A gifting guide to support local this holiday season.
Just in time for the holiday season, our Marketplace has transformed into a local and responsible Christmas market stocked for all your gifting needs. Scroll for our team members’ tips and tricks to find (or make) a little something for everyone on your list.
Meet Emily. She’s a weekday Copywriter and a weekend jam, preserve, and compote maker who likes to gift more than “just stuff.” Having worked at Lufa Farms for over two years, she knows how to make the most of the Marketplace and spends her summer preserving its seasonality.
Emily begins gift planning months before the first snowfall to gather as many seasonal fruits and veg as possible. Her home is filled with delightful seasonal aromas as she turns hot peppers into jam, apples into spiced butter, pears into compote, oranges into marmalade, and oats, candied ginger, and pecans into crunchy granola.
She’s particularly pleased with the Marketplace’s variety of responsible and traceable spices (a real rarity) that she adds to her jams and compotes - Emily’s proud to create each gift lovingly and with ingredients that support local producers. Plus, homemade presents are cost-effective and a great way to repurpose empty glass jars.
Team tip! It’s always more fun to prep this type of gift with a friend or two - make a weekend out of it, choose recipes, play some classic holiday tunes, and jam out (literally).
Meet Sophie. Over her (nearly) two years as one of our purchasers, she’s paid particular attention to which products steal the show and works with our partners to create the ultimate ready-to-gift boxes.
Whether you’re celebrating Hanukkah (like Sophie), Christmas, a birthday, or another special occasion, she suggests supporting local artisans by gifting a gift set. She’s hand-picked Lufavore favourites, bundled them together, and wrapped them up in sustainable, ready-to-gift packaging.
If she had to pick, her favourite is Miels d’Anicet’s box - complete with honey, soap, a best-selling lip balm, and homemade nougat. Sophie also recommends The Unscented Company’s set for the sustainable self-care expert and B Factory’s beeswax candle box. And we haven’t left out the kiddos - we have everything from portable memory games to colouring books.
Meet Michael. He’s our IT Support Specialist of two and a half years and a year-round gift giver. Michael comes from a family of Lufavore foodies, so when it comes to gifts, he gives them his most loved products and recent discoveries.
Michael doesn’t wait for a holiday to gift his faves - he delivers Marketplace hits year-round. His recent gifts include Sum Sauce Lab’s iconic spicy garlic oil (he always has a solid supply in his fridge), Bagel Henri Bourassa’s breakfast samosas and in the past, he’s gifted dD Manba’s spicy peanut butter and virtually all of Chef Su’s dumplings. For seasonal finds this year, he’ll be sticking to classics like maple butter and our rotation of cakes and bread.
He’s fond of sending surprise basket deliveries filled with his faves straight to his friend’s and family’s front doors for birthdays, holidays, and care packages that brighten a loved one’s day. It’s a hassle-free way to gift - he just grabs the empty basket back the next time he sees them and returns it with his weekly delivery.
