Consumers line up to support local greenhouse tomato producer May 11, 2021
With reduced orders from local food establishments and an influx of foreign product, Tim Verbeek of Platinum Produce says his greenhouse tomatoes have nowhere to go.
When Platinum Produce found themselves facing a surplus of tomatoes they couldn’t move in their own province, they turned to social media. Consumers, hungry for local produce, responded and the posts went viral.
Within 24 hours, co-owner Tim Verbeek and wife, Bonnie, found visitors lined up outside of their greenhouse’s roadside produce stand in Blenheim, Ont. Over the next few days, they would be visited by hundreds of customers from Sarnia, London, the Greater Toronto Area and even from Kingston. To manage the high volume of traffic, they turned the stand into a drive thru.