Shopping for organic food has gotten a lot easier since Irv Cernauskas and Shelly Herman started doing it 20 years ago. “Back then there wasn’t a lot of choice,” Herman says. But even with all the options that exist now, from CSA subscriptions to specialty sections in 24-hour supermarkets, the couple saw room for improvement. Local farmers, they thought, needed infrastructure to connect them to wider markets. So two years ago they hatched a plan—-a way to help farmers and make a living doing it.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
In June Cernauskas and Herman launched Fresh Picks (freshpicks.com), an online grocery store selling products sourced from more than 40 area farms. Similar businesses have serviced Chicago for some time, from the national chain Peapod (which carries Wild Oats stock) to the regional operation Timber Creek Farms, but Fresh Picks is the first to offer item-by-item ordering from an inventory that’s entirely organic and by and large locally produced. Fruits and vegetables make up the bulk of the stock, but you can also get meat, dairy, eggs, baked goods, and pantry items like pasta sauce and preserves. “Not everybody has time for a farmers’ market,” Herman says. “A CSA doesn’t work for some people either, because they don’t want to put money up for a whole season.”
Fresh Picks is itself a pretty small operation. For the first several months Herman personally packed every order at headquarters in Niles, and Cernauskas made all the deliveries in a Dodge diesel van. They’ve since hired a full-time driver and warehouse worker. Cernauskas now concentrates on brokering deals with farmers and Herman handles the books and customer service. They say business has grown steadily, and though they won’t reveal how many people currently buy from Fresh Picks (or how often), their service area covers 55 zip codes.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Jon Randolph.
