Fresh Food Network delivers local foods to campus

Guest post by junior Jake Teitelbaum

Do you ever wish you could buy more local produce, meats or dairy, but simply don’t have time to make it to the farmer’s market?

Fresh Food Network, launched last semester, is an entirely student run e-commerce venture making it easier for members of the Wake Forest community to buy local and organic foods.

To purchase items, visit www.FreshFN.com to see what’s fresh around town and place your order anytime from Sunday evening through Thursday at 10 p.m. Choose whether you will pick up your order on Thursday or Friday (Note: Orders placed after Wednesday at 5 p.m. will be available for pick up on Friday).

Orders are delivered to the Campus Kitchen Lounge (next to Kitchin Residence Hall) and available for pickup from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday or from 1 to 2:30 p.m. on Friday.

After picking up your order, you’ll receive an email with information about how you can use your purchases.

How did this all start?

Working full time as a pediatrician while raising three children on her own, my mother was lucky to find an hour to run to the grocery store, let alone the farmers market, which was only open from 4-7 p.m. on Thursday. Here was a caring and health-obsessed young mother who wanted to provide local food for her family but couldn’t because of time constraints.

Although as a young kid I relished the opportunity to trade bits and pieces of my homemade lunch for a savory pack of Fruit Gushers, I eventually matured and began questioning the temptations of sugary delights. I developed an obsession during my teenage years with how our nation grows and consumes food, and the more I learned, the more frustrated I became. Throughout America and in my own small town, there seemed to be an abundance of local farms and high-quality foods, yet the difficulty of obtaining these foods was preventing people just like my mother from providing them for their families. Thus, an idea was hatched.

Under the guidance of Wake Forest faculty, I began to put together the rough workings of a business model and launched Fresh Food Network in the summer of 2014 in my hometown of Durham, Conn. Young, inexperienced and incredibly motivated, I was fortunate to receive positive feedback, but bit off more than I could chew in terms of trying to do too much too quick.

After returning to campus in the fall, I recognized a similar need among Wake Forest community members. Though supplies of local foods are bountiful, some students, faculty and staff have neither the time nor means of transportation to obtain them. A service that could help provide easy access to healthy, local foods would also tie in perfectly with the University’s Thrive program, which supports personal and environmental wellbeing.

Drawing from my past experience, I launched the Wake Forest Fresh Food Network. Since its initial opening in fall 2014, the Network team has grown to four members including juniors Angela Gallagher and Caleb Marley, and sophomore Ann Nguyen.

United under a simple vision of improving the convenience of buying local and organic foods, Fresh Food Network defines its mission in just two short sentences: “The irony of our world is that in our globalized economy, it’s easier to purchase food that was produced halfway around the globe than it is to buy better quality foods grown in our own backyards. We’re here to change that.”

To stay in the loop on happenings with Wake Forest’s Fresh Food Network, sign up for our newsletter at www.FreshFN.com/sign-up.

I hope you’ll consider giving our service a try. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me at teitjr12@wfu.edu.