Door to Door
by Diana Cercone
It’s 7:30 on a recent Thursday morning when I visit Door-To-Door Organics in Ottsville. The warehouse has been in full-tilt since 4 a.m. with staff members unloading fresh shipments of local organic produce. Still others are busy filling today’s customers’ orders. Along with fruits and vegetables, there are orders of meats, fish, dairy, eggs, and market products such as coffee, jams, bread and baked goods. Many items are local. All are organic or all natural.
Each item is checked for quality and freshness before packed into a customer’s box. Working the fruit line is Pete Chekemain of Malvern. After looking at a customer’s order, he opens a box of organic, fresh figs. Satisfied that the figs are plump and juicy, he closes the lid and tucks it into the customer’s box. Two plums, however, don’t pass Pete’s quality test. These he discards and replaces them with two plums that do.
The same attention to quality is repeated throughout the morning by everyone at Door-To-Door Organics. And by 11:30 a.m., 14 company delivery trucks are loaded and on their way to individual customers. Today’s trucks will make stops in Staten Island and New Jersey.
Food shopping doesn’t get any easier than this. And good food doesn’t come any better—or fresher. But, then, that’s the guiding principal behind Door-To-Door Organics, says Charles Minguez, location-marketing specialist. Enabling people to eat good food which has a positive affect on their health, supporting sustainable agriculture, local farmers and producers, and following earth-friendly practices, he says, is what Door-To-Door is all about.
“I think it’s important to support local food as much as possible, to protect the environment and promote good health,” says Charles, who grew up in Ottsville. “That’s the way I was raised.”
It evidently was the same for Door-To-Door Organics founders, the Gersenson Family. In 1997 they began operating from their garage in Upper Black Eddy, delivering fresh, seasonal boxes of organic produce to their customers’ doorstep. In 2004, son David Gerenson moved the operation to Boulder, CO. Today, along with its Ottsville (called Tri-State) and Boulder locations, the company has sites in Chicago, Kansas City and Michigan.
To read the rest of Natural Deliveries, turn to page 92 in the Fall 2014 issue of Bucks County Magazine.