Farm Store Offering Curbside Pickup

Customers can now order their groceries, farm-fresh produce, and fresh-squeezed orange juice from the Cal Poly Pomona Farm Store online and pick it up curbside behind the store.

“We’d like to make it easier for our customers so they can still get fresh produce but don’t have to worry about shopping indoors,” Farm Store Manager Dawn Taccone said.

Here’s how you can order and get curbside pickup at the Farm Store:

• Order and pay through the Farm Store’s new online sales portal, http://www.orderfarmstore.com.
• Curbside pickup is available Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Follow the signs and park in the designated curbside pickup spaces behind the store.
• Call the store at (909) 869-4906, extension 2, to notify a Farm Store employee that you have arrived.
• A Farm Store employee will bring your order out to the car.

The Farm Store joins the adjacent Cal Poly Pomona Nursery and Discovery Farm in offering curbside pickup of items.

The nursery was planning its annual Pepperzania sale when the pandemic struck last year, forcing it to switch gears.

Instead of having customers come inside the nursery greenhouses to pick from the 150-plus varieties of sweet and hot peppers, Manager Monica Salembier made them available to customers through the nursery’s online sales portal, which was created in December 2018.

The nursery then either shipped the plants to customers – only in California – or provided customers with curbside pickup service.

Curbside pickup – which is available from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day in front of the greenhouses – also was extended to all online orders.

The nursery will have spring vegetables available for shipping or curbside pickup starting March 1 – including eggplant, herb and papaya plants, and 25 varieties of tomatoes.

Like the nursery, Discovery Farm – part of the AGRIscapes Center – had planned several events for last spring, including hosting weekday field trips by schoolchildren and berry and produce picking on weekends.

With crops ready for picking and no customers able to visit, Discovery Farm decided to offer the “Farm Box” – a service where subscribers get a box of fresh Cal Poly Pomona produce every week.

They can order the box online - adding other, optional, items, such as honey from the university apiary – and pick up on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

“This just shows how innovative and flexible our staff are,” said Lisa Kessler, interim dean of the Huntley College of Agriculture. “The college is pleased to be able to provide fresh and essential items to the community in a safe manner”