IT'S the original Southampton veg box service, delivering the finest fruit, vegetables, local produce and more to doorsteps in and around the city since 2015.
Bitterne Box Co offers zero emission deliveries of farm-fresh fruit and veg boxes at competitive prices to around 100 homes in Southampton and beyond each week.
Each one is completely customisable and there are over 1200 other products to choose from - everything from jams and chutneys, to food cupboard essentials, eco-friendly cleaning products, and a huge range of ales, all from local producers wherever possible.
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Robin Bluemel set up the firm after a chance conversation on his fruit and veg stall.
Robin, who has since also opened grocer-with-a-difference Bitterne Park Stores, told the Daily Echo: "Eight years ago, I was working with fruit and veg for somebody else, but I didn't like a lot about the food services industry. It was very money focused and there was a lot of food waste. I was passionate about wanting to change that.
"There were your national veg box delivery services, but they all required subscriptions and were very fixed with what they could offer. Our boxes are completely customisable and you don't have to subscribe.
"I used to run a fruit and veg stall at Bitterne Triangle, it was a Saturday morning community thing. What really stuck with me was a man who would bring a swede along each week to swop. He was getting a Riverford delivery each week, but had to have a swede he wouldn't use. It was a beautiful swede and it seemed ridiculous that somebody had grown it, picked it, packaged it and delivered it to someone who had no use for it.
"That's why you can personalise everything. Even with the set boxes, you have the opportunity to swop out as many things as you like, cabbages for potatoes or apples for bananas. We don't want to deliver things people don't want.
"The business has grown from there."
As well as using a family-run wholesaler, many of the products come direct from farms at Aldermoor, in the New Forest, at Titchfield, and on the Isle of Wight.
They are sent out from the warehouse on an industrial estate in Portswood and delivered using cargo bikes or electric vans.
Order at bitternebox.co.uk
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