As the pandemic took hold of life last spring, grocery store shelves were decimated, farmers markets were disrupted, and food supply chains were utterly upended. Consumers scrambled to find new sourcing for ingredients, including more boutique options to keep their cooking routines fresh and exciting. These three grocery services, all of which launched last year, aim to satisfy that desire — and they all deliver gourmet goods straight to the cook’s doorstep.
Founder Ryan Pierce was ecstatic at the start of 2020. His hydroponic garden in Arlington was selling rare herbs, greens, and edible flowers exclusively to high-end restaurants, including Fiola Mare and Reverie. February was his best month ever. March started out strong. Then COVID-19 hit, and he lost literally 100 percent of his revenue. Every standing order cancelled; no new orders came in. “It’s a gut punch,” he says. “It takes your breath away. You’re basically pushed into a corner. You’re either going to come out swinging and try to fight your way out of it, or you’re going to go down hard.”
He decided to come out swinging, quickly pivoting his business to offer consumers a weekly community-supported agriculture box filled with microgreens, herbs, and specialty products made by local chefs and food producers. Over the past year, the program evolved. Salad greens and edible flowers are now a part of the mix, and there are four types of weekly packages available. The Impact share ($173) is the biggest option, featuring an extra-large bag of salad greens, a container of micro-herbs, a selection of herbs (such as parsley, basil, and cilantro) and either edible flowers or specialty products. On the other end of the spectrum, the Basic share ($64.88) includes just a large bag of salad greens and a container of microgreens.
Now that restaurants ramping up service again, orders are coming in from chefs and they’ve stopped marketing the CSA. But Pierce isn’t going to simply flip back to his old business model; existing CSA subscribers will continue to receive their orders. (Currently, they have approximately 175 subscribers, slightly up from the same time last year.) “I’m a big believer in loyalty,” he says. “These customers kept us afloat during our most trying times. The last thing I want to do right now is abandon them.”
Orders can be delivered in Northern Virginia and D.C., or picked up at either the farm in Arlington or in Ballston.
Founding Farmers Market & Grocery
When the pandemic overturned the world as we knew it, Founding Farmers watched its sales drop by 95 percent overnight, and the company’s leaders decided to lay off roughly 95 percent of its workforce –– around 1,100 employees. The day after the layoffs, co-owner Dan Simons met with his business partner, Mike Vucurevich, to figure out how they were going to survive. “We were clear,” says Simons. “This was not a two week thing, this was not a two month thing. We’re not going hold our breath. If we’re going to hold our breath and wait, we’ll be dead. We need to create a business model that works now.”
Before the pair launched Founding Farmers in 2008, they worked on the Dallas restaurant concept, eatZi’s, which blended a restaurant and a market. Leaning on this experience, they spent the next several weeks readying an e-commerce concept, which would ultimately offer over 1,000 items at its peak – everything from prepared meals (some Founding Farmers favorites and some completely new offerings, like lasagna), freshly baked goods, and pre-made cocktails to produce, grocery staples, and then-hard-to-find household mainstays, like toilet paper and hand sanitizer. After the service’s launch in April, the company began making their own chocolates, including riffs on Twix, York Peppermint Pattie, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
The company is rebounding financially – Simons estimates they are cash flow positive if all their locations are pooled together – in part due to the market initiative, which they plan to expand in the coming months, especially in the cocktails-to-go category.
Customers can get same-day delivery or pick up orders from the Founding Farmers locations in Tysons and Potomac.
Adam Gerson’s startup was only a couple of weeks old when the pandemic hit. On one hand, his “farm and sea to doorstep” service offering locally-sourced, pasture-raised beef and heritage pork, and wild-caught seafood was perfectly suited for the lockdown. “Grocery stores were out of meat and there were major headlines about beef and pork plant closures,” he says, “so there were a lot of people looking for meat delivery.”
On the other hand, the entrepreneur with a background in tech startups in the restaurant and on-demand transport spaces was forced to deal with unexpected stresses on his supply chain and implement safety protocols before he even made a single drop-off. Thankfully, he prevailed. His company began delivering monthly meat subscriptions in the greater D.C. and Baltimore areas last March. Currently, he’s sourcing pork from Grand View Farm in Forest Hill, Maryland, beef from Thistle Creek Farms in central Pennsylvania, as well as Virginia’s Grayson Natural Farms, and a variety of local fishing operations.
Near Country Provisions customers choose the mixture of meats (which will soon include chicken from Freedom Valley Farm in White Hall, Maryland), the amount, and whether they’d like to get their meaty CSA every one, two, or three months. Packages start at $70 a month for a 5-pound package, which the company estimates is 10 servings of meat.
Depending on the package chosen and the season, customers can get bacon and sausages, steaks, roasts, ground beef, whole rockfish, blue catfish filets, and soft-shelled crabs. There’s the option to add on specialty items, such as oxtail, beef tongue, corned beef, marrow bones, and smoked ham. The pay-as-you-go subscription can be cancelled at any time with no penalties.
