SPUD

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for local organic produce delivery.

My very first delivery from SPUD was excellent (I will update my review if this changes). The quality of the apples and celery received was excellent. I am so happy that they sell Flying Apron products. Thus far, customer service has been great.

I received my first order today. The vegetables and fruit seem to be good, but I was a little upset that my deli meat came frozen and 1 month past the «sell by» date. They stated that they froze it before that date, so it’s fine. It probably will be, but I won’t be ordering deli meats from them again.

I’m not sure about the previous reviews, but from what it seems the company has either changed or improved quantum leaps. I’ve yet encountered a problem with SPUD. As a full-​time student and employee, they’ve literally made life so much easier. My most favorite thing about the company is their website. It’s so easy to navigate, it’s almost like online shopping but for groceries! This is the difference between them and other companies. You get the real experience of browsing through their selection and they have almost everything so that you will likely never have to set foot into a grocery store again! I love that I don’t have to make a trip to the store every week in order to get fresh groceries.
Their pieces aren’t too bad compared to your local Whole Foods market. I believe I save more money and time purchasing only what I’m only to eat for the week so nothing goes to waste. They sometimes throw in a free product every now and then. I’m not sure if this is intentional or a mistake, but it shows up on my invoice as discounted. They also throw in a new recipe every week!
Thanks SPUD! You guys are awesome! SOOOO awesome that I’ve convinced my roommate to order from them too and she LOVES it! (Yes, we get two different grocery cases delivered to the same house every week).
I just looked at the photos on here and saw a picture of their old website. They’ve definitely improved from just these past couple of years.

I’ve tried many, many times over the years to give Spud a chance. And every time, things will go ok for the first few deliveries, then the fruit hits the fan. I’ve had more mistakes on orders than I can even remember, which is why I’ve suspended delivery many times previously.
After I started a new job with crazy hours that effect my ability to grocery shop on a regular basis, I decided to give Spud another chance. Again, things were ok for the first couple of deliveries, then mistakes started popping up. The first was 3 weeks ago when I ordered 2 packs of cremini mushrooms and was sent 1 pack of creminis and 1 pack of white button mushrooms instead (might not seem like a big deal to most, but I chose the creminis because I like them better.) When I sent an email about it, I was told «That’s what we had.» Why not just give me what you had on hand, not give me the white button mushrooms, and not charge me for adding an item I didn’t request? I was a bit annoyed, but I let it go, because the quality of their fruit is excellent.
Then I ordered 10lbs of apples, and in my preferences stated I didn’t want one or two specific varieties (again, personal preference.) I was sent all 10lbs of the one variety of apple I dislike most. If I’d known that I’d receive 10lbs of apples I didn’t want to eat, I never would have ordered it.
The last straw came tonight, when I got home from work after a very long, very rainy day to find an open, uncovered cardboard box sitting on my front porch, with all of my produce for the week exposed to the elements. Normally my orders were delivered in covered (albeit not sealed) plastic crates. Someone at the warehouse apparently decided this open-​top cardboard box would be a good idea in a downpour. The box was so waterlogged that it fell apart when I picked it up after it was unloaded, spilling water all over my floor. Even an earthworm had made its way into the box – with my uncovered, unbagged fruit. I took photos and attached them to a polite yet firm email stating why exactly I was fed up and done with Spud. I am so beyond done.
All in all, you disappoint me, Spud. I wanted so very much to like you, but your habitual lack of quality control is maddening.
If you cancel your orders with them, be sure to state you want to be removed from their database, otherwise they will keep your info in their system indefinitely.

