Between work, kids and volunteering, there’s little time to squeeze in grocery shopping and cooking, never mind catching up on one's favorite Food Network shows for inspiration.
And that is driving a boom in meal delivery services. You wouldn’t think there was a niche left. But Beth Richards (pictured at left with Kyle Lacasse of Moulton Farm) thinks she’s found one.
A busy executive who spent much of her career on the road while raising a family with her husband, Richards was an early adopter of Blue Apron, which delivers recipe cards and ingredients to make meals. But she didn’t like how far the food was shipped or the packaging it came in. “I kept thinking we should do something better,” she says.
The result is Local Baskit, based in Meredith, which offers cook-at-home meal kits in NH only. Food is sourced from New England and clients order online from three “Baskits,” each featuring new meals each week with locally grown, sustainable and seasonal ingredients. The choices are: a “Simple Baskit” with local produce, and protein supplied by the customer for $5 a meal; “Fresh Baskit” with five or six menu selections for $9 a meal; and the “Artisan Baskit” with up to nine menu choices for $12 a meal.
Customers can choose serving portions of two or four dinners per meal, with prices ranging from $18 to $158 depending on the package and number of servings. Meals can be shipped to clients (for an additional shipping fee) in compostable packaging, or they can choose to pick up their baskits at designated drop off points (mainly local farmers markets).
Richards, founder and managing director of Local Baskit, says she enjoys the creativity of coming up with new recipes that take advantage of what is in season locally. “We’ve tested the recipes with my kids and neighbors,” she says.
Recipe cards include information about the local farms from which ingredients were procured. Moulton Farm and Vegetable Ranch in Warner are the two farms she chiefly receives produce from, but she also buys from a number of others. “As much as I can, it is locally sourced,” Richards says. Anything she can’t get from NH, she sources from a New England vendor.
Local Baskit ships to her 30 to 40 customers about 100 meals per week, and she has pick-up locations in Amherst, Concord, Meredith and Portsmouth. “Am I going to make a million dollars? Nope,” Richards says, adding she expects to be profitable within six months. And she eventually wants to open a storefront.
For more information, visit localbaskit.com.
Current Issue - April 2024