LATEST COVID-19 UPDATES
APRIL 23, 2020
We are so happy to continue the bringing the Farmers Market to your front door each week! To reduce our time together as a team while we live with the COVID-19 pandemic, we will continue to offer only one delivery per week (Tuesdays). For our latest offerings, please visit our product ordering platform for current offerings and availability, updated daily. We have temporarily restructured and adapted many of our offerings to fit as well as possible with the current needs of our customers. Our goal during this time is to continue to support Nashville’s local food community by providing the weekly staples needed to help keep our customer’s grocery visits to a minimum. Thank you for your support with these efforts and your understanding of our limited MEEL Kit options!
APRIL 1, 2020
MEEL is ready to bring local food to your doorstep once again! For now, we will only be offering a Tuesday delivery. Hope everyone is hanging in there and thanks for being part of our community!
MARCH 24, 2020
RE: Moving Forward
This Week's Local Produce:
Thanks to our relationship with Nashville Grown, we had some amazing greens to share this week! Here’s what was is in our deliveries, from Green Door Gourmet, Rocky Glade, Henosis, and Rally House: Swiss chard, kale, mustard greens, dandelion greens, oyster mushrooms, lions mane mushrooms, sunflower sprouts, hydroponics tomatoes, carrots, hakurei turnips, and of course beautiful salad greens. With our next deliveries, we will be sure to include a list of what produce was included, along with the farms that provided the bounty.
Home on the Range:
In the midst of all of this chaos, we have temporarily moved our operations to a beautiful farm in Kingston Springs, West Glow Farm. The owners of this special piece of land nestled along Brush Creek have been friends and MEEL supporters since the very early days of our vision. We are so thankful for this opportunity to work in a space that keeps our team and process isolated during these anxiety-ridden days. And the fresh air of the Tennessee countryside is so good for our spirits. As we settle in and face each new day, I feel more and more confident about our process, establishing a safe new way to operate that keeps our team members physically separated while each doing our important pieces of the puzzle.
A Brief Pause:
As we are all taking a time-out from most pieces of our normal, pre-coronavirus life, thank you in advance for understanding our brief pause next week. To keep our team and customers safe while we establish new processes and safe handling practices, we have temporarily suspended our ordering platform and will NOT be delivering next week 3/30-4/3. We intend to re-activate ordering on April 1st, once we have better certainty of our local supply chain and have updated our Marketplace offerings accordingly. There is certainly plenty of local food available and we look forward to getting it to your doorstep. Thank you for understanding and for continuing to be part of our community. In the interim, please consider joining a CSA…. it’s the perfect time of year for this. And a direct connection to your favorite local farm is always the best way to have food security! Check Edible Nashville for a very comprehensive CSA list.
Cooking Resources
Recipe ideas for this week's lion's mane & oyster mushrooms.
I’m out of bread… what can I do? Make tortillas!
I have a little extra time to cook but not the mental energy. Any simple ideas for dinner? Sheet Pan Nachos.
I have a lot of dried beans. How do I cook them? Try the Rancho Gordo Manner or their Instant Pot Instructions.
I’m working from home, full of anxiety, and just want to eat. What else can I do? Try a session with The Oil Jar and their Foundational Aromatherapy Course.
Cook this now: Milk Street's Cardamom-Lime Chicken & White Beans
Thank you for continuing to be part of our community. We look forward to adapting and serving you well during this brave new world we are all facing. There's never been a better time to embrace our local food community. Wishing each of you good health and happiness during the days ahead!
MARCH 23, 2020
RE: COVID-19 UPDATE
To keep our team and customers safe while we put new processes and safe handling practices in place, we will NOT be delivering next week 3/30-4/3. We intend to re-activate our ordering process on April 1st, once we have better certainty of our local supply chain and have updated our Marketplace offerings accordingly. There is certainly plenty of local food available and we look forward to getting it to your doorstep once we have established a new way of operating. Thank you for understanding and for continuing to be part of our community. In the interim, please consider joining a CSA…. it’s the perfect time of year for this. And a direct connection to your favorite local farm is always the best way to have food security!
MARCH 20 2020
RE: COVID-19 UPDATE
Due to the day to day uncertainty with the current health crisis, the influx of orders we are experiencing, and the fluctuating local supply issues that we are encountering, we are needing to temporarily put our ordering process on hold until we have fulfilled our existing orders for next week. Please continue to check back for updates.
MARCH 16 2020
RE: COVID-19 Update
As we all continue to adapt to the current challenging circumstances, please be patient with our reduced offerings of meal kits. We are temporarily focusing our efforts on bringing weekly essentials (plants & protein) to your doorstep directly from the source of our community farms with minimal handling on our part. This will also give our farms a better outlet for their items as farmers markets temporarily suspend market days. We are working very hard to bring back a menu of simple meal kits in the days ahead that rely on basic pantry ingredients that you likely already have on hand. We are all in this together.... and we still have to eat!
MARCH 10 2020
RE: Actions We Are Taking (COVID-19)
Dear MEEL community,
We have been putting plans in placed the past few weeks, proactively reviewing our internal processes and how we can best keep our team and our customers safe in the midst of a potential COVID-19 outbreak in our city. With several now confirmed cases of community acquired Coronavirus in Nashville, it is time to put these steps in place. Since this situation is very dynamic, we will continue to adapt and change as necessary.
Sanitation & Cleanliness - To alleviate any concerns you may have, we want you to know that all cleaning solutions used in our kitchen space meet the requirements from the EPA for effectively killing COVID 19. As always, our team will continue to maintain appropriate hand washing and sanitizing protocols throughout the day. If anyone on our team is feeling sick or even the slightest bit under the weather, they will have zero contact with your orders. Nitrile gloves are worn when handling produce.
Sustainable Packaging - We are making a temporary change with our sustainable packaging initiatives. This will be our last week of using returnable packaging items (crates, insulated bags, and jars). The following week we will move to all disposable items for portioning ingredients and for our deliveries. This measure will eliminate any potential cross contamination issues between households. We will continue to use our wonderful BioBags for produce and all new packaging materials will qualify as sustainable disposables. As you receive pickup reminders from our team over the next week, we ask that you leave out any and all returnable items in your house so that they can be set aside for a 7-day quarantine and then sanitized and stored for future use when our sustainable packaging practices return.
Supply Issues - As much of the country, including our grocery stores, begin to encounter supply issues, we can be very grateful for the local food community that remains our ethos and fills our crates each week. While we may run into supply issues eventually with some of the pantry items used as supplemental ingredients in meal kits, the core of our offerings should not be affected. Our freezers continue to be stocked and re-stocked with local meats, the larder is stocked with local food products, and produce is delivered to us directly from the rural farms we work with each week. This is one of the many benefits of a “farm to front door” model. Your food is minimally handled which minimizes risks.
Deliveries - We will continue to leave your deliveries on the front porch with a text notification upon arrival. This process eliminates any potential contact between our delivery team and each household. We ask that you don’t request our drivers to bring items into your home.
Thank you for continuing to be part of our local food community. We will be monitoring the CDC, WHO, and local news for updates and will keep you posted with any additional changes to our process and services. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if we can answer any questions you may have.
Wishing you good health and happiness,
Marti Emch
Founder & Owner, MEEL