StartUp Lab Stories: Cole Jones and Local Line

By Alex Kinsella

Local Line founder and CEO Cole Jones has a lot to celebrate.

The Kitchener-based startup is a one-stop platform for independent farmers and is getting ready to celebrate its tenth year in business. It is also making news with an announcement that fast-casual chain restaurant leader Chipotle Mexican Grill has selected Local Line as a Farm-to-Fork Partner to source food for its 3,200 plus restaurants in the U.S.

From school project to startup idea

Local Line started as a summer project between terms while Cole studied for his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. He visited farmers at the St. Jacobs Farmers Market and was surprised by what they shared with him.

“We got to know the farmers and learned that most of the time, farmers' markets are not profitable for the farmer. It's more of this like necessary evil as a way to sell their product,” Jones said.

Jones added that local Mennonite farmers were open to sharing more about their farms, and he was able to partner with them on his initial idea. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Jones would visit the farms and load his SUV with fresh crops, which he then sold to local restaurants and markets in Waterloo and Kitchener.

“I built a nice little student business. I was making enough money that I could pay my rent. There was no burning need to get a ‘real job.’ That’s when I decided to apply to Laurier LaunchPad (now StartUp Lab) during my fourth year,” he said.

Learning how to build a business

Jones said his time in Laurier LaunchPad (now StartUp Lab) helped him stop thinking about it as a project or side hustle and more about it as something that could be a real business.

“Local Line wouldn't exist today without the support of Sandeep De and Dave Inglis, who were support startups at Launchpad when I joined,” Jones added. “I’m still friends with Dave today, and he’s one of the original investors in Local Line.”

Startup methodologies and frameworks have changed over the years, but Jones credits Sandeep De’s teachings on the Lean Startup methodology as one of the reasons for Local Line’s success.

“Sandeep was huge on Lean Startup methodology, which many people today have moved on from. It’s amazing how these philosophies change. I read the Eric Ries book 100 times, and it worked for us. It is a scientific, methodical approach to how you do customer discovery and ensure you're actually solving a problem that people are going to pay for,” he said.

While Cole enjoyed his degree program courses, his time in Launchpad helped solidify his post-graduation plans.

“I was always prepared for those LaunchPad meetings. I took it seriously because once I was exposed to LaunchPad, Communitech, and Sandeep and Dave specifically, I knew that building a startup was the thing for me. Like burn the boats, this is what I want to do,” Jones said jokingly.

Pivoting on an idea

After graduation, Jones started building Local Line as his full-time job. Within 18 months, Jones secured Local Line’s first round of angel funding as he and his small team continued to speak with customers and refine its products. Jones said his original idea of a marketplace led him to find a customer problem with thousands of potential customers.

“We started the business as a marketplace for wholesale local food buyers, but it became clear through the process that it would be difficult to scale. So, for the first few years of business, we focused on family farms. There are over two million of these, and they produce 36% of calories consumed in the U.S. Most of them were running their businesses on sticky notes and spreadsheets, so our thinking was always that we wanted to help maximize the potential of local food systems.

Today, Local Line has 30 employees and serves more than 13,000 farms across North America. Farmers in Australia, the UK, New Zealand, France, Denmark, and Panama also use its platform.

This year, the company is bringing buyers back into the mix, including its partnership with Chipotle Mexican Grill. Jones said Local Line is positioned to do this now because of the number of farmers and products in its system.

“Our platform offers 340,000 different products for sale. It's the largest local food database in North America, making it easy for you if you're someone like our largest customer, Chipotle. It runs its entire local program through our system now,” he said. “It's a full circle moment for us because now we're able to return to the same thing that I was doing out of my Acura MDX—just on a little bit of a bigger scale now.”

Want to get involved? Ask us how at startuplab@wlu.ca.