The Fraîcheur Québec website: A tool to encourage local procurement

In recent years, Quebec products have become increasingly popular among consumers and are also becoming key ingredients for gourmet creations by Quebec chefs.

More than a passing trend, local procurement has emerged as an important strategy to support food sovereignty. In keeping with this movement, the website fraicheurqeubec.com which is ready just in time for the autumn harvests is a new tool for the hotel, restaurant and institutional sector (HRI) to encourage and facilitate procurement of fruits and vegetables from Quebec.

Convenient features to help us consume local foods

During the summer, Équiterre joined the Quebec Produce Marketing Association (QPMA) to enhance the site, which was launched in 2013. Some of its advantages include:

• The navigation has been improved; the site now enables its users to easily find the seasonal fruits and vegetables that are available from the producer
• The user can identify the nearest producer thanks to a GPS system or cross-search by region (producers and products) or by season
• The range of products is enhanced by the addition of local fruits and vegetables that are frozen, dried or dehydrated
• The addition of a section dedicated to local organic products which are increasingly popular with consumers helps to better understand the benefits of organic farming and also demystify the certification schemes
• Finally, the new section featuring video portraits of "champions establishments" in local sourcing is intended to inspire other organizations to make the transition to buying local.

There is great potential for local procurement in the HRI sector. Just take a look at the experiences of this hospital (Jean-Talon) and this childcare center (CPE Le Sablier).

The new version of the fraicheurquebec.com site provides access at your fingertips to the Quebec’s bounty. Already, more than 600 products are made available and more than 300 chefs are registered to the newsletter.

We invite producers to sign up and encourage consumers to tell food establishment to promote Quebec products. If you think you are a local food champion, don’t hesitate to contact cthorpe@equiterre.org to share your local procurement initiatives and you may be featured on the site