Truck Farming 2.0 – New York City’s Mobile C.S.A.

The Farm Truck from Holton Farms on one of its 22 stops in Manhattan. Photo by Holton Farms.

Holton Farms

By Lauren Shockey
New York Times
Jully 12, 2010

Excerpt:

It was only a matter of time before two of New York’s biggest culinary fads — food trucks and Greenmarket fare — united. As of May, the Farm Truck from Holton Farms has roamed the city’s streets, stocked with the Vermont farm’s pickling cucumbers, radishes and yellow squash, along with other regional products from up north, like Walpole Creamery’s raw-milk maple walnut ice cream and Vermont Coffee Company’s fair-trade, organic beans.

While the ultimate goal is to function as a roving farm stand, obtaining a mobile food vendor’s license has been a challenge for the owners, Jurrien Swarts, Seth Holton and George Hornig, and so the truck can’t actually sell the farm’s wares to passersby. Instead, it functions as a roving pickup spot for their C.S.A., or community supported agriculture, in which customers subscribe for a share of produce and pick it up at 22 locations around New York City. (Passersby can, however, sign up for a share onsite and begin purchasing if the truck has extra goods.) Unlike most C.S.A.s, which offer customers little choice in a particular week’s bounty, Holton Farms has adopted a Fresh Direct-like approach, allowing its subscribers to order whatever products are available, in whatever quantity desired, on the Web site up to 36 hours ahead of pickup.

See complete article here.