Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
I am a Fresh Direct devotee, perhaps their owned whore, in some judgments.
I live in Manhattan, have for over a decade. and I discovered Fresh Direct after seeing their clever little trucks zooming up and down the avenues. And then one of my students mentioned to myself and other students that he worked at the processing plant in Long Island City. In an effort to always understand what my next generation students were talking about, I looked it up—-could this be a good line on jobs for other students? Then I saw what they do, connected to the tiny trucks zooming through the avenues and a connection was born.
I Am A Vampire
What I will tell you about my personal schedule, is that then and now, I am a night owl. I like the daytime——occasionally. But I’m about 4 to 6 hours off of when everyone is up and perky. I read all of the articles and suggestions about getting up early—-4a, 5a,, 6a, that all of the most productive people do.
I generally go to bed between 4–6a. It is more unusual for my to go to sleep early evening—-and I still wake up at 1,2,3,4a. I often go to sleep with the dawn rising. Yes, like a vampire.
But what does this have to do with Fresh Direct? In the past decade or so, teaching, coordinating programs, teaching university classes, I’ve been able to push my schedule to later. The first push was from 9am to 10am. Then from 10am to 2pm through 10pm. Then sometimes later nights so that I can rise and shine like I normally do at between noon to 2pm.
But being 4 to 6 hours off of the world means that I’m off from the world—-and the majority of the world is designing to coincide and support 6am to about 10pm….supermarkets included. There are yes, some supermarkets that stay open 24hours here in NYC—-Pathmark (which no longer exists) and West Side Market and Morton’s. But I would often finish teaching 3 classes for the day by 10pm—-which would put me at home in 15 to 45 minutes from Manhattan or some evenings later from an institute I taught in Brooklyn. There’s a West Side Market on 110th, in the area of Columbia 116th but if I were consulting away from the main campus, I would have to trek back to the market there or to one of their other city locations.
Fresh Direct though delivers as late as midnight. In my neighborhood. And more importantly I can set up an order, have it zapped to them and get home and a few minutes later they buzz and several gentlemen bring up boxes of food—-fresh veggies, mousse cakes, meats, dry goods, sauces, sodas, juices. It was also a boon when I helped a co-worker move, dislocated my knee—-and I was living in a 5th floor walk up (one of the downsides of living in the convenience of NYC—-you might have to settle for a walk up to have a larger apartment.) So they became amazingly helpful to being up groceries, I generally order about 6 weeks supply of, then I can stop at 7–11 or a corner store for minor items.
Is it/delivery more expensive?
Actually, no. Everyone thinks that it is but it isn’t. I rounded between West Side and Whole Foods (both more expensive), D’Agostinos and Gristedes (medium) and C-Town (medium to lower)—-yes, I know, a lot of energy and though goes into this logistically and financially—-but if you obviate walking to the store, standing in line, actual shopping time, and it all being carried up 5 flights and timed to exactly when I get home—-I’d pay a dollar or two more. Mostly the delivery charge is generally about $5. How so cheap? Volume, repeat business, lower overhead costs because they don’t have to maintain a brick and mortar store so the orders go through packers and some form of cashier and delivery workers but I’m willing to bet that the packers say cut up the meat AND put it into my 2lb package—-so a butcher/packer. The cashiers get the food orders and assemble them but don’t have down time dealing with customers directly so their efficiency and speed is probably multiplied 1 to 3x compared to an in-store cashier. And the delivery men, do only that—-deliver.
Plus, one of the soft controls Fresh Direct has over me is that they initially were very specific to zip codes, not delivering to every zip code. Here on the West Side of Manhattan you can walk down some streets and literally see walls, 6 to 8 feet high of Fresh Direct empty boxes out for garbage on garbage days. What this does is control if they’re only delivering to a range of blocks. (They used to exclude parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn—-I was trying to send an ill cousin food while in chemo and learned about the zip code segregation.) I literally was apartment hunting and stayed within the same two zip codes because one of the losses would’ve been no Fresh Direct delivery service—-I kid you not.
