Your Philadelphia Fruit Delivery Starts Here! Stories From the Road

I started my career with The FruitGuys in our Philadelphia facility in 2007. It was home to a box truck that The FruitGuys had driven across the country from San Francisco. When Rebecca North (who opened the Philadelphia facility and is now our lead buyer for Northern California) returned to the West Coast, I had to drive the truck to deliver fruit to clients and pick up produce from farms. I can still remember how nervous I was to drive that behemoth. Until then, the largest vehicle I had driven was a Volvo station wagon.

The truck was about 13 feet long, with crank windows and no air conditioning. The style is called a “box truck” because the box, or cargo container, is separate from the cab and has a lift-up rolling gate. I spent a lot of time in that truck during the summer and fall as I drove out to family-owned farms near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Hammonton, New Jersey, picking up blueberries, peaches, nectarines, apples, and pears for The FruitGuys’ Philadelphia fruit deliveries.

I grew up outside of Philadelphia and I still love that area. There is so much history and great food in the city proper, and there are so many wonderful farms within 200 miles of it.

The Farms Behind the Fruit Deliveries

The first Philadelphia area farm I ever bought from was Three Springs Fruit Farm in Aspers, Pennsylvania. Three Springs is a seventh-generation family farm founded in 1901 that grows a variety of fruit and vegetables. Grower Ben Wenk, one of three brothers who run the farm, was so kind to me when I drove out to meet him. He took the time to explain Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to me and showed me how his family cared for their land and produce.

Like many of our farmers, the Wenks do whatever they can to limit how often and what they spray on their crops. We bought our first farm-direct apples in Pennsylvania from Ben, and they arrived in wooden crates, old-school. Over time, the Philadelphia facility added other farms as our needs grew, including longtime supplier Frecon Farms of Boyertown, Pennsylvania, and Beechwood Orchards of Biglerville, Pennsylvania.

The number of farms in the US peaked in 1935. There were 6.8 million of them then, but that number declined to 2 million farms in 2022, according to the USDA. Of those, nearly 90% are small family farms.

Farming is hard. All kinds of things stand in the farmer’s way, from weather, to pests, to labor, to regulations, to access to land and seeds. Every farmer is committed to a labor of love to bring us their produce for our fruit deliveries in Philadelphia and beyond.

How We Support Small Farms Beyond The Fruit Box

At The FruitGuys, we believe that family farms are essential to our food ecosystem, our local communities, and our country. That’s why we support small farms not just with our purchases but through The FruitGuys Community Fund, the nonprofit we founded in 2012 to provide farmers with small grants to fund sustainability projects that can make a big impact. You can read about the 18 small farms and agricultural nonprofits that received funding in 2023 for their projects.

We retired The FruitGuys’ box trucks years ago and replaced them with more efficient and comfortable cargo vans. But I will forever fondly remember the sound the roll-up door made as I pulled it closed after loading up produce from a farm. Each time, I drove back to Philadelphia feeling deeply grateful for our farm partners and everything they do.

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