Partner Pledge
The Taste the Local Difference pledge demands a certain level of truth, trust, and transparency in the relationship between our business and yours.
We pledge to:
- Include your business in the TLD database and select marketing materials, such as our searchable website, point-of-sale materials and regional publications of the Guide to Local Food.
- Provide opportunities for you to promote your business through other TLD marketing efforts and events. (Paid and unpaid.)
- Recognize your business as a TLD Partner.
- Provide liaison support between producers, buyers and consumers.
- Provide broad marketing and public relations support for locally grown food in the region where your farm or food business is located in Michigan.
- Promote the vision and goals of the Good Food Charter (www.michiganfood.org).
- Protect the value of the TLD brand to consumers by ensuring that all Taste the Local Difference® partner businesses honor TLD’s core tenets of trust, truth, and transparency:
- TLD requires that every participating TLD food business provides consumers, upon request, with honest, accurate, and timely information about the growing practices, origins, ingredients, processing methods, and labor practices used to create their products.
- Survey our partners on the important issues that resonate with them, so we can better serve them year after year.
As a Taste the Local Difference Partner, I will:
- Continue to make locally grown products a priority in my business.
- Honor TLD’s core tenets of trust, truth, and transparency. (noted above)
- Use the TLD logo and other marketing/branding materials licensed by TLD to:
- Promote products grown and/or made specifically in regions represented by TLD*
- Encourage sales of locally grown products.
- Act in a consistent manner with the goals and vision of Taste the Local Difference®:
- Professionalism: TLD producers deliver high-quality products, running sound, ethical businesses while maintaining compliance with pertinent governmental regulatory agencies, and keeping appropriate records.
- Care for Michigan’s Unique Resources: Recognizing that sustainability looks different on each farm and in each region, TLD promotes management practices that support biological diversity, healthy soil, clean water, and fresh air.
- Community: TLD businesses are committed to developing and strengthening safe, healthy, and accessible community food systems.
- Support efforts to measure the value of TLD marketing efforts by participating in TLD research.
- Permit the use of my business name in TLD marketing efforts.
- Provide a detailed listing of my business for inclusion in the TLD database.
- Provide basic factual information about the growing practices, origins, ingredients, processing methods, and labor practices used to make my products.
*Taste the Local Difference® operates in regions around Michigan. We recognize that each region may have its own deFinition of local boundaries. We ask that farmers and producers emphasize sales of their products within the geographic area where the business resides.
