Recently we signed up for the grocery delivery service Spud.ca. At first we felt a little bit lazy ordering organic groceries online and having them delivered to our door- but we got over that pretty fast and haven’t looked back since.
Spud.ca is a convenient way of getting fresh, local and organic produce (and other groceries) to you weekly. You sign up online, select from their endless selection of products – from home baked chocolate croissants to purple potatoes – and within a week the groceries are delivered to an address of your choosing. I’m at work all day, so I request that they deliver it there. The items are kept cool in a big tupperware tub with ice (or dry ice if need be) and can stay cool for up to 8 hours without refrigeration.
Produce is always fresh, clean and is handled far less than your average grocery store produce. Plus you can feel good knowing that most of their items are organic and as locally grown / produced as possible. Once you place your order they tell you the average distance the food has travelled to get to your door. Nifty! And if that wasn’t enough, they donate leftover food to disadvantaged families.
To make things even more easy, they have a standing order option. Each week we have $35 of fresh produce chosen for us by Spud. We can go online and change / tweak their selection, but they do the bulk of the choosing if you select this option. It’s a great way to try new things. You can also have certain items automatically added to your cart each week. We go through a lot of Que Pasa corn chips and salsa, and have that automatically put in our cart each week. It saves a lot of time, and ensures that you don’t forget the essentials. I’m not sure Jake could survive a week without nachos.
Aside from convenience their selection is pretty good. While we still need the occasional trip to Safeway, we now buy all of our fresh produce, milk, eggs and bread through Spud. Specialty items like pumpkin pie spice or wasabi peas currently aren’t available, but as the company grows I’m sure their selection will as well.
As for prices, Spud is only slightly higher than the grocery store, and delivery is free. For convience, peace of mind, and knowing that I’m supporting an awesome local company, the few extra dollars a month I spend is well worth it.
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I am sorry to say that the transition in Tacoma, Washington from Pioneer Organics to spud! was disasterous for me.
I have nothing but good things to say about Pioneer Organics. They weren’t perfect but would immediately respond to complaints about quality of produce and other issues.
spud! took over Pioneer recently and the first delivery I received was last week. It was horrible. Half the produce was bad or on it’s way to going bad. Lettuce was packed tighter than I pack my socks when travelling. Their highly-touted miles traveled total said 0. An impossibility.
But, far worse, repeated emails went unanswered. Multiple phone calls to the number on the invoice resulted in a fast busy signal. An email using their web received the automated response but nothing else. A phone message to the phone number on their web site was answered by a machine and never returned.
Look, I’ve grown used to what passes for customer service these days and I always cut more slack when dealing with businesses that try to work for a better world. But this is beyond even that pale.