A Case for Local Food Delivered
I am not affiliated with any brands or products that I share in this post. I am an independent researcher sharing my knowledge to help consumers shop their values. Where stated I have personally tried and recommend brands or products. I’m always hopeful to receive feedback from the community about your experiences.
The Problem with Going to the Grocery Store
I didn’t think it was possible to get boxed food delivered to my rural home until I researched my last post on Local Foods for Simple Camp Meals. It was then I uncovered that there are opportunities to have boxed food delivered in both rural and urban areas. While dairy, produce and grain delivery options are limited, protein options are plentiful.
In this post I’ll share the opportunities I found to have meat and seafood products delivered to your door.
I am delighted with the potential for having local food delivered because I am contending with several unfortunate facts about modern grocery shopping:
First, there is limited physical access to mainstream grocery stores in my area. Grocery shopping requires additional expenditures on a car and gasoline. Going to the same place I uninspiring.
Second, these grocery stores cost me a lot of time. I usually drive out of my way, make multiple stops to find everything I’m looking for, and struggle to navigate confusing layouts and signage that leaves me searching in circles for ingredients. They’re overstuffed with convenience foods that distract from finding the whole ingredients I mainly shop for.
Third, I struggle with the value that mainstream stores in my area offer. There isn’t much ingredient selection, brand selection, quality, or service, even though the employees themselves are mostly darlings. This leaves me feeling like I’m paying A LOT for groceries that don’t really reflect my nutritional needs, preferences or budget.
The quandry? I need food and have limited choice. When I shop mainstream grocery these days, I feel like I’m being asked, “would you prefer to be kicked in the knee, or the shin?” I say, “well, the shin, I guess.” Really, I would prefer not to be kicked at all, thank you.
There must be a better way than grocery shopping at mainstream stores…
How about supporting independent grocers and local food markets? I have found personally that some small food businesses seem determined to offer competitive pricing and value, product quality and service. Stephens et al. 2025[i] have made similar observations in their research. It’s hard to believe unless you see for yourself because of what we know about economies of scale. From the most reductive point of view, economies of scale mean the more of something you produce, the cheaper it becomes; that is, bigger is better in business…to a point. On the flip side there are diseconomies of scale, meaning when a business gets too big it begins to lose its cost advantages. I’ve not done any analysis myself, but perhaps this is what big grocers are in the midst of? Perhaps the big grocers have just gotten too big to offer the advantages they once had?
Mind you, there are disadvantages to shopping at independents and local food markets too. I often find their hours of operation, communication, and marketing present barriers to access. My efforts to spend money at alternative grocers over the last few months have been thwarted because they didn’t get back to me, didn’t get back to me in time, or weren’t open at a reasonable time when I needed to shop (like Saturday). I went to a farmer’s market recently that didn’t have much meat, and no cheese, but was overloaded with produce. If you want to shop alternative, you may still have to make a lot of stops and travel a long way to each business serving its own niche. All this is to say that among mainstream, independent and alternative grocers there is likely a place for each in our food system, and plenty of room for improvement.
To get the value I’m looking for, that is nutrient value, price value, value from my time spent, and ethical production value, I’ve developed new interest in having fresh food delivered!
Delivered Foods 101:
There are three main ways to get delivered foods these days:
First, having groceries delivered. In this way you can have ingredients delivered to your door from a farm, wholesaler or retailer. In my area, mainstream grocery stores do not offer this service.
Next, higher priced options include ready to cook food delivery. These are your meal kits like HelloFresh. Ready to cook sends you portioned ingredients you assemble yourself with provided recipes. Again, not available to me.
Finally, ready to eat food delivery includes fully prepared meals delivered to your door, like pizza and restaurant takeout. No one is delivering to me, 40 km out of the city.
What I can get is locally produced and harvested groceries delivered, to my door, from a farm! What I find especially appealing about this option is that it ultimately saves me time, supports my community, brings me closer to my food source, and cuts out the middle-man and associated cost mark-ups, all without compromising on price, quality and safety. Read on an I’ll show you how.
Read a brief history of food delivery below or skip to the meat and seafood delivery options available TO YOU!
