Food supply chain issues have been in the news more frequently during the days of COVID, it seems, than ever before. As just a few examples of what’s been happening:

• Restaurants around the county closed as a measure to protect diners and staff.

• As restaurants are beginning to reopen, owners and managers are having to reimagine new ways to serve people to help keep them safe. Here are some thoughts on the subject of restaurant reopening.

• Empty grocery shelves clearly indicate that panic buying has taken place, suggesting that some people have worried about the availability of food for their families.

• Many packing plants are struggling to find ways to safely handle and ship food, 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, by no means, a comprehensive list of food supply chain challenges in the news right now. It’s intended as a sampling of what consumers, farmers, restaurant owners, and more have faced in just a few short 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.


And, as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Cleveland.com, News-Herald.com, and other venues have so graciously shared about our farm, we now have a strong focus on delivering our regeneratively farmed, farm-fresh vegetables directly to homes.

In short, we look forward to serving our chefs again while also appreciating 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, as we leave our soil in better shape, healthier shape than how 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 cause that cog of the food supply chain to need to evolve. Here’s some perspective. Prior to COVID, only about 10 percent of people were regularly shopping 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% of them said they’re using that particular online service for the very first time. Compare March 2020 figures with those in August 2019, when COVID wasn’t yet a factor, and it was calculated that the number of online grocery shoppers has 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.

Now, here’s an additional advantage of online ordering from The Chef’s Garden. When we say that we ship directly, our farm-fresh produce literally goes from our fields of rich soil after being harvested to our shipping/packing room, and then to your home.  

This means that, when you order from us, there are no complicated agriculture food supply chain issues to worry about.

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 very best that Mother Nature has 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 includes 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, following the same high standards as our packing room, sends the box directly to you and your family.

• It arrives at your door.

You’ll then have premier vegetables, regeneratively farmed according to the highest of best practices, at your fingertips.

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, washing them well and using them as you normally would.

If you’re looking for additional ideas about how to create 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.