BELFAST—Watch out Grubhub, a new food delivery service is in town.

Matt Burke, owner of Sweet Monkey Business, an artisan cookie company and Kate Hall, owner of GRAZE Maine, a producer of microgreens, have teamed up to offer a custom delivery service with their new website Belfast Delivers, which allows customers to shop from more than 20 local farms, food vendors, shops, and restaurants and have it brought directly to their door.

The way it works is customers can browse the website and shop for items every Wednesday. At the end of that day, Burke and Hall place all of their orders with the vendors, who then deliver the items on Thursday to their custom kitchen at The Crosby Center, where the items are packed and refrigerated. Then, with a small team in place, the organizers schedule all of their deliveries Friday to Belfast and the surrounding towns in Waldo County.

The new venture kicked off on June 17 with the choices of farm-raised meat, cheese, produce, herbs, restaurant to-go meals, and even locally made products for sale on the website.

Inspired by an online market started by the restaurant, The Lost Kitchen where Hall sold her microgreens, the co-organizers of Belfast Delivers decided this was a service people in the community needed during a pandemic.

“We both come from cities and both had access to any kind of food you wanted, but up here in Maine, the area lacks that resource,” said Hall. “There are a lot of people that can’t venture out to get what they need because of the risk of Covid-19, and at the same time, there are a lot of small businesses that are impacted by farmer’s markets and stores that have closed. We wanted to create a local delivery service that sourced from high-quality locally grown food, farms, bakeries, and other products. We’re just trying to keep everybody’s heads above water with a unique sales outlet to get through these times.”

Even though Burke and Hall still work full-time on their own businesses, they said that they plan to operate Belfast Delivers for the long term and will continue to add more vendors to their website as well as add more days for delivery.

“We have lots of ideas we’re going to explore,” said Burke.

Delivery within Belfast (and all of 04915 including Waldo and Swanville) is $8 per order. Delivery to Northport/Lincolnville (04849), Belmont/Morrill (04952), Searsport (04974), and Stockton Springs (04981) is $12 per order. 

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com