A Brief History of Boxed Food Delivered
It Began with Ready to Eat
Hangovers, the elite class, cows, and pizza, may all take credit for some of the first instances of food delivery in history. Between 1392 and 1897, the Korean aristocracy were said to consume soup to chase a hangover, delivered at dawn. Later, Japanese delivered sushi and soba noodles in stacked boxes to Samurai, merchants and theatre patrons during the Edo period (1603-1868). A dedicated milk delivery service was emerging in America by 1785. In 1889, Queen Margherita received the fist delivered pizza on a visit to Naples.
From then, food delivery evolved to meet the needs of society throughout periods of social change. In 1890, the urbanization of workers to Mumbai spurred the emergence of Dabbawala, or “the one who carries a box.” The Dabbawala served lunch to workers who lived outside the city but worked inside the city and couldn’t go home for lunch. War-wellness packages were delivered to soldiers during war time and to veterans following it. The first online food delivery service was launched by pizza hut, called PizzaNet, and the evolution continued into what we know about food service delivery today: Ubereats, Doordash, Skip the Dishes etc.
Evolution into Ready to Cook
The concept of meal kits is comparatively recent, emerging in 2007 with widespread adoption in 2015.[ii] Meal kits are marketed as a convenient way to access new ingredients, fresh foods, local foods and reduce food waste. With such a fresh history though, scholars have a lot of questions about their sustainability in practice. So far, these questions have focused on packaging, emissions, and waste.
One 2017 study[iii] from the US suggests that meal kits save 33% in energy and emissions cost savings, but they produced 3.7 pounds more packaging material per meal when compared to a going-to-grocery scenario. With meal kit providers aware of the issue, much about packaging has evolved in the last 8 years.
Still, the trade-offs between emissions, packaging and waste remains dynamic. For example, more biodegradable packaging could lead to more emissions, less packaging could lead to more food waste. Addressing food waste at the consumer level, which meal kits tout as an advantage, is only about a third of the overall food waste problem in the US. At the production level, however, for which food waste is also a significant problem, little changes when compared to going-to-grocery. While shorter supply chains and optimized delivery routes in ready to cook models may cut down on emissions and draw more product from local suppliers, consumers become even further removed from their food source. Fewer warehouses and less transport may be needed for meal kits than for going-to-grocery overall but more refrigeration capacity is needed at the storage and preparation stages. Less energy is needed than to operate retail stores but the energy consumption is merely outsourced to larger servers and more personal computers needed for ordering. Lobbies, companies and governments in the US are not naive to these trade-offs explored in depth in Fenton (2017)[iv] or their impacts on margins. It’s not clear what the facts are in Canada.
Direct Marketing and Groceries Delivered
To address inequalities of concentrated power in the food supply chain, local producers have started directly marketing to consumers. Local companies delivering boxed groceries have an opportunity to leverage their product quality and brand values to consumers directly. In doing so, they address many of today’s consumer’s grocery challenges.
Local companies can remain a mainstay of the future grocery ecosystem by operating business models and systems that allow them to be seamlessly incorporated into current methods of grocery analysis and forecasting. That means, at minimum, price tracking and price reporting. Their main advantage, in my opinion? Offering subscriptions that allow shoppers to automate their grocery purchases for foundational items like meats and seafoods. This service adds a welcome serving of certainty and a whole heap of value to the consumer grocery experience.
Where to Order Quality Product and Local Ingredients
To get started, choose businesses that deliver products you value. Next, develop habits, like a subscription, around ordering them. To help you, I’m offering a short list of companies who advertise delivery. Many options below offer opportunities to ‘subscribe’ so you can automate your grocery purchases.
Meat and Seafood
I’ve almost always lived on the prairie and have been picky about finding good fish and seafood. When I moved from a prairie city to literally the middle of the prairie, the struggle got real, especially because I don’t fish myself. Quality or wild caught options were scarce at the grocery store. When available, the prices were atrocious. Grocers offered to bring in specific orders for me but couldn’t guarantee availability or price. And specialty meats, forget it! I thought I was out of luck until I found out about Surf’nTurf Guys from my neighbour.
