Nashville, TN – Happy Holidays! The Tennessee Department of Agriculture has a gift for you: a store full of locally grown and made products you can keep inside your telephone.
Savvy cell phone users can now point their phone cameras at a “quick response,” or “QR” code, and launch an application that takes them straight to the Pick Tennessee Products website and Taste of Tennessee Online Store. Once the code has done its job, shoppers can instantly access all the local farm-direct ingredients, artisan foods, gift baskets, and even Christmas trees listed at www.picktnproducts.org.
The Taste of Tennessee Online Store is a featured section of the Pick Tennessee Products site. Holiday shopping with the online store makes local artisan foods not only easy to find but easy to send, as well. All businesses listed within the store conduct “e-commerce,” meaning items can be ordered and sent all at the same time online with a credit card.
The online store features a wide variety of upscale and specialty products in addition to Tennessee’s traditional farm fare. Tennessee produces international award winning caviar, handmade artisan chocolates, farm-direct cheeses (including goat and even sheep cheeses), fruit butters and sauces. E-shoppers can send, straight from the farm, an aged country ham, local honey or sorghum syrup, a naturally raised fresh turkey—or even a Christmas goose.
Several companies specialize in gift baskets made with Tennessee farm products. Click on the gift basket picture within the online store to go directly to Tennessee gift basket companies. Gift baskets are also an option from some other Taste of Tennessee producers who produce items like honey and jellies, so it’s worth taking a look in their online stores, too.
Many of Tennessee’s farmers and artisan food makers do not do e-commerce, but still sell and send items when contacted via telephone. The farmers and producers of these foods are not included in the online store but are listed by food category in the Pick Tennessee Products “Food” section. A number of the state’s wineries are also happy to put together and send a basket of items from their gift stores. Locate Tennessee wineries through the “Beverages” button or by clicking on the wine glass photo on the home page.
Find local, artisan foods at www.picktnproducts.org. To access the online store, click on the “Shop Now” and “Taste of Tennessee” picture. To find other Tennessee farm foods, click on the green “Food” button at the left hand side of the home page screen, and then click on any food category button.
Follow Pick Tennessee Products on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PickTnProducts and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/#!/PickTnProducts.
