Long work hours and family responsibilities make it difficult sometimes to get to supermarkets or farmers markets to purchase and prepare healthy food. But Louisvillians now have several options for getting good, fresh food.
Consider these four fresh-food delivery options — Community Supported Agriculture subscriptions (CSAs), Grasshoppers boxes, Green B.E.A.N. Delivery and HelloFresh. All provide periodic (usually weekly) delivery of a box of fresh foods, though the source of the foods, the variety offered and the context of the food are all different.
Green B.E.A.N. Delivery
A private business that started in Indianapolis and is expanding in the Ohio Valley, Green B.E.A.N. Delivery offers a choice of foods, not all of local origin, but customizable according to needs and taste. It is, essentially, an online natural foods store that delivers to the home. A subscription box will primarily contain produce, but subscribers can also choose baby food, cereal, bread, eggs, dairy and frozen items. You select items from a seasonal grocery list. Green B.E.A.N. Delivery touts that it sources organic vegetables and operates farms near Cincinnati and Indianapolis. It also provides tropical fruit such as lemons, bananas and mangoes, which it insists are from fair-trade sources. There is also a long list of value-added products, some sourced locally, such as Red Hot Roasters coffee and Bourbon Barrel soy sauce.
Green B.E.A.N. delivers to home or workplace once a week. The day is determined by geographic area of the city. Its boxes are recyclable, and if they’re lost or damaged, subscribers are charged. The minimum charge is $35 a week for a vegetable box suitable for two people; more substantial subscriptions are available for more money, and you can add a la carte items.
Pros: You can order what you want, keeping the season in mind. A variety of sizes and prices is available. You pay weekly, and you can suspend subscription for vacations or other reasons. Non-local foods are available (mangoes, lemons), as well as a limited choice of prepared foods. Boxes are packaged in local warehouse facilities and delivered to your home or business.
Cons: It is an out-of-town business. It makes efforts to source foods locally, but many things seem to be from non-local sources. No recipes are provided with boxes, but the website has links to many recipes, well organized by dish.
CSAs
Louisville is as high on the trendy cutting edge of food production as any spot in a state not blessed with an abundant coastline. Farmers in Kentucky and in Southern Indiana have kept up with the times and are bringing excellent quality produce, dairy products and meats to area tables.
Indeed, local farmers were among the trendsetters, establishing Community Supported Agriculture programs 20 years ago, long before they became a fashionable way to get food. Small farmers invite individuals and families to partner with them each year by investing in the spring, buying shares of the farm’s production, and by so doing, understanding more about the cycles of the seasons and the joys and troubles of farmers.
An initial investment of $350 to $500 at the start of the growing season (depending on the farmer and the extent of his or her production — some subscriptions run higher) gives local farmers a cash cushion and entitles a shareholder to a weekly box of produce, freshly picked and packed, the exact contents determined by the season and the weather.
The food in a CSA box could not be fresher, but the subscriber has no say in what is in the box, and early in the season may be overwhelmed by greens and more greens, or oddities like garlic scapes or rhubarb. And later in the season, a bumper crop of beans might mean enough beans to feed a family of four. Twice a day. For a week. For weeks at a time. Or, if drought strikes, the contents might be rather lean and limited for a few weeks. But CSA is a philosophic as well as an economic investment, a way to understand more about real food — which can mean abundance for a while, or lean times.
Pros: All food is locally produced. CSAs are through individual farms, and subscribers get to know the farmer and can usually visit the farms if they wish. Some even give discounts in exchange for labor on the farm. Some farms can also add eggs or meat or cheese, if they produce that in addition to vegetables and fruit. You pay upfront, at the start of the season. Boxes are returnable and reusable.
Cons: Subscribers get what is grown in season locally. No choice, and no citrus fruit or bananas. Sometimes subscribers will get weeks and weeks of the same vegetables. Unusual vegetables might appear (sorrel, tatsoi); no recipes are provided with the box, but farmers often have suggestions. If you leave town during the season, you lose those weeks, or must find someone to take and use it for you. Most farmers bring boxes to a central pick-up point, and you must go there to get it. You must sign up at the start of the season, and you are committed for up to 26 weeks.
Grasshoppers Distribution
Formed initially by a group of local farmers, Grasshoppers has been a way to provide a more stable market for local farmers, and to allow farmers to concentrate on farming, not finding ways to market and distribute their food. Grasshoppers provides seasonal produce boxes, drawn from the bounty of the 74 local farms it works with, as well as eggs, meats, dairy and value-added local products, such as canned fruits and vegetables.
Somewhat like Green B.E.A.N. Delivery, Grasshoppers is an online food market. It offers a range of box contents, starting at $19.50 a week for a small produce box, and subscribers can augment their basket with a la carte choices beyond fruits and vegetables. While Grasshoppers requires a subscription commitment, subscriptions can be suspended for vacations. A la carte and recurring packages can include dairy, breakfast meats, pastured beef and chicken, and locally canned goods.
Pros: All foods are locally sourced and sustainably farmed. Distribution runs on a just-in-time basis, so food is distributed within days of its arriving at the Portland Avenue warehouse. The boxes offer a wide range of choices while still being seasonal. Subscriptions can be halted and restarted.
Cons: Foods are what is produced locally, so no bananas or guavas. Delivery is to 36 drop-off points in Louisville and Southern Indiana, but no home delivery.
HelloFresh
This is a meal ingredients delivery service operating out of New York City, and delivering by FedEx. My one experience with HelloFresh’s service, a sample box, resulted in three very good meals — and leftovers.
You choose three meals a week from an online account, and the HelloFresh folks package everything needed to make those meals, including spices (they assume you have salt, pepper and oils and some other basic staples). They provide a photo-illustrated, step-by-step recipe card for each meal.
My three-meal box included shrimp for a panzanella — a bread and tomato salad over chopped Romaine lettuce with sauteed shrimp; a large strip steak for a Korean beef bulgogi-style stir fry, and chicken for a dish of chicken over chickpeas and rice, the most substantial dish — I got four servings out of what they provided for a putative two-serving meal.
Like Green B.E.A.N. Delivery, you order and pay a week at a time, and can suspend delivery at any time. Unlike the other two options, you get just what you need to make meals, including meat or fish, and including recipes. The quality of everything in my sample box was quite good, including perishables like lettuce and tomatoes.
Pros: You get three complete meals in an insulated box, including instructions on how to put it all together. The recipes are various and interesting. You can opt for the default weekly menu, or you can choose from two alternatives each week. There is a vegetarian option. The cost for three meals of two servings each is $69 — $23 for each two-person meal. Most recipes provide enough for leftovers or even additional servings, if you eat light. For that you get everything you need sent to your door, and the pleasure of cooking it for yourself. A three-meal, four-serving option is available for $129, and a six-serving for $179.
Cons: The recipes do require slicing, mixing, marinating, sauteing — no heat-and-serve here. It is not a local company, and the sourcing of food is not at all local. It is all put together in a New York City commissary and shipped out, which adds a carbon footprint issue, something locally-sourced food minimizes. The cardboard boxes are lined with insulating foam, and packed with sealed stay-cold freezer packs. The boxes are recyclable like any cardboard, but not returnable, and the insulation and icepacks must be discarded each time.
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