Enjoy home delivery of organic, local food
Home delivery makes veggies ‘an experience’
Remember the ice cream truck? Remember how even the most fleeting glimpse of that childhood icon was enough to send shivers of anticipation coursing through your body? And remember how much effort it took not to instantly bolt out of the house and chase it down?
Now picture that same ice cream truck, but instead of finding ice cream stuffed inside, imagine finding veggies. Yes, veggies. “We’ve designed our vans so they look like ice cream trucks for vegetables,” explains Danny Turner, founder of Edmonton’s The Organic Box, an organic-food delivery service that focuses on local products. “Even the box that the food comes in is meant to look like a present.
“It’s our way of getting kids excited about eating healthy foods,” Turner says. “First they see this delivery van coming, and it’s all bright and colourful. Then they get this box. And they get to open and unpack it, just like a present. It turns it into an experience.”
Turner, who comes from a farming background, says he thought up the idea for The Organic Box when he noticed that a lot of other kids from farming backgrounds were hesitant to take over the family farm.
“Small-scale growers can’t survive just by depending on farmers markets — the season is too short. Growers needed a direct-to-market channel, and an organic-food delivery service gives them a market 12 months of the year,” Turner says. “Plus, people need a way of accessing local, organic food beyond shopping at farmers markets.”
The process is simple. Members of The Organic Box get a box delivered either weekly or bi-weekly on a set day of the week, depending on where they live.
Inside that box they’ll find a variety of organic fruits and vegetables — usually about 15 kinds. The focus is on local produce, but because of our short growing season in Alberta, non-local items supplement the local ones.
“In the summer everything in the box is local, except for the bananas. Bananas always go in because we’ve made a commitment to a co-op in Peru to buy a certain volume every week — guarantees like that help them pull themselves out of poverty,” Turner says.
“During the winter we use what’s in storage — locally-grown root vegetables like potatoes, onions and carrots — as well as local salad shoots and mushrooms.
“After that, we slot in imported items to make a full produce list. And by local, I mean Alberta and the B.C. interior — B.C. is where most of our fruit comes from.”
There are two box sizes, one based on what a family of four might consume, and one smaller one. Exactly what’s in the box changes every week, depending on what the growers have available, and every box is fully customizable.
“You can remove items, change quantities, add things … it’s very flexible. We also have a full catalogue of nonproduce items like bread, eggs, milk and coffee that you can order too. Fundamentally, it’s a produce business, but the other items help to meet our customers’ needs and expose them to other producers in and around the Edmonton area.”
Calgary has its own organic food delivery service in SPUD (Sustainable Produce Urban Delivery). It started out as a very basic produce-delivery service 15 years ago, and has evolved into what is essentially a one-stop grocery shopping service today.
It also offers a fully customizable local fruit and vegetable box, the Fresh Harvest Box, but the range of other products available is similar to what you’d find in a grocery store, everything from dairy products to ready-to-eat offerings to canned goods to laundry detergent.
General manager Karen Durbridge says about 90 per cent of the items SPUD carries are organic and at least 50 per cent are local (produced within 800 kilometres of Calgary).
“If we can do 100-per-cent local we do, but unfortunately we can’t grow bananas and oranges around here,” explains Durbridge with a laugh. “If we can’t get it locally, then we ship it in from California or Mexico — we try not to go any further than that, though.
“All of our products are clean, too. We won’t carry anything that’s been produced with chemicals or preservatives, or anything containing nitrites. That means we need to find vendors who smoke their meats naturally.
“It took us two years to find someone who makes really great bacon, and now that bacon sells out each and every week.”
For both companies, the focus is on connecting consumers with local farmers and producers. Not only is it convenient, but it’s a lot more energyefficient to stuff a van full of 60 boxes than have each and every one of those customers drive to the store.
Both services also offer storage tips, preparation suggestions and recipes. Everything even comes with a 100-percent guarantee.
And although a food-delivery service might seem somewhat impersonal, Durbridge disagrees.
“At SPUD, we try to add a very personal touch. Our drivers are on the same route each week so they get to know the customers. They pet the dogs on their heads, they stop to chat, and kids watch at the windows, waiting for the drivers to come. And our drivers are all bonded, so some of them have keys and can put the boxes right in the house. That’s especially helpful for older people.”
And this way you can even shop in your pyjamas.