Frequently Asked Questions

City Fresh buys only enough food to fill our orders, and doesn't have a place to store food.

If you do not pick up your share, the food will be donated and you will forfeit your share payment. If you have ordered a full-season share, you will forfeit only the week that you have missed.

We unfortunately cannot offer refunds or transfer payment to another date because we have already paid the farmers for your share.

Please try to find someone else to pick up your share -- a great reason to make friends at your stop!  If you can't find anyone to pick up your share for you, please let your stop volunteers know as soon as possible.

Each Fresh Stop decides where to donate their extra food.  If you know an organization who would benefit from City Fresh donations, please talk to a volunteer at your Fresh Stop.

Thanks!

Most stops could use your help with unloading the truck, setting out food, taking orders, accounting, planning events, etc...

If you already pick up your share at a Fresh Stop, talk to the volunteers running the stop to see where you can lend a hand.

If you'd like to offer other types of assistance, please let us know.

We at City Fresh care deeply about healthy food and understand its connection with ecological and economic sustainablity.

While we do not insist that the food we source has been grown according to a particular standard, we do work closely with all of our farmers to learn about their practices and motivations, and to ensure they understand ours.

Our approach of focusing on relationships instead of regulations has opened many doors, and we are proud to be able to provide more than 90% chemical free or organically certified produce in our shares - food grown on soil that is biodiverse and richly maintained by farmers committed to environmental stewardship.

As always, even with organic, wash your food!

Sourcing only the freshest food that's local and in-season means we (and the farmer) typically won't know exactly what's going to be in the share until we get to the farm to pick it up.

This ensures that our shareholders receive the best quality and most fresh produce available.

An example family share from July 28, 2010 included:

4 Peaches
10 Apples
1 Bag of Sprouts
1 Large Eggplant
1 Pint of Cherry Tomatoes
2 Yellow Onions
3 Banana Hot Peppers
1 Mild Flamingo Pepper
1 Green Bell Pepper
1 Bunch of Beets
7 Ears of Sweet Corn
1 Bag of Green Beans
2 Heads of Garlic
1 Cantaloupe
1 Head of Red Leaf Lettuce
1 Pint of Mixed Tomato Varieties
1 Large Heirloom Tomato

This share was price-compared at a leading chain grocery store at $42.

Single Shares are not necessarily half the size of family shares. Our ordering system is complex, as we try to balance cost, variety, nutrition, quantities available, and meal planning ability. A Family Share typically includes 14-16 different items, while a Single Share includes 8-12.

City Fresh also tries to provide one or two unique items in each week's share - an item that you may or may not be familiar with. This is one of the fun perks of City Fresh - you will certainly learn to experiment and have fun in the kitchen as you play with Kohlrabi, Ground Cherries, Garlic Scapes, All Kinds of Cooking Greens, and more. Luckily, your Fresh Stop Managers have been doing this for years, and they are your best resource for quick and easy recipes and kitchen-experiments-gone-right.

City Fresh sources all of its food locally.  We buy from farms within 75 miles of the Fresh Stop.

Food is picked up directly from the farmer on the day of your Fresh Stop, and the food was often picked from the fields and hoop houses that very morning.

In Cuyahoga County, we have taken our environmental stewardship a step further with our use of a truck that runs on Straight Vegetable Oil.

In 2010, City Fresh sourced from 30 small family farms, including 4 urban farms.

For the 2011 season, City Fresh will run 20 weeks beginning Wednesday June 1st and running through Tuesday, October 18th. 

City Fresh shares are purchased a minimum of one week in advance of pickup, and come in two sizes: Single and Family.

There are no membership fees or minimum commitments.

City Fresh has completed its strategic planning phase for the 2011 season. In a response to our funders' request for the City Fresh program to become further independent from the need for annual grant support, prices for the coming year are have increased slightly.

Family Share: $28.00
     Limited Income Family Share: $16.00
Single Share: $15.00
     Limited Income Single Share: $9.00

City Fresh is the only CSA program in North East Ohio with a Limited Income share option. We utilize the WIC Income Guidelines to determine eligibility. We are also the only program that accepts the Ohio Direction Card.

In addition to cash, checks and money orders, City Fresh proudly accepts:

• Ohio Direction Electronic Benefit Transfer cards.

Please write checks or money orders to: The NAC

This program is funded in part with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. City Fresh is an equal-opportunity provider.

In order to offer the freshest local food at an affordable cost, we purchase only enough food to fill our orders.

Orders are placed (and paid for) at least one week prior to picking up.  You can order for as many weeks in advance as you like.