Questions about veg deliveries
Your Questions Answered
The Vale Grocer
Some questions people have asked us about our vegetable boxes
Of course, if you have any other questions whatsoever we’d love to hear from you so please contact us here and we’ll do our best to help. Thank you.
Our main delivery area is Denbigh, Ruthin and some surrounding villages. We have a number of different rounds and when we sign up a new customer we need to make sure they are close to one of our existing rounds. We would love to deliver to everyone who wants a box, but it’s just not sustainable for us to do this. If you’re not sure if we can deliver to you send us an email with your address and we’ll let you know.
When we work out which round you are on we’ll tell you which day we’ll deliver. We have a little van which purposefully limits how far we can deliver and the size of each round. Delivery is included in the price of your box. Chris does the deliveries and will leave your full box and pick up the empty one each week. If you forget to leave out your empty box, don’t worry too much just leave it out the following week.
Nothing! It’s included in the cost of the box.
We invoice monthly. Most of our customers pay by standing order or BACS transfer. We can take cash too. When you sign up we’ll send you your first invoice and then every 4 weeks from then onwards.
A regular box is £17.50/week (£70/month) and a small box is £14/week (£56/month).
We regularly check prices against supermarkets are are always broadly in line, although supermarkets don’t have the range of veg that we supply, grown organically/without chemicals.
We put a lot of effort into planning each box and making sure we’re giving the best variety of veg possible.
Just send us an email giving us at least 10 days notice. The only thing we’d ask you to consider is that the nature of the business means that in December/January we plan what to plant in Feb/March for harvesting later in the year. This means we do need some consistency so we don’t plant too much in Spring and then end up with excess veg. So although there is no commitment to stick with us once you have signed up, we do ask that if you enjoy getting the box you keep getting it throughout the year rather than dropping in and out. We also have a long waiting list, so if you do drop off in Summer because you grow your own veg, you may find you are unable to sign back up straight-away when you want to return.
Yes, one month. When you sign up for a box, we ask that you give it at least a month to really get a feel for how to use the box. You may not get through everything in one week, particularly in winter when there’s lots of root veg, but our produce keeps a long time because it is so fresh and once you get the hang of using the box you will find it becomes easier.
A regular box contains 9-11 items. A small box containts 7-9 items.
We would always recommend starting with the regular box. It’s better value and it also reduces your need to top up with vegetables from elsewhere.
However, if you just want your box to supplement what you buy from elsewhere and/or grow yourself, then the small box may work better for you.
No, sorry. We don’t tailor boxes to customers – if you get something you don’t like, try cooking it differently or give it to a friend or neighbour! If you do ask for something to be left out of your box (other than potatoes), then we will charge an additional £2 per box for the additional work we have to do to manage those subs.
Yes, we aim to put one item of fruit in each box. This could be 8 apples, 4 oranges, or a punnet of berries – it depends on price, weight, what’s in season. You can top up on fruit in our shop.
Possibly. We do have a few customers who choose to have alternate week boxes – whilst we try to accommodate these, it’s not our preference as we spend a lot of time planning the box each week, and trying to avoid putting the same thing in 2 weeks in a row. This means if you get an alternate box you don’t end up with the experience that we would want you to have. It also means our rounds become inconsistent and harder to manage.
Grown using organic methods. Local / low food miles. UK. Minimal packaging (or at least reuse where possible). Low wastage – our veg is picked for us by the farms we order from.
We regularly price-check against the main supermarkets and, whilst we often include organic vegetables that aren’t available in the supermarkets, we broadly come out at a similar price and sometimes cheaper.
