Veg Boxes

Since the boy has started on solids, we want to start getting a veg or fruit and veg box.  I have been unhappy with grocery store veg for a while now but just put up with it, but since he's going to be eating it too I want it to be nicer/fresher and I just don't have time to make it to the market.

I've done a google search for the boxes, but have no idea how to tell if it is worth it or a good deal or how much we'd need for 2 people and a little one.

I see that some people use Riverford are they a sorta national distributor or do they have agreements with more local farms? I'm honestly not that bothered about it being organic, to me it being locally produced and fresh is more important.

If someone can recommend a Nottinghamshire one that would be great, or just general opinions of having a box?

Thanks!

Riverford is a national company but they source locally to each customer.  I think they have agreements with individual farms.  I've been quite pleased with them.  We get a mini box which is more than enough for two people.  My only complaint is that we get potatoes every.single.week.  I'd switch to a different box except that I like always having onions on hand.  Overall, I'd recommend them.

Riverford sort of has regional farms.  They aren't always super local, but they'd be a lot more local than where you would get your veg from a lot of the grocery shops. This time of year is the "hungry gap" so more of your food will be imported from abroad if you order from any scheme (or grown in greenhouses).

You can try to find a more local service here if you'd like:
http://vegbox-recipes.co.uk/veg-boxes/find-a-box-scheme.php

We do a Riverford order, and really love it.  I have heard mixed reviews about other services, and it seems a totally different animal to Abel and Cole (which seems a bit more like having an organic shop deliver to you than a farm).  We get a veg, salad, and fruit order every week (or a mixture).  Sometimes we just do the bags of fruit and veg, and sometimes if there's enough salad in the box, we skip the separate salad order. But we eat most of our meals and all of our snacks from the box, so it's hard to say what someone else might do.  Riverford has a pretty wide variety of boxes, and they are good at spreading out the durability of the food.  You won't get a box full of veg that will be spoilt in a few days, and you won't get a bunch of stuff that you have to wait days to ripen.

It might take a couple weeks to get into swing of it, but we rarely chuck anything from our box.  We don't bother with the pre-set order.  They update the lists at the end of the week, and I pick what I want to order on a weekly basis.

Riverford is a national company but they source locally to each customer.  I think they have agreements with individual farms.  I've been quite pleased with them.  We get a mini box which is more than enough for two people.  My only complaint is that we get potatoes every.single.week.  I'd switch to a different box except that I like always having onions on hand.  Overall, I'd recommend them.

You should try the "seasons" box, which is what I order most weeks.  They sometimes have onions, but if they don't you can always add on with some onions.  It might be a bit bigger than you are used to, but I couldn't imagine trying to figure out what to do with all those potatoes.

We've been regular Abel & Cole customers for about four years now, and we also build all our meals around what's in the fruit & veg box each week, and usually only have one or two things left by the time the next box arrives (I can't remember the last time we threw something out!). I really like that Abel & Cole let you pick your preferences, so you never get stuff you hate, and if stuff on your love list is available, they'll try to give that to you as a substitute. That's important to me as I really, really hate throwing away food so I'd rather never get stuff we won't eat!

But we also get potatoes EVERY WEEK! I think this is a real British/Irish thing to eat that sheer quantity of potatoes...

Abel & Cole are always organic, always, seasonal, and never air freighted. They try to source from UK farms where they can, but also have some suppliers on the continent, too (so we can get lovely stuff like seville oranges). You get a newsletter with stories of the various farmers so you do feel involved.

We've had problems with some of the meat orders we've had from them, but their organic meat is really expensive so we never did that very often anyway, and just tend to stick to our usual box. The quality of the fruit and veg in there is fantastic, and I love that I eat produce now that I'd never have chosen from the store (stuff like swede, kohl rabi, and salsify is really tasty!).

I've seriously debated getting a veg box so many times! But every time I cost it out, it works out to be much more expensive than it should to feed the two of us. I buy most of my fruit and veg from farm shops anyway and I feel I can do it much more cost-effectively than the veg box people do. I suppose that's part of what you're paying for - the convenience of not having to physically go and shop for it yourself. But I worked the difference in price out to be so much that it doesn't really make sense for us. Maybe our farm shops are just dirt cheap! 

I've seriously debated getting a veg box so many times! But every time I cost it out, it works out to be much more expensive than it should to feed the two of us.

But how much more do you end up buying besides the fruit and veg? For me, part of the cost of a veg box is not having to go to the store, yes (and I loathe supermarkets, I"ll do just about anything to avoid going to them!), but also not being tempted into buying a thousand other things while I'm there! The veg box means less trips to the store, and less overall spend on other things...

I'm jealous that you've got farm shops that convenient for you!!

But how much more do you end up buying besides the fruit and veg?

