Who Doesn’t like Farm Fresh Eggs?

On your average….okay, below average week, we would find a farm not too far out of town and grab some eggs. Score! my week is set.

Then I realized that I was putting a TON of work into the egg hunt. Store eggs just do not taste as good as farm fresh eggs, period. I cannot go back, I will not go back. This is where my 3 year old would say, “Sam I Am”.

Then it happened. Our Saturday became a nearly all-day event to find eggs. The second Saturday we were driving around for eggs we hit the fourth or fifth farm with no eggs, and I said to my husband, “This is the business. I can get fresh meat delivered from Crowd Cow or Butcher Box. Fresh produce from Imperfect or Full Circle. Ready to make meals from Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, BistroMD….no one delivers eggs or milk.”

So I grabbed my trusty iPhone and started looking; a couple in the entire country. Genius.

An Idea is Hatched

We got home, did some research into the agriculture laws, got some chickens, and ran a small test with a simple Facebook post. The next couple of weeks we spent creating the brand and making a website on an eCom subscription platform called Lemonstand that had templates you fill out. We were able to give this a try without having to invest a ton of money not knowing if there was a demand or not. That platform LemonStand has since closed its doors and we took it all in house.

It’s been an interesting journey and all of our customers say the same thing. “I used to drive all over to find eggs and it’s so convenient to know they are on my doorstep on Friday”.

I guess many people are also figuring out that for our $5.95 delivery charge you’re saving 1-2 hours or more…or worse; many hours and STILL NOT finding eggs 😡

Two Years Later

My husband is a major coffee snob, so Portland, right? We used to drive all over to find which stores had Alpenrose 3.8% milk in stock for his latte. Déjà vu to my egg hunt, right?

With Alpenrose Dairy selling out and ceasing the community events they used to do, we stopped buying Alpenrose products and migrated our milk purchase for our family to a small, local farm called Schoch Dairy.

One day in a driveway conversation, one of our subscribers was asking our delivery driver if we’d consider bringing milk in a glass bottle out. Ironically the timing was perfect.

February 2020 we added milk. And not just any milk either. Schoch Dairy Milk. Schoch is said “shock” like ⚡️.

They low temperature, vat pasteurize their milk and store it in a glass bottle.  Get this; the milk is still in the cow on Thursday and on your porch on Friday…how fresh is that?!

A few weeks later it was on the website and on your doorsteps.

Fresh Fruit? Umm YAAS!

Summer 2020 we partnered with local fruit farms to deliver fresh fruit. How Fresh? Well the fruit was picked early Friday morning then delivered to your door later that day; THAT Fresh! Hood Strawberries, Albion Strawberries, Blueberries, Blackberries, the most GIGANTIC Marionberries, pears, apples, peaches…you name it! If it grew locally we are bringing it to you!

Honey 🍯

One day at the berry farm my husband Brian, saw the bee apiaries. While we know it’s common practice for farms to rent bees for pollination, it never dawned on us. He asked the farm about them and sure enough, the beekeeper makes honey with the bees from the very fruit we’re delivering.

💡 After a few calls and some market tests, we released our own brand of Raw Local Honey; The Honey Drop.

Baked goods

In the winter not many farm foods in the PNW. At the request of a customer, we tried out some local baked good from small-batch bakers who were displaced with COVID -19 shutting down restaurants. Wow, what a hit it was and we’ll keep doing it. We try to focus on baked good that use other Farm Fresh Foods we deliver; like Apples 🍎

Applesauce

One of the bakers has a special Applesauce cake. So we called our Apple Farm partner and asked if anyone makes applesauce out of their apples? They replied, “funny, we’re in the process of doing it right now”. A few days later we had our own brand of apple sauce with the very same apples we deliver; Applesauce Drop.

Coffee

One of our customers said that their friends didn’t use us because we don’t deliver coffee. While is roasted locally it’s not farmed locally. Well, that same week we had 4 requests for coffee beans.  Remember earlier how I said that Brian was a total coffee snob? So we made a few calls to some coffee people he knows and brought coffee on. We’re currently working on our own brand; Coffee Drop coming soon!

What’s next?

How about if you moved and there was an Egg Drop in your new town? How rad would that be? Well, talks are happening to have it be a real thing !!

That’s what is currently making noise around in my head.

Sound interesting? Feel free to drop me a line with anything that’s on your mind info@eggdroppdx.com or text me at 503-662-2102