As an original member of Pioneer Organics, I was a little worried when they were purchased/​merged with SPUD.
There were the typical growing pains but I have to say they over the years they have gained my vote of total satisfaction :)
I love their selection. I love that there is a website you can go to to order EVERYTHING you need. I live in a neighborhood that is difficult to navigate in without a car. The closest grocery store is a mile and a half walk and appeals to the demographic. As a vegan, I can’t find many of the items I use on a weekly basis and if I DO, they are about twice as much as they would be on SPUD (Veganaise for example is $ 4.99 on SPUD but at my local store it goes for $ 6.99 for the same size).
Since going vegan I have become militant about reading labels. I am able to read the labels of everything I buy in the comfort of my own home. I’m able to budget (there is a shopping list on the side of the screen that totals as you go so no suprises at the checkout) and I rarely am subject to the «impulse items» like I would be if I were in the grocery store.
For me it’s SO easy and without a car makes my shopping effortless. I am able to plan menues, and buy the ingredients with no wandering around aisles trying to find that ONE ingredient I can invariably never find.
The biggest advantage to SPUD is their customer service. I have had the good fortune to deal with Reese and she is AMAZING. I have been a little «needy» with my orders the last few months and she has been SO kind and understanding and TOTALLY helpful. She always goes out of her way to make sure I“m completely happy with my order. If I ever receive something that is damaged (it’s only happened twice in the several years I’ve been using them) I can always get credited. Customer satisfaction is their number one concern and I love that.
I encourage anyone who hasn’t tried SPUD to give them a chance. I love that you can see your carbon footprint in the orders and how much energy/​gas/​money you have saved by using their service.
SOME of the items are slightly more expensive than at a PCC or Whole Foods but SOME of the items are far less expensive too. The money I save in gas, grief and time FAR outweighs anything else in my book :)
Yay for SPUD!!!

Spud is an amazing company. They are very sustainable, very accessible and very affordable when it comes to CSAs. The minimum for free shipping is totally acceptable and reasonable and the online ordering system/​Harvest Box is excellent.
My issue is with my personal experience with their financial department. One week, my card didn’t go through. They delivered my box, anyway, which I appreciated, and I tried to contact me by telephone a few times. When I was able to call them back to give my card number again, it seemed to process correctly and all was well. They then called me a couple days later, leaving a message saying the card actually didn’t go through. I verified the error with my bank and called again to give them a different card that was sure to go through. This time, I wasn’t able to reach them, and left a message on their machine, as instructed by… their machine. I left all of my contact info and name, stated my case, and waited. The next time I heard from them wasn’t… from them at all. It was via a piece of mail from a collections agency, demanding that I pay the $ 34 that I owed them. I no longer had access to the website, and no one ever called me back about my payment, so I lost my Spud membership and my weekly access to local, organic, and affordable produce.
I loved Spud. I spoke very highly of them and referred several friends to their service. I am very bummed that I got kicked out of their program because of a missed phone call.

This place has been all over the chart for me. My husband loves veggies, but I’m not good at remembering to buy them.
We started ordering from Spud back in 2009 as an eco-​alternative to Safeway delivery. We live outside of the Amazon Fresh delivery and Spud seemed to have the best produce.
Like many other Unilocalers, we had a great beginning. Produce always looked good and unlike other services, the lettuce lasted for a full week, if not two. We were proud to say our vegetables were local and really enjoyed the point system. We had delivery for over a year and only had a handful of issues with bugs or bad food. FYI– We only ordered fruits and veggies.
We too had bad customer service and a six month game of phone tag to pay a bill they could have charged to my credit card. Also, the voicmail/​call catcher makes it seem like no works there, I kept hanging up assuming it was voicemail. Last issue, I ignored the first couple of phone calls because the number is still listed as «Pioneer Organics».
Unfortunately, because of our spending cutbacks we’ve canceled our service. If our budget allows, I’d definitely go back to delivery, we ate like kings and felt great. However, I’m not sure I’d run to Spud without doing some serious comparison shopping first.
Great: Website, preference options for Harvest Basket
Bad: Customer service, food packing, bin pick up when finished.

I’m genuinely surprised to see so many negative reviews. I have absolutely loved my experience with Spud! I’ve tried several different CSA and grocery delivery programs in Seattle, and have not been as impressed with any of them as I have been with Spud.
I find the website clean, easy to navigate, and fun to browse. I will echo the sentiments of Inna in that the selection is not quite as big as I would have liked… but on the other hand, SPUD is genuinely committed to providing LOCAL foods, not like the giant box of produce from Mexico I got when I was subscribed to Full Circle Farm (in fairness to them, that was during late winter, but still… don’t market yourself as a CSA of local foods when less than 5% of your share is from Washington state.)
I came by Spud via the highest of recommendations from a couple friends who have been using them for a long time now (and are not Unilocal users, so I’ll pass along their Spud love here, too!) They steered me toward the Dutch chocolate milk and pumpkin cookie dough from Cougar Mountain… yum on both! The prices are definitely high, but such is often the tradeoff when you choose local and organic.
Customer service was excellent, in my personal experience. When I needed to return bins, I was worried they might expect me to go drop them off somewhere, but I just sent them an email and was promptly given a suggestion date for when to leave them on my doorstep for them. No hassle whatsoever.
Definitely would recommend to anyone who wants to give organic home grocery delivery a try!

