Adventures in running a web-based food business
Confirmation of three huge lessons all at once. A new employee quit unexpectedly recently. Just didn’t show up one morning. Turns out that he was a fragile soul and couldn’t handle the pressure of tricky customer service situations. I understand now in retrospect, but I sure wish that he would have come talk to me. …
Marko & Hanako produce truly superb organic sauerkrauts & kimchi at Midori Farm in Quilcene, WA and a nearby commercial kitchen – shepherding the whole process from seed to jar. Because their krauts are unpasteurized and don’t ship well, we only sell them in our Seattle retail store and Amazon Fresh. You should come by …
During my recent food scouting trip to Italy I had the opportunity to visit Compagnia del Montale, the family owned & operated company producing our superb aged balsamic vinegars. It was a great visit, and I learned a lot…but perhaps even more exciting was what they sent me home with. In addition to their more …
Because a lot of the meat sold on MarxFoods ships from our New Jersey facility, but is photographed here, we often get “care packages” of goodies to be used in photo shoots, recipe development, etc. While boxes filled with New Zealand grass-fed beef are plenty exciting on their own, my brother Garrett has taken it …
I’m super excited to be the first retailer in Seattle (and maybe the country) to offer urban-farmed microgreens from Farmbox Greens. Not only are they gorgeous, but they’re also delicious, thanks to a perfectly balanced regimen of light, moisture and nutrients. Dan, the owner of Farmbox Greens, has achieved this by building a perfectly controlled …
The Olympic Peninsula is home to abundant natural beauty–the Hoh rainforest, the Olympic mountains, the Pacific coast. It is also home to a sort of agrarian renaissance, with an impressive diversity of farms, from livestock to orchards to vineyards. Here are a few notable spots between Chimacum and Port Angeles on the north peninsula: Chimacum …
If you’re driving through the Willamette Valley wine country between Portland and McMinnville on Highway 99, these are good shops to fill your picnic basket or fortify your wine tasting tour. Beaverton Farmers’ Market A huge, diverse market, easily twice the size of an average farmers’ market. (SW Hall Blvd between 3rd & 5th Sts, …
Portland is a little powerhouse food city of the West Coast. It has the food resources of a much larger city: nationally-acclaimed restaurants and bars, an impressive number of well-stocked farmer’s markets, all manner of natural and specialty food shops, and a comprehensive network of artisan food producers. The list of resources presented here is …
Naturally Grown: An Alternative Label to Organic Many people don’t realize that the increased cost of Organic isn’t just less efficient/more expensive growing techniques or farmers charging a premium for their work. Organic certification can be very costly. Sure, it helps ensure everybody’s following the rules, but it can also bar the door for small …
It’s easy enough to find guides on which restaurants, bars, and food trucks to sample when visiting a city, but guides on where to shop for food are considerably harder to come by. Sometimes you just want to cook a meal, or pack a nice picnic, or have a snack that didn’t come out of …
Chicaoji Hot Sauce is one of my favorite products we sell, not just because it’s local and tasty, but also because of the down to earth guy who makes it: Randall Waugh. He’s a solid guy! I recently got to go to Lopez Island to interview Randall and watch Chicaoji being made – check out …
One of the highlights of my recent food scouting trip to Italy was getting to hunt bianchetti truffles & fresh morels. I love wild foods –especially wild mushrooms. The forest contains some of the most delicious foods and some of them, like mushrooms and truffles, are defenseless and just waiting for you to pick them. …