Pre-packed food boxes for contactless pickup/delivery are trending all over—even with the USDA! Nearly every restaurant with takeout is looking to add a pantry that includes a box of produce assembled to help support their farmer-vendors as well as to keep their own workers busy. We’re also seeing plenty of ways to add a donation to our food box orders. Watch for new boxes here as we learn about them, and tell us about your favorite box if you want to see it featured here in coming weeks.
Bellanico Restaurant and Wine Bar Produce Box
It's a family affair, Bella and Nico
are helping out tonight.
For over 12 years. people living in Oakland’s Glenview neighborhood have strolled over to Bellanico Restaurant and Wine Bar for favorites like tagliolini pepati, spaghetti alla Bolognese, Swiss chard malfatti, and casunzei (beet and ricotta ravioli). Now they're picking up those items as meal kits or frozen to thaw and cook at home. Co-owner Elizabeth Frumusa says customers enjoy the surprise of seeing what’s in each week’s produce box. For the highly affordable $35 they recently got orange cauliflower, broccolini, lacinato kale, Meyer lemons, maitake mushrooms, cipollini, fingerling potatoes, sugarplum tomatoes, bananas, pears, and Pink Lady apples plus a pantry item (recently house-made olive focaccia or house-made tagliolini). Boxes must be ordered and paid for online at by 5pm on Monday for pick up on Wednesday between 3 and 7pm.
The Board at Home Big Fella includes three wedges of cheese, two types of charcuterie,
two boxes of crackers, and two bottles
of wine for $125
Raymond Rumiano of Rumiano Cheese Company—California’s oldest family-owned cheesemaker—says that with cheesemongers no longer able to custom cut cheeses to order at counters and farmers' markets, people in his business are struggling to sell. As a way to help these and other small-scale food artisans reach customers directly, he came up with a way to pack a wine and cheese happy hour into a box. Called Board at Home, it’s available in three sizes ranging from a Little Guy box with two wedges of cheese, crackers, and a bottle of wine ($65) to the Mother Board, which has three wedges of cheese, a bar of dark chocolate, charcuterie, two boxes of crackers, and a bottle of wine ($130). Five percent of proceeds go to the Lee Initiative to provide emergency assistance to independent restaurants and their workers. There’s same-day no-contact delivery available in some Bay Area locations.
C & L Produce Family Food Boxes
Back in the 1980s, eating burgers at the old Gorilla Café in Oakland’s Jack London Square produce district was all the more fun for the hubbub of surrounding produce wholesalers loading flats of fresh produce for delivery to local restaurants and markets. One of those companies, C&L Produce (est. 1949), continues as its third generation of family members moves the produce through the same old warehouse. When restaurants stopped ordering in March, C&L made a quick pivot to retail, and they now offer numerous semi-customizable produce box options. You can choose an all organic box with produce from favorite farms like Happy Boy, Blossom Bluff, Durst Organic, and Coke Farm, and there are options for fresh pesto, salsa, hummus, eggs, dairy, and rice. Call 510.893.9010 before 10pm for next-day pickup at 440 Franklin Street, Oakland. (Delivery option coming soon.)
No surprise that the Chez Panisse Farm Box is much in demand, since the restaurant’s kitchen has an unmatched reputation for sourcing the finest and freshest local goods. You'll need some luck getting into the ordering site before the boxes are all snapped up, though. The online shop opens on Fridays at noon and closes up quickly as things sell out. You'll bring your own bags and boxes to fetch your goods from the restaurant’s driveway the following Sunday. The $40 box is filled with organic fruits and vegetables from the restaurant's partner farms like Green String, Knoll, Swanton Berry, and Riverdog. You’ll also get a pantry item like the Chez Panisse house vinaigrette. Also find à la carte items like local black cod, Acme bread, pasta, canned Di Napoli tomatoes, farro, extra-virgin olive oil, vinegar, anchovies, and chocolate. Plus, you can make a donation to the California Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), which will go to CAFF to support grants and loans to small family farms during this crisis.
Lots of tasty meals in this box!
