Farm-Fresh Food Delivery in the Mid-Atlantic: Introducing 4P Foods
March 12, 2014 by 4P Foods
4P Foods is the newest farm-fresh food delivery company serving the Washington DC Metro Area. We do things a little differently.
First of all, we deliver to your building, so you don’t have to worry about going to the store or detouring to some central pick-up location. You’re busy enough as is.
Second, we source from right in our own backyard, within the Washington DC foodshed. What does that mean? It means that we get the fruits and vegetables to you at their absolute freshest. Arbitrary mile-radius stuff can be really misleading. Some folks use ‘local’ to mean ‘independent’ so the ‘local’ farm they are talking about might be in California. For us, we source the highest quality at the closest location, so most of our food comes from Virginia and Maryland.
Third, our name stands for the 4 P’s we think should be part of every business: Purpose, People, Planet and Prosperity. Purpose means that this business is trying to do something important – specifically, we are trying to ensure that all people can eat local, ethical, farm-fresh food. People means that we genuinely care for everyone who interacts with our business, from the well-being of our customers and farmers to the hours we expect our staff to work. Planet means that we are deliberately gentle with our natural resources, proactively focusing on fixing existing problems rather than just avoiding new ones. Finally, Prosperity means that we are running a viable business that can sustain itself over the long term and that we can pay fair prices to our farmers and pay good wages to our staff. Ultimately, the 4 P's mean that we are local food with a Purpose. Everything we do as a company must first go through the filter of our "Why".
Finally, who are ‘We’? 4P Foods was founded by Tom McDougall, a long-time DC-area resident. Tom had a ‘food awakening’ several years ago (you know the one where you look around and see how broken our food system is) and he has been working in agriculture ever since. We are more than Tom though. We are Tom’s friends and neighbors. We are the small Virginia farmers and artisan food-makers who are lined up to supply 4P’s subscribers. We are the people in DC who will get to eat better food as 4P succeeds. We are the subscribers who signed up the first time we heard about this idea. We are all 4P Foods, and we are really glad to meet you. Join us, won’t you?