It seems that food supply chain issues have been in the news more frequently during COVID-19 than ever before. Here are just a few examples of what’s been happening:
- Restaurants around the county closed as a measure to protect diners and staff.
- As restaurants reopen, owners and managers must reimagine new ways to serve people and keep them safe. Here are some thoughts on the subject of restaurant reopening.
- Empty grocery shelves indicate panic buying has occurred, suggesting that some people have worried about food availability for their families.
- Many packing plants are struggling to find ways to handle and ship food safely, particularly meat.
- Students who often ate one or more meals a day at school, Monday through Friday, are no longer doing so, with families now eating at home together more often.
This is not a comprehensive list of food supply chain challenges in the news. It’s intended to sample what consumers, farmers, restaurant owners, and others have faced in just a few months.
To make this situation even more difficult, these changes happened quickly and dramatically, giving businesses and customers virtually no time to adjust. At The Chef’s Garden, for example, the great majority of our produce was grown for and shipped to chefs at restaurants, hotels, private residences, and more—and, in what seemed like a matter of moments, we had to learn how to operate differently—radically so.
As the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Cleveland.com, News-Herald.com, and other venues have graciously shared about our farm, we now strongly focus on delivering our regeneratively farmed, farm-fresh vegetables directly to homes.
In short, we look forward to serving our chefs again and appreciate the opportunity to deliver fresh vegetables to individuals and families.
One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is our regenerative farming philosophy. “At The Chef’s Garden,” Farmer Lee says, “we’re still growing vegetables slowly and gently in full accord with nature. We still go far beyond sustainable farming, leaving our soil in better shape, healthier shape than it once was.”
Demand for Home Delivery on the Rise
Increasing numbers of people may shop less often in a physical grocery store going forward, which will almost certainly require that cog of the food supply chain to evolve. Here’s some perspective: Before COVID, only about 10 percent of people regularly shopped for groceries online.
According to Digital Commerce 360, a survey shows that, in late March 2020, 31% of households used an “online grocery delivery or pickup service” over the past month. Even more relevant: 26% said they’re using that particular online service for the first time. Compare March 2020 figures with those in August 2019, when COVID wasn’t a factor, and it was calculated that the number of online grocery shoppers increased by 145.3 percent.
Business Insider Intelligence, meanwhile, predicts that “online grocery will continue its surge in Q2 2020, and that we’ll see an increase in adoption from all generations, including baby boomers, who have previously been slow to buy groceries online.”
Advantages of ordering food online include that people don’t need to shop in crowds or stand in lines during a time when social distancing is recommended for public and personal health reasons and when a percentage of people are even more fully sheltering in place.
Here’s an additional advantage of ordering online from The Chef’s Garden. When we say that we ship directly, our farm-fresh produce goes from our fields of rich soil after being harvested to our shipping/packing room and then to your home.
This means you don’t have to worry about complicated agriculture food supply chain issues when you order from us.
It goes like this:
- You order from our home delivery choices online, with shipping already included.
- Our farm team goes out into the field and harvests the best Mother Nature provided for us that day.
- Our packing team packages your order with the team following:
- 112 daily food safety procedures
- three daily cleaning cycles
- Two bonus procedures, which include the cutting-edge Extreme Microbial Technologies air purification system that allows everything touched by air molecules in our packing/shipping area to be sanitized
- Our shipping room follows the same high standards as our packing room and sends the box directly to you and your family.
- It arrives at your door.
You’ll then have premier vegetables at your fingertips, regeneratively farmed according to the highest of best practices.
Easy. Convenient. Delicious and nutritious.
Fresh Vegetable Boxes from The Chef’s Garden
“Once I’d cooked it [spinach] for dinner, I couldn’t believe its buttery-rich, crunchy, almost-nutty flavor—unlike any spinach I’d eaten in the past.” (Janet Podolak, The News-Herald)
We believe that by simply upgrading the quality of your ingredients, you’ll automatically upgrade the quality of your meal-time experiences. When the home delivery boxes of choice arrive at your home, you can select the delicious and nutritious vegetables that appeal to you for today’s meal, wash them well and use them as you normally would.
If you want additional ideas about creating healthy and flavorful meals, here is our vegetable primer. There, you’ll find information about flavor, nutrition, texture, storage, and care—along with links to individual vegetables if you’d like to order that way.
Our carefully curated boxes each contain the absolute best of the day’s harvest, with options including:
- Introduction Box of Fresh Vegetables
- Best of the Season
- Immunity Booster Box
- Anti-Aging Box
- Detoxification Box
- Optimal Health Box
Curious about which individual crops are currently available? You can find that information here.