Buy Local Promotion
Promoting Local Food: Supporting Local Farms
An important part of building markets for local food is knowing what messaging will lead people to buy local.
This was the core objective in a project Sustainable Solano started in 2025 in partnership with University of California, Davis, and local marketing agency Protective Marketing to research how people made decisions about buying local food, develop and test marketing strategies reaching both new and existing market segments in Solano County to support local and regional farmers.
This web page provides resources and project documents. We hope that local agencies, farmers and businesses find this material helpful for their public outreach and marketing!
About the Project
The project started with focus group interviews with Solano residents attending Sustainable Solano cooking classes and Food is Free Bay Area food distributions. UC Davis researchers conducted the interviews.
The project continued with two “Lab in the Field” experiments conducted by UC Davis undergraduate and PhD students under the guidance of Dr. Kristin Kiesel. Solano residents were given the choice of buying local strawberries with different labels.
UC Davis student Eileen Nguyen created a marketing plan, recommending differentiated marketing strategies, particularly targeting two segments:
- Low-to-middle income, sustainability-focused, health-conscious middle-aged consumers (Gen X, ages 46-61)
- Low-to-middle income college students and young professionals valuing sustainability and healthy eating (Gen Z, ages 18-29)
Darren Holmes from Protective Marketing took these findings further to develop Buy Local communication strategies and messaging targeting these two segments.
Sustainable Solano conducted two pilots to test the proposed strategies: a cost comparison between CSA boxes and the same quantity of produce from a local grocery store (the CSA produce was significantly less expensive), and a Gen Z tasting experiment at Solano Community College.
More information and links to all of these documents can be found in the Resources box.
Resources from the Project
Preliminary Situational Analysis
UC Davis assessed the current market for buying local food (click to read the report)
Focus Group Interviews
What Solano residents shared about buying local food (click here to read report)
Buyer Intention Experiment Results
How people actually made purchasing decisions in “lab in the field” experiments (click here to read report)
Marketing Plan
Segments and strategies to reach cost-conscious consumers and Gen Z (click here to read report)
Communications Strategy
Messaging and communications strategies to reach cost-conscious consumers and Gen Z (click here to read report)
Blogs
The True Cost of Local Food
Comparing the cost of a subscription farm box with fresh, local, seasonal produce with grocery store prices reveals that the farm boxes are the better bargain.
Making it Meaningful: Marketing Local Food to Gen Z
Opportunities exist to engage Gen Z in boosting local food systems that build long-term community health, support regional economies, create a sense of community and belonging, and ensure sustainable food systems
Buying Local: Community Preferences for Local Food
The Solano Local Food System Alliance hosted an educational forum about what leads consumers to make purchasing decisions around local food. This forum drew on recent research in Solano County on consumer preferences that will inform future marketing around local food.
Funding for this Buy Local project was made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA.