Organic delivery from farmaround.

rammelino

I used farmaround for the best part of the year but gave up in the end after continuous problems with deliveries and charges to account.

To summarise, the positives were:

good food and (as I'm now finding having switched to another box scheme) and lots of it for the price paid.
The other items for sale were also great, particularly the dairy goods, pasta and cleaning produce.

The negatives.
In trying to change my order, the website was hit and miss -if I logged in as an existing customer and tried to add new products (as one-offs) sometimes I'd get them, sometines I wouldn't
Occasional problems with the way that goods were packaged - e.g. putting bananas at the bottom of a bag with tins of tomatoes on it. Result: bruised & inedible bananas.
Unreliable deliveries - on an increasingly frequent basis, I would arrive home on a Thursday to find no food delivered. The annoying thing was I always had to ring farmaround and tell them this! It seems like they had no idea as to whether I had received my delivery
Their system of taking your money - basically, your goods arrive with an invoice and thats the amount they take off your card. Fine. Except (as seemed to happen most weeks) when items that were listed on the invoice were not actually in the food bags. Sometimes the invoice would say "item out of stock - credit applied". More often than not (and pretty much all the time in the last few months) nothing would be there at all. So a pattern developed - I would e-mail Farmaround and ask them to credit my account because I hadn't received one or two items. They would (sometimes) make the credit. Tragic as it sounds, by the end i was keeping my own spreadsheet with the amount I should have been paying - in the last two months I was being overcharged fo every invoice. I just got bored with it (probably like the readers of this posting!)

It strikes me that they have grown too big, too quickly and have lost track of exactly what they are sending out to their customers, and what they are charging for. Farmaround customers be warned - check how much they take out of your account!

I am now with beanstalkorganix, getting a £10 box of fruit and a £10 box of veg. First impressions are good but the fruit is very expensive - if I wanted to order 500g of grapes it would cost me £5!!!

Gingham_Ribbon

Hmmm. I'll keep that in mind, thanks. My delivery was at around 10am for the first 2 weeks. It turned up at about 6pm yesterday. We had no food in for dinner. She did say that it can turn up any time up to 8 though, so I'll make sure there is food in for Tuesday in future then it won't matter - as long as it DOES turn up!

d.o.o.g

My wife and I have been using http://www.riverford.co.uk/ for some time now. Their choice of veg is fantastic with both boxes and add-ons if you want more of something. They are also great at advising how much of something you need (we got them to estimate very successfully for us over Christmas). They seem to deliver to most of the country.

They also include recipe sheets with deliveries featuring the seasonal veg, to give you ideas.

competitionscafe

Picture of today's box - it's the £10 veg box and £5 fruit bag from East Coast Organics near Edinburgh, the potatoes are in the brown bag at the back:



http://www.flickr.com/photos/78791045@N00/167120177/

Tondella

Tondella wrote:

This thread has inspired me to order with farmaround too, previously i had visited my local street market, but it wasn't always convenient (saturday morning is the only time i could go) and the range can often be limited, plus I'm pretty sure alot of it is imported.

I've ordered the singler person's veg and fruit boxes, my first order is on the 21st, so I'll post and let people know what you get for your money. I also thought I'd try the eggs out too. I really like that farmaround post a lot of recipes to help you get creative with your veg!

well my order was waiting for me when i got home at 5.30 last night. I ordered the single person's fruit and veg orders. Have to say there doesn't look to be enough to keep me going for the week, and I don't feel like i have value for money. I can't really afford to go up to the next level as i am trying to do this on my dfw budget, so i may cancel after only one week

here's what i got
fruit
two bananas
two pears
three peaches
about five plums

veg
potatoes - probably about six
two onions
couple of carrots
one large head of cauliflower
one courgette
three good sized tomatoes
one green pepper
about five mushrooms

Floss

That doesn't sound like enough to feed one person for a weekend, never mind a week!

I used to have a delivery from a farmaround-type company but stopped it because the fruit was always battered & the veg didn't last more than a couple of days.

Gingham_Ribbon

Oh that's a shame. I'm really sorry it wasn't what you wanted. I'm still really happy with mine. I'm even baking with the fruit to get through it all and the veg is lasting, provided I cook things like spinach and carrots within a couple of days to store for the rest of the week.

But I'm getting the luxury fruit and the standard veg bags which seem to be much more generous for not that much more. But as veggies, my budget for fruit and veg is reasonably high because I'm not having to suppliment it with meat etc.

Evelyn_2

Hi, I get a weekly delivery from Farmaround. I have had a few problems (squashed/over-ripe produce) but these have been resolved by phoning them. I also got a temporary 25% discount and a "Quality check".

Generally the produce is very good quality, but we have noticed that it deteriorates a bit faster than supermarket fruit and veg.

Here is a photo of a recent delivery (Luxury fruit bag, Luxury veg bag, Mediterranean veg bag, 1 dozen eggs, 1 pint of milk). It tasted as good as it looked!

competitionscafe

Wow Evelyn that does look good (and healthy too).

I see you have some radishes there, so here's a suggestion for a salad (tried this recipe last week and making it again tonight - it's delish:

1 Cucumber (diced)
Bunch of Radishes (halved or quartered if large)
Bunch of fresh mint (tear large leaves into pieces or chop, leave small ones whole)
Bunch of fresh flat leaf parsley (torn or roughly chopped)
Feta cheese (350g or so, crumbled)
6 spring onions (sliced)

Mix everything together in a bowl and then splash on some good extra virgin olive oil and a few drops of red wine vinegar, plus a little freshly ground black pepper if it needs it (taste first as radishes are quite 'peppery') Don't add salt though as feta is quite salty).

Also, I got some 'mystery' veg this week which looks like beetroot but is carrot shaped - is this a kind of beetroot? It looks just like beetroot apart from the shape..

quester

Many thanks for sharing your experiences about Farmaround Organic food. I have just had my first order delivered and am extremely impressed with the quality, service & value for money. Its like Christmas! :-)

Both the vegatables and fruit are far superior to the organics which are currently available at our local Asda. (In both quality and taste)

I ordered one luxury vegetable bag
one salad bag
one standard fruit bag
a dozen Yorkshire freerange organic eggs

Total cost £32.10 delivered to my door
I have taken a photo of today's delivery
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