I'm pretty good! I generally have a list and stick to it. And, yes, we are really lucky. I have five of them relatively close by, as well as two good farmers' markets!

But how much more do you end up buying besides the fruit and veg? For me, part of the cost of a veg box is not having to go to the store, yes (and I loathe supermarkets, I"ll do just about anything to avoid going to them!), but also not being tempted into buying a thousand other things while I'm there! The veg box means less trips to the store, and less overall spend on other things...

I'm jealous that you've got farm shops that convenient for you!!

This is exactly why we do ours the way we do it.  If we had a lot of farm shops local to us, we'd probably use them.  Plus Mr A wants fruit like oranges as well as local apples and pears, so we'd have to get stuff like that from our shops.

Right now we do a twice monthly supermarket order and the weekly veg boxes most months.  This month we might not do a second order depending on if we have good luck at a planned Costco trip.  I don't know how well we will do because I doubt they have the stuff we eat now-a-days (maybe bulk lentils, who knows).

We've cut our grocery bill nearly in half avoiding the shops and eliminating most meat (we still eat fish and seafood).  If we found a farm shop which was convenient for us to use, I'd try it out at least on a short term basis.  I've looked over some, but it would mean travelling to another part of London and ordering on specific days.

I actually like that Riverford has forced me to learn to cook with things I wouldn't willingly buy before.  

Riverford started in the southwest and I loved getting our veg box from them. I had the chance to go to their main farm, too, and was very impressed. We also ordered their milk which I froze and took out as we needed it.

We're happy Riverford customers too.  We just go for the veg though, and buy fruit ourselves from either the supermarket or our local green grocer - as unless it's apples in season, the stuff in the box doesn't tend to be from the UK anyway.  Bearing in mind, we have shops that are only a 5-10 minute walk down the street from where we live.  Occasionally, I'll add some fruit onto our veg box order - such as when they had nice blood oranges available.

We started up with Riverford when the quality & price of our local green grocer wasn't holding up to what it had been.  Sometimes we get a box weekly, but we often skip weeks if we haven't used it up - it's pretty flexible.  I think our 'default box' from when I first signed up is the 'Favourites' one but we tend to change it up every order - varying between Seasons, Roots & Greens (when available in the winter), Favourites or sometimes the Medium Veg box (in which case following, we'd definitely skip a week).  We pick the box by the contents for that week - according to our preferences & also looking at how much of it is from the UK, as opposed to from elsewhere.

We found the prices competitive - we were getting more veg in the veg box than DH would get at the green grocer for the same amount of money.  The quality of what we get is amazing.

We don't find the amount of potatoes to be unmanageable - it's only about a kilo you get with the boxes that include potatoes.  It's less potatoes than you'd buy in a pre-packaged sack at the grocery store.  Maybe we eat more potatoes?  We usually have a Sunday roast with roasties, and then maybe have mash once or twice a week in addition to that - or else a stew with some potatoes.  If we end up with too many potatoes (which is rare), we'll get the Seasons (without potatoes) so we can catch up on our potato consumption. 

We base meals around the veg box contents plus meat from our local butcher, so don't end up having to do much more food shopping that that.

Riverford farms in the UK are in Devon, Peterborough, North Yorkshire, Hampshire & Cheshire - and as much as possible, your veg will be grown & delivered by the farm nearest where you live.  They also work with specific growers in Spain for citrus, and specific suppliers for things like dairy, meat & fruits, etc.

Yeah, I tend not to eat many white potatoes (too much of an addict), so all the potato consumption falls to Mr A.  I was thinking about ordering a box with potatoes next week though since we haven't had them in about a month.  We eat sweet potatoes once or twice a week, though, but order them from our grocery shop.

DH is growing potatoes, so when they start to produce, I think I'll switch to a seasons box.  We get ours every other week.  It used to be every week, but I found the potatoes and carrots were piling up too much, so I cut back.  Plus over the winter they sent a lot of root vegetables, for obvious reasons, but DH won't touch swede and I have to hide parsnips from him in blended soups and such.  He doesn't like brussels sprouts either, and I found I struggled to eat the whole bag myself.  So anyway, every other week works better for us.  Since I have a long commute I have a long workday (7.15 to 5.30-ish) so when I come home I want to be able to take the path of least resistance, and I find that with the veg box we eat much more healthily than we did before we got it, and with less effort.  I wish I had the time to go to farm shops, but since I don't, this is a nice second best option. 

We're good about eating it all up - never throw any out.  (Ok we may have thrown out an onion, a potato or little piece of cabbage that went off, once or twice - but it's rare.)  The only thing I won't eat at all, in any format, is Jerusalem artichokes, which DH knows & loves to wind me up over...so if he wants a box with those in, he knows he'll have to eat them all himself. 

Thanks! I still have no idea which to do (who would have thought that buying veg would be so stressful!) I'm just going to bite the bullet and pick one.