A new locally sourced food market, Grandad’s Farm Stop, will open on the west side of Madison in the coming months. Owner Patrick Randolph’s only condition for products in the shop: They must come from Wisconsin businesses.

“ We're trying to be as much of a one-stop shop as possible,” he adds.

Randolph is taking over the old Dan Moore’s towing service location on Mineral Point Road and hopes to open before the end of the season in August or September. The shop will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week.

Products will range from produce and meat to frozen pizzas and shelf-stable products like pickled vegetables and organic flour. Grandad’s will also have a small café attached to the market serving locally roasted coffee and a rotation of pastries from a variety of Madison bakeries.

After 10 years of working in education, Randolph pivoted and spent a year managing a small farm in 2021 before becoming a full-time parent. He has continued to help out on a family friend’s farm while working on creating a space where farmers could drop off their products without the hassle of selling.

A “farm stop” is a retail store that Randolph describes as “threading the needle” between a co-op and a farmer’s market. It functions like a grocery store but carries only locally sourced products, with vendors setting their own prices.

Fifty-five farmers and small local businesses have signed on to sell their products at Grandad’s and will receive 70% of the profits from their products that are sold. According to Randolph, the model allows smaller farmers more opportunities to sell their products without needing to provide wholesale-level quantities that co-ops demand or spend long days in a booth at a farmers’ market.

“ It's definitely not better than a farmers’ market or better than a co-op, by any means,” he says. “But it gives people more options and allows people more flexibility in their business. The whole idea (is) I want to support farmers literally any way I can.”

Randolph says support for farmers is necessary right now as more and more Wisconsin farms file for bankruptcy. He says farmers are financially strapped and often work 15 to 16 hours a day. Randolph’s grandfather — the store’s namesake — owned a farm in central Missouri and Randolph says it was difficult to get him to take a break even to have lunch when they would visit.

These experiences shaped Randolph’s understanding of what goes into managing a farm: “It’s just really, really hard — a lot of uncertainty, a lot of lack of control. You're never making a ton of money. Things are always kind of on the precipice of failure.”

Randolph worked for several universities before joining a large nonprofit called the Aspen Institute. In 2021, burned out and searching for work that wouldn’t keep him at a desk, Randolph left education to manage a small family farm in Oregon, Wisconsin. He spent one year farming before his first daughter was born, when he became a stay-at-home parent. He’s continued caring for his two daughters full time until launching Grandad’s.

Even though he had no experience in retail, Randolph began thinking about the idea of a farm stop in his first season on the farm. “We were growing so well, and we just didn't have the customer base to sell all of the produce.”

Smaller farmers who sell their product need to be able to market it or manage a team to do so. “ We require them to have like a thousand different hats,” says Randolph. He hopes to ease the process of getting produce to market so farmers can focus on growing or “ just take a Saturday morning off here and there.”

At Grandad’s, if products don’t sell, the farmer absorbs the cost. But, Randolph is looking for other ways to sell products. For instance, produce that isn’t aesthetically pleasing to customers at the farm stop might be resold at a discounted price to local chefs or farm-to-table catering companies like Pasture and Plenty. He adds that Grandad’s will work to donate anything that can’t be sold to a food pantry.

In the winter, Grandad’s will still be able to sell storage crops like cabbages, onions, potatoes and carrots. Randolph will be looking for ways to maintain access to locally grown foods during the colder months but thinks “people will be surprised what you can get locally in the winter.”

He hopes to get Grandad’s up and running as quickly as possible, but he says little things came up with the older building and permitting through the city. Beyond opening the market, he is helping to manage the build-out and start the cafe. “ It's kind of like three projects in one,” he says. “ Somebody said, ‘You like to be uncomfortable, don't you?’”

Randolph remains optimistic about opening his farm stop in Madison. “This is a great local food economy ecosystem — it’s so cool. We’re just excited to be a small part of it.”