Supporting local and diverse food operators just got easier with La Cocina’s East Bay addition to their Community Food Box. The San Francisco–based incubator, known for helping launch aspiring food entrepreneurs (mostly low-income, women, people of color, and immigrants), now offers a curated box of meals prepared by their entrepreneurs. Filled with eight dishes serving 2-4 people each, the box is available in omnivore or vegetarian options, both priced at $110. A recent box included Reem’s California’s cheese & za’atar manoushe, la Guerrera’s Kitchen’s chicken mole tamales, Mama Lamees’s mujjaddarah, chicken and shorabet khodra, Minnie Bell’s mac n’ cheese with veggie greens, and Nyum Bai’s kuy teav cha (garlicky stir fry sauce). The selections inside change weekly in order to feature the full variety of foods from La Cocina businesses. You need to pre-order for the Tuesday contact-free pick-up at Nyum Bai, 3340 East 12th Street, #11, Oakland.
Grace Street Catering has served the Bay Area from the corner of MLK and 47th Street in Oakland for 30 years. Concerned for their employees, farmers, and suppliers when the SIP suddenly shut down catering, they quickly decided to open an online “corner store” featuring the Graceful Box, which they filled with local produce and eggs. Realizing they had more products around the catering kitchen that people needed, they also stepped up to help fill home pantries with high-quality baking supplies, dairy products, meats, and fish, and household essentials like cleaners and toilet paper. They have a wide ordering window and deliver all over the Bay Area. Order by Monday 9pm for Thursday Pickup or Delivery. There's an option to purchase a box to help someone in the food industry facing a layoff.
Homage Produce Boxes and Pizza Kits
Homage has been a favorite pizza spot in Martinez for years, and they continue to deliver hot pizzas and pizza kits. Now during the shutdowns, you can also choose to get a C&L Produce food box (see above) along with your pizza kit. Plus they have added a drop location at the Emeryville Public Market.
Mica Talmor’s previous restaurant Ba-Bite (featured in our Spring 2016 issue) was a big hit with East Bay lovers of Middle Eastern flavors. Her new venture, Pomella, opened just as the shelter-in-place order landed, but she’s determined to carry on. Among her offerings of modern Israeli prepared dishes are lots of pantry items including a CSA-style box filled with organic fruits and vegetables (plus eggs if you want to add them). A recent box included broccoli, asparagus, radishes, kale, butter lettuce, a bunch of carrots, Pink Lady apples, D'anjou pears, Pixies, blood oranges, avocado, and blueberries, plus some fresh-squeezed juice. Order the day before for your preferred Thursday, Friday, or Saturday 3-6pm curbside pickup. There’s also delivery available in the East Bay on Fridays.
Port Costa Community Food Box
Never been to Port Costa? Better not to go now, but please take inspiration from this story.
Here's what one of the East Bay's more isolated communities has done to ensure that its citizens have access to fresh local produce.
“Our version of the food box came about from a desire to have our own access to inexpensive organic produce without having to go to the grocery store. CSAs and Instacart don't deliver to Port Costa, so we had to come up with another way. A friend created a very simple Google form that our neighbors fill out weekly. Once the forms are submitted, I total everything up and cobble together orders through a number of farms and distributors. The fruit and pantry items, which I order from distributors, are delivered to Bull Valley Roadhouse. Everything else I can possibly get farm-direct, I pick up at Berkeley's Tuesday market. I usually order extra of everything so that people can purchase things on the fly from our stand, which we operate for a few hours twice a week. Everything that doesn't end up in someone's box or purchased at the stand gets made into sorbet, pickles, or veggie stock and sold through the market. Very little ends up in the compost bin. The margins are tight on purpose, and our relatively tiny price markup helps offset the cost of transit, spoilage, and utilities. Everyone who staffs the market is a volunteer, including myself. It's a lot of work but it is a blast, and almost everyone has asked me if the program will continue after the shelter-in-place is lifted.” —Kramer Collins
Soul Food Farm CSA supports many local farms and artisan makers
Alexis and Eric Koefoed have been farming on a family homestead in Vacaville for over 20 years. Their “temporary CSA" is a way to help other small local farmers and craft producers get full value for their products and keep sales moving during the shutdown. Your “box” is essentially whatever you choose to load it with from the weekly-changing online pantry. You might stock up on fresh pasta, bread dough, preserves, handmade body care products, Wild Dog Farm microgreens, Liberty Duck, Be Love Farm beets or duck eggs, Bohemian Creamery cheese, June Taylor’s candied peels, Lockewood Acres veggies, lamb, and popcorn, plus Soul Food Farm’s own eggs, olive oil, and herbs. The ordering window opens Saturdays at 10am and closes on Wednesday at 5pm. You’ll need to pick up your box from one of three locations: Soul Food Farm in Vacaville (Saturday pickup), Albany/Berkeley (Sunday), San Francisco’s Sunset District (Sunday).
