Fresh Direct Expanding to Other Side(s) of the Park?
We got a tip this morning (based on a post here) that Fresh Direct will soon begin delivering to the several new zip codes further south and east of Prospect Park than they’ve delivered to date. We just spoke with Fresh Direct and here’s the more detailed breakdown by zip code: 11230 – full coverage…
We got a tip this morning (based on a post here) that Fresh Direct will soon begin delivering to the several new zip codes further south and east of Prospect Park than they’ve delivered to date. We just spoke with Fresh Direct and here’s the more detailed breakdown by zip code:
11230 – full coverage
11210 – partial coverage
11229 – partial coverage
11226 – full coverage
11223 – partial coverage
As if Brooklynites didn’t have enough reasons to be jealous of those who live in Victorian Flatbush this time of year! We’re expecting a full press release to come out by the end of the day which will (hopefully) include more specifics about the boundaries of the new delivery zones. On a related note, our contact at FD alerted us to another cool piece of news: The company is now using 100% post-consumer use recycled materials for their boxes.
Photo by Frank Lynch
Yikes- pick your issue- if FD was just a money loving, earth killing greed machine- why wouldn’t they deliver to all the neighborhoods they could- just to f**k everyone? Maybe they’re actually sparing “the brown people” or maybe their trucks get robbed? There must be some logical reason that they would pass on a viable market. Maybe McDonald’s pays them to not deliver to their Dollar Meal territories.
When a store opens in my nabe I will shop there. Until then…
Fresh Direct is terrible for the enviroment, all the non profit groups who have looked at this issue agree. Besides the excessive packaging, think of all those trucks double parked and still running! Drivers are in fact not allowed to turn off the engines. Grocery stores in NYC are centralized distribution centers. Trucks deliver there in highly space efficient packaging, then pedestrians take the grocercies the final blocks home. Fresh Direct uses trucks to deliver a box to your door that contains exactly one loaf of bread. Save the planet and shop at your local store.
I don’t mean to quibble or pick a fight, but… yes, food still goes from, say, a farmer to FD HQ to the customer. But, with a regular supermarket, it often does not go right from the farm to the supermarket. It goes through a distributer and/or supermarket HQ. I really still think FD is less wasteful. Also it’s less incentive for people to drive or own cars.
So..the boxes are cardboard and totally recyclable. And it probably translates into fewer plastic bags that are not recyclable.
–It’s LESS wasteful to shop via Fresh Direct, I think.–
Don’t think so, as the food still has to be trucked to Fresh Direct. And then trucked again as deliveries are made to the customers.
Of course none of those customers need to drive to the market.
But the net use of large boxes is unquestionably more with Fresh Direct. They never reuse the boxes that they received the food in, as a neighborhood deli might do, they use new FD boxes every time.
Immensely wasteful
“It seems to be the least environmentally correct way for people in the city to get food. Have you seen those huge trucks idling and driving around. The amount of gas used is huge.”
I’m sorry but I don’t buy that. How is food in supermarkets transported there? By truck, usually. In boxes. And then the food gets taken out of a box and onto the shelf and then into a bag when you take it home. It’s LESS wasteful to shop via Fresh Direct, I think.
“If every neighborhood had a quality store in their hood I imagine many brooklynites would walk with shopping carts to buy their groceries”
Yeah, and if I had wings I could fly like a birdie!
–To hell with Fresh Direct for not delivering to Bedford-Stuyvesant and many parts of Harlem.–
Look, they can’t serve everywhere. They only recently started service to my part of Bay Ridge, which they drove through in order to get to areas that they did serve, and you didn’t hear me cry then.
If they don’t think they’ll get enough business from an area, or lets face it if an area has a higher than average crime rate, then they have every right in the world not to go there.
——
–Have you seen those huge trucks idling and driving around.–
Absolutely. And I’ve seen their huge boxes all over the place too, a big source of waste.
Fresh Direct has a terrific service and business model, but the their overwhelming success is due to the fact that NYC has on balance the worst supermarkets in America. Almost any suburb in NJ or LI has better supermarkets than 90% of NYC neighborhoods.
We have foo-foo places like Whole Foods in the yuppie neighborhoods and cramped ratholes most everywhere else. Its a wonder that everyone in the city doesn’t use Fresh Direct.
NYC has largely solved the crime problem, but has barely put a dent in its supermarket problem.
I used to have a medium size A&P that I could walk to, now I drive from Bay Ridge to Fairway in Red Hook.
Houston, we have a problem. And it ain’t Fresh Direct.