Laurier alum Cole Jones builds e-commerce platform Local Line to help farmers boost sales, cut waste

Nov. 20, 2025

While visiting the St. Jacobs Farmers’ Market as a student, Wilfrid Laurier University alum Cole Jones (BA ’16) learned about a significant pain point for market vendors: even though direct-to-customer sales offered higher margins than wholesale, few were making a profit selling at the market because of the time and logistical costs involved.

This realization sparked an idea, leading Jones to create Local Line – an e-commerce platform for farmers that recently won a Canadian Food Innovation Network Foodtech Frontier award.

Local Line’s platform helps farmers address the issue of profitability by streamlining administrative workflows and allowing them to sell directly to customers online. It also matches farms with local grocers, restaurants and distributors, opening new markets and reducing shipping costs.

“We give farmers the tools to sell directly to their customers, shorten their supply chain and increase their margins,” says Jones. “The average farmer that uses our platform grows their sales by 23% a year.”

After graduating from Laurier, Jones opened an office in downtown Kitchener’s historic Lang Tannery building in 2016 to take advantage of the region’s burgeoning tech hub.

Jones credits the Laurier StartUp Lab for helping him shape his idea into a business and exposing him to the greater Waterloo startup ecosystem. The StartUp Lab is an early-stage incubator that provides mentorship and connection to students, alumni and community members.

“The mentors at the StartUp Lab were exceptional,” says Jones. “They made me believe that I could actually do it.”

Jones is among the 28% of Laurier graduates who have started at least one business, according to Building a Thriving Future, a 2024-25 report highlighting Laurier’s social and economic impact. These ventures collectively employ an estimated 305,000 people across Canada.

From humble beginnings serving farmers in Waterloo Region and Guelph, Jones has grown Local Line operations to include more than 10,000 farmers in 14 countries, with over $200 million in annual sales passing through the platform. Among his customers is the restaurant chain Chipotle, which uses Local Line software to manage the logistics of sourcing 47 million pounds of produce from local farmers. During the last two years, Local Line customers have saved more than 1.5 billion food travel kilometres through supply chain efficiencies and in some cases, reduced food waste by up to 18%.

Modern farming uses cutting edge technology and equipment, and one of the lessons Jones learned at Laurier was the value of deeply understanding your customers and their needs.

“If you’re going to deliver a digital service to a farmer, the bar is high,” Jones says. “You have to quickly provide real value to customers.”

Jones’ advice for future Laurier student entrepreneurs?

“If you strongly believe that a product or service should exist in the world, just build it,” he says. “You don’t need anyone’s permission to create something awesome.”