Overview

Gender

female

Julia Niiro’s two-year MilkRun harnesses an old-fashioned idea--the milkman--to solve two key problems of the local food movement: distribution and low pay. MilkRun brings all the food groups--dairy, produce, bread, and meat, and even locally produced pet food--to the doorsteps of customers and high-end restaurants in Portland, Oregon. Niiro hires farmers and ranchers to make deliveries themselves; cutting out the middleman allows Niiro to increase their take to 70 percent of each dollar spent on food. (In a traditional supply chain, producers receive only 10 percent.) “I want to make it as easy to buy from local farmers as it is to book a stay in someone’s house or call a ride,” Niiro said in a recent TEDx Talk. “If it was easier to buy better tasting, fresher food directly from your local farmers than it was to go to a local supermarket after a long day, wouldn’t you