Surf’nTurfGuys.ca are located in Edmonton but they deliver all over Alberta at no additional cost; they deliver to me more than 40 km from the nearest city. These guys do seafood, WILD CAUGHT fish, beef, bison, duck, lamb and poultry too. Their product truly is premium and offered at incredible value. We’ve already recommended this company to our friends. With their referral service, you can earn money off your own order. I’m not asking, but if you want to tell them Robyn Graham sent you, it wouldn’t hurt!
I don’t order online, our delivery guy just calls when he’s in the area, maybe 4 times a year. So far, I’ve only tried the fish and seafood; we just pick what we want right out of the truck. It couldn’t be simpler and we’ve never looked back. Right now, I’m making a list of prepared options I want to try, like Italian meatballs and brie stuffed chicken. Let me know what you think!
Bessie Box is ‘by Albertans for Albertans,’ offering a variety of meat and fish, including beef, chicken, and WILD CAUGHT fish which I find difficult to source in the mainstream grocery markets. Select your own cuts or choose a curated box. Order on subscription to save 5% and automate your meat purchases. free shipping for orders of $75 and more. At first blush, prices look comparable to or better than what you might find at Costco; like 12, 10 oz New York Steaks for $180.50 ($15/steak), when available. Actually, my last trip to Costco found me looking at a striploin priced at around $250 (about $16/steak when cut at home). You can sign-up for the Nessie Box newsletter to get $20 off your first order.
I’m thrilled to have found that Bessie Box also offers canoe-cut marrow bones that I first tried in Switzerland 2 years ago and have been dying to get my hands on ever since. Their website says they may be able to deliver to locations other than what they’ve listed (i.e. Cochrane, Airdrie, Calgary, Okotoks) so fingers crossed they can get these to me or we can find a way to connect.
If you like saving money on beef, you can buy a half cow or full cow online with Alberta Beef Box. With this option, you are looking at buying all your beef for the year with one order. Talk about time savings! They also offer roast, steak and ground beef boxes delivered to the greater Calgary, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge Area. Blue Ridge farms also offers whole beef, halves and quarters that they will deliver to more major centres, for a modest fee.
One Mile Ranch offers 10% of your first box and allows you to set a subscription to every 30, 60 or 90 days, which they offer at a lower rate than one-time orders. I don’t think you’re going to save money on gourmet beef and pork boxes offered but they sure are pretty and make a good option for smaller families. Plus, they say they ship to ALL of Alberta, which is a bonus.
Look no further than AlbertaBBQbox.com if you live in the Stettler/Red Deer Area. They offer Nielson Signature small portions, quarter, half, and whole 100% local Alberta beef hand delivered for free to your door, potentially by the farmer who raised it!
Want bone broth? Organ meats? Turkey? Beef? Poultry? Pork? Sausage? Pasture raised and finished animals? Free range eggs? TK Ranch delivers to a pretty robust list of major communities for a fee. They also offer an eighth of beef, which I’ve not seen before but is a good option for a couple or a single.
The Craft Beef Co delivers anywhere FedEx ships and offers beef, specialty beef like grass-fed and Wagyu, plus poultry, sausage, and pork. Customers have said it has unique options you can’t get in the grocery store and some prices comparable to Costco.
The options for dairy, produce and grains looked limited to me. I’ll need to do more work on what, if any is available for delivery. Perhaps this presents and opportunity for businesses to fill a market need.
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[i] Stephens P., Madziak V., Gerhardt, A., Cantafio, J. (2025). Exploring price changes in local food systems compared to mainstream grocery retail in Canada during an era of ‘greedflation.’ Food Policy. Retrieved May 8, 2025, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919224001842
[ii] Fenton, Kayla. (2017). Unpacking the Sustainability of Meal Kit Delivery: A Comparative Analysis of Energy Use, Carbon Emissions, and Related Costs for Meal Kit Services and Grocery Stores. University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved July 13, 2024, from chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://repositories. lib.utexas.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/ece1c46b-3e9c-4178-8b13-32582f9e93bb/content
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.