LocalCart

Forty-seven food products, offered for sale by eleven vendors from six U.S. states, make up the entire selection that LocalCart presents as an online marketplace for small-batch producers. The store is managed from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, by Universal Schedule and Booking LLC, listed as the operator in the terms of use, and delivery is available nationwide, that is, throughout the United States. The numbers are small. However, they describe—more accurately than the promotional texts—what the buyer actually finds, since the latter speak of farmers and artisans without naming any specific team members.

It is worth noting that public funds are behind the LocalCart project, a fact that can be verified outside the website. The "About" page and two blog posts cite project numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and a joint press release from Senators Shelley Moore Capito and Joe Manchin announces that the Harpers Ferry-based company received $125,000 through the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to develop an app that directly connects small and medium-sized farms with consumers. West Virginia Public Broadcasting, in turn, reported $100,000 in funding from the Local Food Promotion Program for a platform through which West Virginia food producers can promote and sell their products directly to buyers.

Based on this stated purpose of the funding, we examined the list of sellers to determine each one's origin, as indicated by the locations listed on their profiles. It turned out that none of the eleven sellers with active listings are based in West Virginia: the products come from Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, and California, while the only two storefronts in the host state—one belonging to a bakery in Fayetteville and another opened in Beckley—do not contain any items.

For those assessing credibility, this finding has two sides. Federal funding indicates that LocalCart belongs to a real and identifiable entity, but the gap between its stated purpose and the actual product selection remains, for now, unexplained.

The Shelf and Its Producers

On LocalCart, the "Preserves" category belongs almost entirely to Loudounberry Farm & Garden in Lucketts, Virginia: Bear Jam, Traffic Jam, Toe Jam, and Moonshine Jelly cost $4.99 a jar, while smoked pickled eggs go for $5.99. The exception is Blackstrap molasses, sold for $3.45 by McCutcheon's, a company in Frederick, Maryland, where the fourth and fifth generations of the same family work. Sauces and condiments come mainly from four brands: Caulfield Provision Company in Potomac, with bottles ranging from $5.99 to $6.50; Goodlands Food Co. in New Jersey, with hot sauces at $12; Vesta Kitchen in Pottstown, with sauces at the same price and spice blends for $10; Lahtt Sauce in Los Angeles, whose vegan chili oil costs $12.99.

The Pantry, as it's called on the website, is the section with the widest variety of products. Dutch Market Popcorn in Spring City, Pennsylvania, sells five varieties of popcorn kernels in two-pound bags for $10, and a set of six small bags for $27, while GrainBooster offers a mix of whole grains and seeds for $14.50 per bag. Amac, in Montgomery Village, has a jollof rice mix for $7.99, and Pasta Lab in Philadelphia ships a box of four packages of dry pasta for $32. Beverages on LocalCart are limited to a single item: The Botanist kit from Floral Elixir in Cleveland, featuring five floral syrups in 2-ounce bottles, also for $32; meat and baked goods are completely absent.

Each seller has a profile with a brief story, and this is where the site really shines. We learn that Caulfield Provision Company is a family-owned business run by a woman, Connie Caulfield, who cooked for her husband and four children for over two and a half decades before bottling sauces; and that Lahtt Sauce's chili oil is based on a recipe from a dim sum chef in the South Bay area of California. Amac's jollof mix was developed by a Ghanaian-born producer based in Maryland, and Floral Elixir syrups are made in small batches from flowers and plants. The descriptions are provided by the sellers and, according to LocalCart's terms, are not pre-verified by the platform.

The "Coming Soon" label appears next to half of the six categories in the search box: the "Baked Goods" and "Meat" categories are empty, while the "Beverages" category bears the label even though it contains the aforementioned syrup assortment. On the homepage, two of the three linked promotional images lead to the pastries category, and the "Deals" menu—where shoppers would expect to find discounts—displays the entire catalog at the same prices as the rest of the store. The blog has eleven posts, four of which are duplicates of the same two texts, while the remaining seven—general essays about local shopping—appeared a few days apart, after which the series stopped. In this regard, LocalCart presents itself as a store that opened before the setup was complete, which, in principle, does not prevent an order but requires a careful reading of each product listing.

Empty storefronts and a dormant platform

The list of sellers includes eighteen storefronts, seven of which have no products, and two of these—named sstest and sstest2 and located in Mossyrock, Washington—appear to be test accounts left visible. On the same list, seventeen storefronts are labeled under the "Baked Goods" category, including those of hot sauce manufacturers. The LocalCart catalog also has its slip-ups: a sauce labeled "Goodlands" is listed as belonging to Caulfield, and the Caulfield three-pack of sauces costs $15, while the four-pack—described as having the same bottle size—is listed at $35. The brand's story leaves a blank space—enclosed in square brackets—next to the region of origin, just as the publication dates for the terms of service and privacy policy remain, also in square brackets, in template form.

These gaps apply equally to people and opinions. The "About the Team" page consists solely of the statement "We have the best team ever!", a claim that, in the absence of any names, can neither be confirmed nor refuted. The testimonials page linked in the footer is empty; verified product listings indicate that there are no reviews; all sellers appear without ratings; and searches for reviews on Trustpilot, BBB, Yelp, or Google returned no results for LocalCart, though the name is present outside the website on its own Facebook and Nextdoor pages.

Regarding liability, the terms of use define LocalCart as a passive platform that does not intervene in the transaction between buyer and seller and refers any disputes between the user and the platform to individual arbitration. Shipping is the responsibility of each seller, and the displayed price does not include shipping; since the shipping cost does not appear on the product pages viewed, the total is most likely shown only in the shopping cart. All sales are declared final: the returns page excludes returns and exchanges, though it promises a fair resolution upon receiving a message, while the terms direct complaints to the seller, at the seller's discretion. For such inquiries, LocalCart provides a contact form with four fields, with the city name filled in at the bottom (the full mailing address is listed in the legal documents), while a toll-free number available daily appears only in a note in the terms addressed to users in California.

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