Central Oregon Locavore is racing to open a second indoor marketplace in Bend's Discovery West neighborhood before Thanksgiving, but the nonprofit says it still needs $100,000 to finish construction after rising costs pushed past its original fundraising goal.
The nonprofit had raised just shy of its original $200,000 campaign goal when it acquired city permits in mid-September to start building the new location, according to The Bulletin. Rising construction costs have since threatened the planned fall opening date, the outlet reported, leaving the organization scrambling to close the new gap before the holiday. As reported by WhatNow, the planned site sits at 1135 NW Ochoa Dr., Suite 100, in the Discovery West neighborhood.
The new marketplace will carry fresh local produce, meat, dairy and other products from regional producers, the same Bulletin report noted. It's meant to give westside Bend residents permanent, convenient access to locally grown food, per WhatNow, while giving small producers a dependable retail outlet that founder Nicolle Timm-Branch has described as missing from the area's food system.
A Second Storefront for a Decade-Old Mission
Central Oregon Locavore was founded by Timm-Branch in 2009 and now operates its original indoor marketplace and year-round farmers market at 1841 NE 3rd St. in Bend, open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., according to the nonprofit's own site, the same account notes. The organization works with more than 150 local farms, ranches and producers, as reported by Bend Source, and returns 65 cents of every dollar spent at the marketplace directly back to those growers and makers.
Timm-Branch has framed the expansion in blunt terms. “Local food doesn't survive on good intentions,” she said, according to WhatNow, adding that farmers and ranchers need reliable places to sell what they produce. The nonprofit has spent years building relationships with regional farms and ranches, per that same account, and plans to stock the new location with a rotating supply of seasonal goods rather than relying on a single distributor.
Why Farmers Say They Need the Sales Outlet
The westside expansion followed surveys and listening sessions the nonprofit conducted in 2025, according to Bend Source. “We don't need more awareness or passion — we just need more sales,” Timm-Branch told The Bulletin in a separate report, adding, “What our members told us was that we need easier access.” A 2025 Locavore audit of 33 farms and ranchers across Central Oregon identified consistent, year-round sales infrastructure as the region's greatest need for small producers, according to My Central Oregon.
The Discovery West location is described elsewhere as a 600-square-foot neighborhood-scale store projected to draw more than 315 shoppers a week in its first year, per a separate My Central Oregon report, and is expected to increase annual producer sales volume by 25 to 30 percent. The nonprofit says it paid more than $1.4 million directly to local food producers in 2025 alone, and has paid more than $8.7 million to local producers across seven Central Oregon communities since it began tracking sales in 2014.
The Broader Economic Case for Local Food
Academic research backs up the stakes behind that sales pitch. A 2016 study of local food in Central Oregon surveyed 28 farmers and ranchers and found they generated $1.5 million in sales and 28 full- and part-time jobs, according to Oregon State University's Small Farms program. The same research found that 76 percent of sales by local producers stayed in the local economy, and that local food producers generated 26 jobs for every $1 million in sales, compared with 12 jobs among commodity-focused producers.
A related 2017 study modeled what a food hub purchasing at least $610,000 in local food products could generate: nine new jobs, $329,000 in wages and $642,000 in overall sales, according to the same Oregon State analysis. If the Discovery West marketplace succeeds, it would mark Central Oregon Locavore's most permanent retail footprint yet, per WhatNow. The nonprofit is accepting donations toward the $100,000 gap through individual gifts, business contributions, donor-advised funds and IRA-based giving via its official website, that report added.