That means that a truck can then stop on an avenue and they can wheel out dozens of deliveries so truck/gas costs are lowered or absorbed by say 100 of us on an avenue paying $5 into the kitty—-which means we don’t have to be overcharged.
Is the food more expensive?
No, I’ve found it to be Medium, and as you can see from above, I move through several stores. Also here’s another point that people don’t factor in from the other side. Being single, no kids when I started my Fresh Direct entanglement—-I’m less price conscious. Now, personally, I’m thoughtful—-even having gone on a budget of $25 a week food right before I started at Columbia to make a job payout last for a year. My normal singular budget runs about $100 to $150 per week, which generally fluctuates the more or less cooking I do—-I cook about 95% of my meals—-maybe monthly I buy Chinese or Italian food and average dinners out twice a month and lunch once or twice. So I’m very conscious of food prices and I eat well, I like to cook so I like quality foods. West Side and Whole Foods consistently the best quality in meats, seafood, fruits and vegetables. West Side more expensive particularly by the university because it’s catering to fast go and grab students/faculty and they have about 1/4 of the store hand prepared meals, salads, baked goods, fruits diced, etc.. Whole Foods is similar to West Side but healthier yet again, that hand prepped within hours adding staff and fresh food costs plus the store housing the supermarket.
Fresh Direct is equal to Medium because you can also control the pricing of fruits and vegetables and more importantly meats and seafood. Generally meats are a hodge podge of sizes so you settle to pay more to get the amount you need. West Side is thoughtful in that they know they cater to less large families so they have individual meat pieces for one or two people. Whole Foods you can buy directly from their butcher counter and control the quantity/price—-the same holds for Fresh Direct.
Dry, canned goods and sauces—-I would caveat in here that cooking a lot myself, I don’t buy a lot of processed foods—-on the conveyor belt at stores my purchases are generally 50% fruits, vegetables—-green, 35% meats/seafood and then Pepsi and maybe a bag of low salt chips or a small pie or cake. (Yes, I cart judge.) I notice that people buy lots of processed stuff—-frozen foods, boxed crap, canned crap. I think my Fresh Direct costs are so general for me because I buy pretty much the same things from them as I do in person—-the exceptions being I stock up—-so several jars of say Rao’s 9the best sauces), multiple cans of tuna, condoms (Magnum XLs are $7.99 a dozen!—-double that in CVS, etc.), fresh juices, Pepsi (6 at a time), not much else—-maybe ice cream. Its also good for select/specialty flavors and items because like Walmart their computer system is always updating availability so I’ve never seen anything out of stock, like I have in person at supermarkets. I might also do bags of frozen vegetables but very light on processed foods of any kind—-I generally, while cart judging distinguish it by bright, colorful boxes. I rarely buy anything in bright colorful boxes/containers.
Fresh Direct is good for buying say multiple 10lbs of chicken breast, beef, steaks, pork chops, fish, lobster, shrimp at a time, and then divvying it up into freezer/portion bags. Which is how, as a mass, I use them for a 4–6 week stint to stock up.
Single people/smaller families, like me, are willing to pay for the convenience of time specific arrival, delivery men (whom I tip—-sometimes more than the delivery charge), a whole breadth of choices, online access and cart building, freshness of food, good packaging (I’ve only had one problem—-on the stairs the delivery man slipped and the juice bottle broke and damaged the eggs—-replace or refund—I took the refund) and ability to control quantity to control price. Those controls allowed someone with a slightly tilted schedule like me to get home by 11pm, get food delivery by 1130pm and even go out to a nightclub with a friend by midnight because I had no errands to run (I used to experiment with renting a Zipcar, dropping a friend off in Queens from Manhattan, so I could circle back to a 24 Pathmark in Brooklyn and bring food (that I had to lug upstairs, 10–20 bags, myself.) But eschewing all of that tie and costs I, they simply do the function better and more efficiently.
And their clever trucks, which I have even written about in my fictional novels, I love their trucks. lol
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