Tacos el Precioso Produce Box and Taco Meal Kits
Continuing to support the farms he cares about has been top of mind for Devin Gonzalez, chef/owner of Taco el Precioso, a popup and catering company run from the commissary kitchen at the Alice Collective, a group of businesses that celebrates Oakland’s diversity. Each week when Gonzalez goes to the Old Oakland and San Rafael farmers’ markets, he patronizes family farms run by women and people of color like Rojas, Barbagelata, Toscano, Ortiz and others. The fresh produces goes into his taco kits—lamb barbacoa, pork carnitas, and cauliflower al pastor—fresh salsas, and salads, and he also packs CSA boxes to sell at cost, so all the profit goes back to the farmers. “People get $30 worth of food from the farmers and the farmers get $30,” he says. He’s also been donating meals for day laborers and first responders at Oakland hospitals with help from East Bay FeedER and World Central Kitchen, and he has a menu option to let customers pay for a donated meal. You place your order any time Sunday evening through Wednesday evening, then Gonzalez shops at the farmers' markets on Friday and Saturday to have your food ready for pickup on Sundays.
The Town Kitchen has a mission you'll want to continue to support.
Formerly known as The Town Kitchen, this community-driven food company was founded with a mission to empower underserved Bay Area youth. They had a roster of corporate clients before the SIP, but with offices closed, they are finding a way forward by offering a full range of prepared foods, pantry provisions, and essential supplies for home delivery. While you’re in the online shop, you can donate to help get goods to shut-in community members, and also know that with every $100 spent at Town Kitchen Provisions, you will have funded three hours of employment and apprenticeship for underserved Bay Area youth.
Good food from the heart of Oakland Chinatown
Yuen Hop Co. Food Box
Located in the heart of Oakland Chinatown at 824 Webster Street, 90-year-old Yuen Hop Co. has been known for decades as THE place to get handmade noodles. When the SIP began, the community rallied around a new relief initiative called Good Good Eatz, whose organizers encouraged Yuen Hop owner Anthony Quan to get on Instagram and to start packing his family’s legacy noodles into a box along with tofu, stir-fry vegetables, and other Asian staples for no-contact pickup/delivery. Funds from community donors help get the boxes to Chinatown shut-ins, and you can consider adding a donation along with your order. The box is $49, and you’ll need to be on Venmo to make payment @Anthony-Quan-a. If you want delivery, you’ll pay Dragonfly Delivery’s Dina Suarez @layDSuarez. Order by Tuesday at 9pm for Wednesday afternoon delivery or curbside pickup between 12:30 and 2:30pm.
Farmers’ Market Pre-Packed Boxes
Please support your local farmers' market!
Farmers’ markets remain open as essential services, but as at grocery stores, risk continues as shoppers mingle, handle food, and exchange money for goods. The solution occurred to everyone simultaneously: boxes of market items pre-packed and delivered curbside at the markets. However, market managers had to invent the systems from scratch, and each market site presents unique obstacles. Thus far (to our knowledge) three East Bay market associations have programs in place, but we expect to see that expanding each week as solutions arise:
The Bounty Box at the Saturday Oakland Grand Lake is a selection curated by market managers. You can specify the size of box you want, but not the items.
The Good to Go Box at the Saturday Orinda market is also market-curated. Sign up early in the week when ordering begins, since the boxes sell out.
The Urban Village Farmers’ Market Association, which runs a market in Castro Valley and three in Oakland (Temescal, Old Oakland, Montclair) has signed on with an app system called Source What’s Good to give shoppers the ability to self-curate boxes from their favorite market vendors (although not all vendors have it functioning yet). If you shop at the Temescal market, you can fetch your pre-ordered Village Box from the parking lot drive-thru on Sundays, but the association expects to have similar pickup systems in place at their other market locations soon. “We see this supplemental online farmers market model as an important, long-term protection for our vendors’ livelihoods and for our urban communities’ access to safe fresh food as the struggles around pandemics, intensifying fire seasons, and inclement weather rise.” —uvfm.org
Please support your local farmers’ market!
USDA Farmers to Families Food Box Program
Photo courtesy of the USDA
Even the United States government has seen the value in boxing food and moving it directly from farmers to consumers: Locally, two growers (Urban Tilth and Capay Organic) and a distributor (Fresh Approach) are participating in the USDA Farmers to Families Food Box Program.
