About spud

I first got the idea for spud in 1995 when, as a sustainability business consultant, I was hired to study the economics of sustainable community food systems for the University of California at Davis. Through that work I became much more aware of the concentration of power in the conventional food industry and how little trickles down to the independent farmers and artisan producers.  Consider the tomato grower who spends months growing beautiful (hopefully organic) tomatoes and then only gets 20 cents of the retail tomato dollar while the remaining 80 cents goes to the distributors and retailers who spend just 3 days transporting it and presenting it to the consumer in a grocery store.

Direct home delivery of groceries offers many benefits

My research also indicated that the best way to correct this imbalance was through alternative methods of retailing such as farmgate sales, farmers markets and a new concept called direct home delivery. I was looking to start a small green business to demonstrate to my consulting clients that it was possible to run an eco-friendly, socially responsible business and also make a profit and the home delivery model seemed to have all the elements.

It offered huge environmental benefits like reducing grocery store car trips, generating 80% less food waste, eliminating plastic bags and grocery flyers, and expanding organic agriculture. It also offered significant social benefits because the direct delivery model creates direct connections between food suppliers and customers and the avoided shopping trips simplify peoples’ lives. Finally, on the economic side, it seemed that the savings of not having a high rent grocery store would offset the cost of the delivery vans while still allowing us to offer competitive prices and free delivery.

A new social mission company begins to grow

So, with an outstanding level if naivety, I named the company Small Potatoes Urban Delivery (spud for short), rented a low-rent warehouse, hired 3 staff, and started deliveries a full range of groceries so that our customers could avoid a shopping trip. That was 12 years ago.  Now we have 200 staff, operate in seven cities across the west coast of North America, and have over 16,000 customers.  However, unlike the big grocery store chains, we have stayed decentralized.  In each location, we hire locally, buy locally, deliver locally, and re-invest our profits locally except when another location needs financial support.  In this way we are much like a network of mini spud locations that just shares a common website to reduce costs.

We are North America’s greenest grocer

And while the economic challenges of this business have been far greater than I ever imagined, I can honestly say the environmental and social benefits are also far greater.  After honing our business model over more than 1.5 million deliveries we can proudly say that there is no greener way for our customers to buy their groceries.  Here’s why our customers feel so good about getting their groceries:

Buying local – we buy more locally than any other grocery retailer offering a full selection of groceries. We are so passionate about local buying that we publish the distance that each of our products travels from where it is grown to get to our local warehouses.

Buying organic – all of our produce is certified organic and 50% of our other groceries are organic, allowing us to sell a higher percentage of organic products than any other grocery retailer offering a full grocery selection.

Carbon neutral – We are the only internet grocer in North America that is 100% carbon neutral. We try hard to minimize our carbon emissions and then buy offsets for the remainder.

Our customers enjoy other environmental savings as well through spud, which they are shown on a special eco-audit section of our website. If you haven’t tried our service we think you will be delighted with our competitive prices, time saving deliveries, excellent quality, and free karma that get knowing that each order is full of environmental and social benefits.

If you are a customer, I would love to hear what you think of our service. You can email me. I’ll do my best to respond promptly.  We truly want our service to improve your life while improving the world at the same time and we’d love to have you with us.