Local, organic products delivered to your door! (The Organic Delivery Company)

Member Name: annaroos1

Product:	The Organic Delivery Company
Date:	18/10/06 (797 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: lots of healthy, yummy food

Disadvantages: prices

About a year ago a friend of mine told me about a company that delivered organic produce right to your door (as long as that door was in London). She had tried it and absolutely loved it so I thought I might give it a go. However, 10 months later and I had got no further than having saved the link to my favourites. When I complained to bf one day about how it was impossible to get any local, organic produce from any of the supermarkets in our area he suggested I have a proper look at this delivery company I had mentioned before.


So I did just that. The page is a subtle olive green shade with LOADS of links on it. It is still pretty clear and I had no problems at all navigating around the site. If you do have problems there is a help page for those that are new to online shopping. This is located at the top of the page and easy to spot. Like most online food shopping sites the links lead to different shopping aisles, i.e. one link will lead you to the bread another to the pasta and pulses and yet another one to the wine. I hadn’t realised before I logged on just how much different produce they had but thought it was merely a fruit and vegetable company with maybe a few extras so I was suitably impressed with the selection.


You don’t need to be a member to browse around the store but if you should wish to order anything you will need to sign up. This is pretty straight forward, just the usual name, address and email address and, of course, card details. You also get to leave instructions on where your products should be left in case you should be out at the time of delivery and a chance to leave suggestions.


Once you’re signed up you can start shopping at once. This can be a little overwhelming as there is just so much to choose from. When I had joined I had a look at everything in the store but settled for one of the pre-packaged boxes with fruit and vegetables as this was really the reason I had wanted to join. Just like all the other produce the emphasis is on seasonal, locally sourced produce. The boxes come in different sizes and vary (often greatly) from one week to the next. Each box has predicted contents but they are careful to point out that some items may be substituted in order for them to provide the beast seasonal produce. This does seem to happen with a few items every time I order but that just makes it even more exciting in my opinion!


Choosing what you want couldn’t be easier, you press select next to the product you want and it gets added to your basket instantly. When you are ready to check out you click on view orders in the top right hand corner where you can check what you have put in your basket. The first time you order you currently get a bag of free potatoes but you have to make sure that you click to receive them – it’s just under your order! Once you’re sure you have everything you need just click to confirm the order. This should bring up a page where you can choose when you’d like to have your order delivered. Just choose your date (this needs to be before 4 pm at the latest if you want the delivery the next day) and voila, your order is done and you should get a confirmation email sent to the email address you signed up with. If you wish to modify or delete your order this is easily done online or over the phone as long as you do it before 4 pm on the day before delivery.


Now, this sounds easy enough, and it is - if you’re a Londoner…The Organic Delivery Company currently only deliver to London. In order to find out what days they deliver to your area you click on a link to the left and type in your post code. Generally they deliver one night a week, between 4 – 10 pm and several, if not all, weekdays between 11 am – 6 pm although this does vary between different areas. As I don’t normally get home from work until 5 I have tried to leave a message to suggest they do not come before then but this has proved fruitless (I guess they deliver to other people but me…).



The day of my first delivery I hurried home from work in case the delivery would turn up early. Outside my door I found 2 boxes packed full with stuff. It was like Christmas as I unpacked the boxes and tried to figure out what it was I had actually got. Most vegetables were easy enough to identify but there was a huge squash-like thing that I later found out was a marrow and also some sort of lettuce which turned out to be kale. The rest was made up of squash, peppers, carrots, potatoes, bananas, apples, pears and onion if I remember correctly. As I have to have tomatoes and cucumbers in my fridge at all times I picked that up from my local supermarket (yes it was organic, but unfortunately not local!).



The box I had picked was a small fruit and veg box (the other choices, rather obviously being medium and large, or you can order just fruit or just veg boxes). I found that the vegetables lasted us 2 nearly a week, but we don’t eat at home every night of the week so for people that do; a medium box might be more suitable. The fruit on the other hand lasted me about 3 days, if that! I do eat a great deal of fresh fruit, but I also think that the quantity was much less generous than that of the vegetables.



As with all organic produce, the Organic Delivery Company’s fruit and veg are not covered in pesticides which means that they won’t keep as long as some of the stuff you can get from the supermarket. However, as it all tastes so GOOD this is not really a problem, you will end up eating a lot more than you normally would which is not a bad thing. Meeting your 5-a-day requirement certainly won’t be a problem. Another great thing is that you can simply leave the cardboard boxes that your products are delivered in outside your door at the time of your next delivery and they will be picked up and used again or recycled if that’s the case – not quite the equivalent of a plastic bag


If you try the service once they offer you some sort of incentive to sign up to a regular delivery, mine was a bag or biscuits (not quite as healthy but yum!). You can set up a ‘standing order’ where they deliver once a week or once a fortnight (although you will get the opportunity to cancel if you are going away or for some other reason don’t want your delivery one week). If you do not wish to sign up for this, you will go biscuit-less but will still be able to place free-standing orders whenever you wish.



I have not yet signed up for the regular delivery but I certainly will as I really enjoy receiving my box full of exciting fruit and veg and I think this is a healthier way of getting your fruit and veg fix. Another bonus is that your social conscience remains clear. If you compare the pollution from one van delivering around your area to the environmental cost of flying in fruit from Europe, South America or New Zealand the choice seems easy. That’s without even mentioning packaging or the drive to the supermarket.



In all, my impression is that of a very professional, customer-friendly and modern company. I do feel very positively about it and have not had any bad experiences with them whatsoever. I have heard people using other companies saying that they have received the products covered in bugs or some such. Even though potatoes and carrots are often covered in mud, this is ‘clean’ mud and washes off easily. I think this service is a useful one for anybody living in London. Whether you lead a stressful city life or a rather more laid back life this is an easy way of keeping your conscience clear while getting lots of yummy food!



One drawback may be the prices. For me I don’t think that it has really made a difference to my weekly shopping bill as I would have spent a similar amount of money in the supermarket. For a small fruit and veg box I paid £14.95. Any order above £13.95 gives you free delivery so all you pay is about £15 for nearly a week’s worth of vegetables and some fruit on top of that.

Another drawback is of course that they only deliver in London although this may well change soon. Apart from this I really can’t see anything negative about the company and I would highly recommend it to anybody who wants to eat organic – here you will find absolutely anything you could wish for.


The company website can be found on http://www.organicdelivery.co.uk and if you wish you can find their phone number and address on this website too, as they are happy to take phone orders as well as online orders.

Summary: This is a convenient way of getting hold of local, organic food