Pre-orders for Shetland food producers

Shetland has seen, more than once, what a run of cancelled ferry sailings does to a supermarket shelf. Those episodes reignite the same conversation each time — about food security, and about why island production matters when the mainland link fails. Shetland Farm Dairies made the point plainly after one such spell: it is exactly why supporting local produce matters.

Local production is the resilience — if it can be ordered

The argument for buying Shetland produce is easy to make and harder to operationalise. A hotel or shop that wants to shift more of its buying to island suppliers still has to place those orders somewhere, chase them, and hope the quantities were written down correctly. That friction is why informal local supply often stays informal.

A structured ordering channel changes that. Your trade customers order against a published deadline, you produce to a confirmed list, and both sides have a record. It's the difference between a supplier people like and a supplier people can plan around.

Built for how island trade actually works

• Cut-offs you set around your production and the freight timetable.
• One consolidated list per delivery day, totalled across every customer.
• Invoice terms for hotels, shops and restaurants — no card checkout needed.
• Your own branded ordering page, on your domain rather than a marketplace.
• Free to start, so a single delivery day can be trialled with a few regulars.

For wholesalers as well as producers

If you bring stock in and distribute it onward, the same discipline applies from the other direction: collect trade orders against a deadline before the sailing, and you commit to a load you have already sold rather than one you hope to.