The online grocery shopping website FreshDirect officially introduced Fresh Week at their Mott Haven headquarters on Monday.
Fresh Week kicked off July 22 with a free farmer’s market celebration for the local community. Throughout the week, FreshDirect will celebrate 22 years of changing the NYC food system with promotions and a special sweepstakes.
“This is just our way of giving back and trying to say thank you to the community,” said Larry Scott Blackmon, CEO of the Blackmon Organization, which represents FreshDirect. “This is critically important because one, access to fresh food is something that we hope to address at Fresh Direct, we’ve always done that since we’ve been in the Bronx. Number two, it’s part of our commitment to give back to the community.”
“At Fresh Direct we eat local, we support local, we live for local,” said Charlotte Myer, SVP and head of merchandising at FreshDirect. “We thank you for your unwavering support and we look forward to serving you, our community, for many years to come.”
FreshDirect prides itself on offering a variety of products, including farm-fresh produce and high-quality proteins to prepared meals and pantry staples. The company works closely with local growers, farmers, fishermen, distillers and food manufacturers to deliver the products to peoples’ homes, cutting the grocery store supply-chain time in half while delivering food that is up to 7 days fresher than what you find at the grocery store.
As a part of Fresh Week, FreshDirect is debuting its inaugural ’22 Years of Fresh’ Economic Impact Report, which highlights data on how customers were affected by local farmers, jobs and sustainability efforts that the company has put forth over the past two decades.
Additionally, as part of Fresh Week, the company will debut its inaugural ’22 Years of Fresh’ Economic Impact Report. FreshDirect has gathered data on how customer orders have affected local farmers, jobs, and sustainability efforts over the past two decades, and plans to report on this progress annually moving forward.
According to the report, FreshDirect has diverted 2,465,575 lbs of food waste since partnering with Divert, and in 2023 alone, FreshDirect turned 667 US tons of food waste into eco-fuel. FreshDirect has supported 682 local farms and 824 local small businesses, plus 3,675 family-owned farms nationally, and over the past 22 years has generated over $2 billion in sales for local brands, businesses, and farms.
The report also highlights the direct impact that FreshDirect has had on New York City. For example, 89% of FreshDirect employees live in the 5 boroughs, with the Bronx being the most dominant. FreshDirect has donated a total of 24 million pounds of food to City Harvest over the course of the company’s lifetime, making them the third-largest donor in New York.
“It means a lot because during COVID, FreshDirect helped to feed a lot of people in different communities, especially Mott Haven,” said Brincella Jamerson, a Mott Haven resident.
Click here to read the full report.
Additional reporting by Paul Frangipane.
