We are excited to be rolling out our four-season CSA for 2014. We've made a few changes to improve our CSA, both for overall farm efficiency (which translates to profitability and sustainability) and to enhance your experience and convenience. Here's what's new for 2014:    

        ♦ A streamlined early morning delivery option available for all customers
        ♦ A primetime evening delivery option available for customers in much of the city and near suburbs 
        ♦ A simpler, one-stop option for signing up for the full year

Until now, all our deliveries have been in the afternoon/evening, during rush hour and starting out during the warmest part of the day. This is convenient as most people are home in the evening, but as far as produce quality and delivery efficiency are concerned, this is about the worst time of day to be handling produce (it's hot out in summer), and to be driving around Chicago (rush hour). Now that we've grown to around 500 customers, the costs and difficulties associated with this "primetime" delivery have grown to the point where we need to address them. The bottom line is that it costs way more to deliver anything when the roads are packed with rush hour traffic. Additionally, produce delivered in the afternoon/evening is subject to more heat, especially from late spring to early fall. This can amount to a couple days of shelf life if produce warms up too much.

To keep our costs down while maintaining/improving produce quality, we're introducing early morning deliveries in 2014. This will dramatically reduce our drive times while reducing stress on the produce. Though we've slightly re-organized our delivery zones, we're effectively holding prices steady with no increase for those customers taking early morning deliveries. By shifting many of our deliveries to the morning, we'll have fewer evening deliveries, which we'll be able to accomplish faster, minimizing the time produce will be exposed to warmer evening temperatures.

The one sacrifice with morning deliveries is that not everyone can receive them. Because we've gotten so good at the rush hour/prime time deliveries, we don't want to abandon them either. We've decided to keep evening deliveries for those who can't take morning deliveries, and to charge what we need to account for our higher costs for delivering during peak traffic times. The flat rate for "primetime" delivery, where available, is $9/week.

We haven't raised our delivery prices in four years, and we're maintaining our existing prices for early morning deliveries. This delivery charge change we're making for our "primetime" evening deliveries is designed to last for several more years. We don't want to change our prices every year, preferring to make fewer changes with an eye to the long term heath of our farm and business. 

 

We look forward to continuing to deliver our fresh, organic produce to you in the coming year!

 

                                                                        -- Chris