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Business & Tech

The Fresh Farm Market Adds Meat, Sandwiches to Deli

The Fresh Farm Market is more than just a stop for everything locally grown. These days it's a one of a kind deli as well.

From milk produced in Myakka City to honey created in Lutz, has all the has all the finely made local products your heart can desire.

Owner Michael Cairo partnered with his wife Christie eight months ago to create a produce market that could offer a unique blend of products that area supermarkets lack. Now, with a delicatessen and their own brand of fresh roasted coffee, the couple is building quite a reputation in the Riverview area.

"We try to carry unique products that you can't get at Publix or Wal-Mart," Michael Cairo said. "We can't compete with them, so we have to offer things like our deli meats, which are high quality at a good price. It's not something you can just walk into a grocery store and buy."

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In looking for products to stock the store with, the couple looked at salad dressings made by Hartville Kitchen in Ohio, where Christie is from. They found out about another Ohio-based company with an Amish background, Troyer, that specializes in meats and cheeses that come from animals that are fed only organic material.

Shortly after discovering that the meats generated faithful customers in areas as close as Sarasota, The Fresh Farm created a deli counter featuring the company's products.

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"It was just something we felt like we had to do to give people another reason to come here," Cairo said. "It was one thing for people to come here to get their produce, but then they had to go to the store to get meat, so we thought it would be a nice addition, and it's worked out really well. Now we're making sub sandwiches, and people are loving it. We've already catered a few big parties, and we've only been making sandwiches since the beginning of the year."

It was 2003 that the commercial real estate business brought the Cairos to the Bloomingdale area from Chicago, but when the market collapsed a few years later, Michael found himself looking for something else to do. That's when the market, at 5914 Providence Rd., was born.

"I like doing this because we've gotten to know a lot of families," Cairo said. "More than 60,000 cars go by here everyday, so this location is perfect. It's been good to see people come in and become our regulars."

The products at The Fresh Farm are wide ranging. Whether it be their fresh ground coffee, locally picked oranges, old-fashioned Amish butter (just salt and cream) or the extensive selection of meats and cheeses, Cairo is proud of the products he has to offer.

"We've got a local family owned dairy that we work with, so you're buying milk that comes from cows that have been fed nothing but grass, no additives," Cairo said. "We sell hand churned butter, free-range, grain-fed eggs from Plant City, old-fashioned country bacon from here in Florida. We work directly with the farmers, so we control the quality of what we sell."

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