Healthy Local Food

Spud.ca

In 1997, SPUD.ca was founded based on the idea that there was sim­ply a bet­ter, more sus­tain­able way to buy gro­ceries. Not only was there an oppor­tu­nity to directly con­nect com­mu­ni­ties with local farm­ers and food pro­duc­ers, but order­ing food online and using a just-in-time home deliv­ery method means a bet­ter prod­uct for customers.

Organic pro­duce and arti­san gro­ceries can be ordered and deliv­ered in their peak fresh­ness – pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with a supe­rior tast­ing and highly nutri­ent rich product.

The orig­i­nal SPUD.ca model has devel­oped and been refined over the years and been brought to serve and sup­port 6 urban areas in North Amer­ica. These great com­mu­ni­ties include Greater Van­cou­ver, Vic­to­ria & South­ern Van­cou­ver Island, Cal­gary, Seat­tle & the East­ern Puget Sound area, the San Fran­cisco Bay Area and Los Ange­les & Orange County.

spud.ca is

• Fresh and local. Ripe and ready. Food from close-to-home at its fresh­est and tasti­est. Savour pro­duce from local fam­ily farms, arti­san meats and cheeses, sus­tain­able seafood, pre­pared meals, and whole­some breads baked delivery-day fresh.
• Quick and plea­sur­able. Con­ve­nient ingre­di­ents for leisurely meals. Pre­mium qual­ity in a light bite. Shop when­ever you want and we’ll deliver more qual­ity time and flavour to your every­day life.
• Pure and sim­ple. Our pro­duce is cer­ti­fied organic, free of chem­i­cals and pes­ti­cides. More than 50% of our gro­ceries are also cer­ti­fied organic. The rest are more than fine, too. No nasty sur­prises. We read the labels so you don’t have to.
• Green and eth­i­cal. Sup­port eco-friendly farm­ing prac­tices and Fair Trade coop­er­a­tives. Lower your food miles. Reduce your car­bon foot­print as each of our deliv­ery trucks replaces a super­mar­ket park­ing lot full of cars. Every deliv­ery day.
• Sen­si­ble and smart. Get to know the peo­ple who grow, har­vest or bake your daily bread. Dis­cover a new whole world of vari­ety and flavour. And how to make the most of it. Stay in touch with your food com­mu­nity and help sup­port food out­reach groups.

Our Approach
We base our approach on the United Nations’ def­i­n­i­tion of sus­tain­abil­ity: “sus­tain­able devel­op­ment is devel­op­ment that meets the needs of the present with­out com­pro­mis­ing the abil­ity of future gen­er­a­tions to meet their own needs.”

Our efforts seek to bal­ance resource con­sump­tion with the impact of that con­sump­tion on the envi­ron­ment, in an eco­nom­i­cally viable man­ner and one that improves the qual­ity of life. At Spud, achiev­ing this bal­ance means inte­grat­ing the three pil­lars of sus­tain­abil­ity – envi­ron­men­tal, social and economic.

Envi­ron­men­tal Sus­tain­abil­ity
Upcy­cling with Ter­ra­Cy­cle: Spud has devel­oped a pro­gram to col­lect and reuse a wide vari­ety of dif­fi­cult to recy­cle items through TerraCycle’s Brigades col­lec­tion pro­grams. For every item recov­ered, Ter­ra­Cy­cle donates 2 cents to char­ity. Spud will match that amount for a total of 4 cents per item. Once col­lected, items are upcy­cled into a vari­ety of con­sumer prod­ucts such as toys and office supplies.

This pro­gram gives our cus­tomers a cost free way to help the envi­ron­ment and raise money for local com­mu­ni­ties at the same time. Find out what items you can recy­cle by going to the “My Lists” sec­tion of our web­site. To learn more about Ter­ra­Cy­cle, visit www.terracycle.net.

Green­ing Our Oper­a­tions
Spud has adopted 6 key ini­tia­tives to reduce the impact of our ware­house oper­a­tions:
•    We pack­age our items in reusable bins to elim­i­nate unnec­es­sary pack­ag­ing
•    We recy­cle all card­board and office paper
•    We work to reduce food waste and com­post what food waste we have
•    Local prod­ucts are our pri­or­ity, flagged on the web­site and food miles are listed for every prod­uct we sell
•    Car­bon Neu­tral Pro­gram: Our cus­tomers pay a mod­est 22 cent car­bon charge on their orders, which is used to buy car­bon off­sets help cover the costs to reduce green­house gas emissions.For 2008 and 2009, Spud com­pleted car­bon foot­print inven­to­ries, pay­ing for car­bon cred­its to off­set our impact. Our 2010 inven­tory is cur­rently being com­pleted. For 2011, we are work­ing to focus on the basics of Reduce, Reuse and Recy­cle.
•    Energy Use: In Cal­gary, we pur­chase green power cer­tifi­cates from Bull­frog Power to off­set the impact of our elec­tric­ity use.

Plas­tic Bag Recy­cling
For no extra charge, we pick up your unwanted plas­tic bags (plas­tics 2, 4 and 5 — stamped along the bot­tom of the bag) along with your empty Spud bin. Cur­rently, this pro­gram is only avail­able to our Van­cou­ver cus­tomers.
Social Sus­tain­abil­ity
As part of our qual­ity con­trol process, items which are unfit for deliv­ery are set aside. Rather than throw them away, we donate items to local char­i­ties on a reg­u­lar basis.

Through our upcy­cling pro­gram we donate 2 cents per col­lected item to a local char­ity, match­ing TerraCycle’s dona­tion for a total of 4 cents per item col­lected. Char­i­ties are selected by employ­ees on a quar­terly basis.

Spud is also a spon­sor of many local ini­tia­tives. In Van­cou­ver, Spud is a Sil­ver level spon­sor of the Sun Run, and in Cal­gary, we spon­sor the Cal­gary Marathon.

Eco­nomic Sus­tain­abil­ity
Wher­ever pos­si­ble we source our pro­duce and gro­ceries from local ven­dors, con­tribut­ing to our local econ­omy and ensur­ing that we truly are Your Local Food Movement.