The website was easy enough to navigate, but I was pretty disappointed with the selection. It’s so SMALL!
I was especially disappointed to find plenty of hummus but NO pita bread available. Ended up ordering Naan instead.
I’m glad they’re great about being local, organic, and vegan/​vegetarian friendly… but I’m just not impressed with the number of options. And things seemed a little extra expensive.
Placing the order: I paid a refundable $ 7 deposit on freezer/​cooler bags. I wonder if this’ll go back on my card or into my spud account? I don’t plan to order from them ever again. I was going to have to call customer service to request they pick up my bin and bags, but then life took over and I didn’t think about it until they sent me an email. My options were: Have it picked up, drop it off, or pay about $ 10 to keep the bin/​bags. I chose the pick-​up and was happy to have that bin vanish yesterday.
The delivery: I was a little frustrated that I’d have to wait until the day they come to my neighborhood (Tuesdays for Wallingford?) to get my groceries, but… I guess that’s fine.
The customer service experience: They seem to be really working on making that good. The day (or the day after?) I got my one and only delivery, I got a call from a spud! employee to check in about my experience. Kind of cool, kind of… weird. I was busy when they called, however, so I heard the voicemail and wasn’t inspired to call back.
They also send weekly reminders letting people know there’s still time to order before that week’s delivery. Useful for people that plan to order, a little annoying for those that don’t… I think I’ll be unsubscribing asap.
Yeah… I like having my groceries delivered… and I like things that are local and organic… but, we have other options here in Seattle and I don’t think this is one really fit my needs well enough for me to continue.

I finally got my order. .. FINALLY! Whew. .. it was quite the brain workout to get my order into the website. I went through the first time and picked out what I wanted and then when I went in to enter my gift certificate, ALL OF MY GROCERIES disappeared! Okay, whatever, so I re-​entered everything again and got it to go through, but I was going on vacay so I suspended my order to restart on a different day. Welpz, that day came and went and no order! I went online again and rescheduled it for the following week and it FINALLY came!
If this was my sole means of obtaining groceries, I’d be starving! The website is definitely confusing and hard to use. .. I’d much prefer Amazon Fresh or Full Circle Farms. The groceries look good but they’re not amazingly gorgeous or anything. .. pretty standard fare.

I’ve used spud for many years now, living in LA and in Seattle. I am always impressed with their level of service and amazing food (and household items). There is always a wide assortment of fresh produce, and amazing baked goods.
The website:
If you need a coupon code/​promo code you can use this code in the Promo Code section to get $ 25 off your first 4 orders: CRVAN-​PELDEA (Another coupon code is: CR5−100 006 103 — so take your pick)
The coupon code gives you $ 5 off your first three orders, and then $ 10 off your fourth order. Spud doesn’t typically charge for delivery, which is great.
I am always looking for new wheat free items and vegan foods, and Spud! always has something fun and yummy for me to try out. I really like how there are foods from all of my favorite health stores, without having to drive anywhere to get it. It just shows up on my doorstep every Wednesday morning. Hooray!
Cheers everyone, and happy grocery shopping.

The first time I received my order, it was magical. All the produce was delicious and looked perfect. I tried collard greens for the first time and I loved how fresh they looked coming out of the box. Same for the Swiss chard and potatoes.
But that was the honeymoon period.
The second delivery was left by the front door of the apartment despite my delivery instructions. I rarely pass by the front entrance so I thought it was never delivered. The next afternoon I checked my mail and saw the box outside where it had been sitting in the heat for 36 hours. Good thing I didn’t get milk.
After a while, though, the stuff wasn’t looking so good. In five deliveries, we received brussel sprouts that were infested with bugs, partially rotted green beans, a wormy apple, and punctured squash. It was disappointing. Fortunately, they have a money back guarantee so I was refunded for bad produce, but it was a big letdown.
The other criticism I have is that their delivery box isn’t secured inside so your fruits and vegetables are rolling around and getting bruised/​punctured from the box’s interior anatomy.
They were typically great about giving refunds quickly, but the last refund didn’t materialize at all in my shopping cart despite multiple emails saying that it wasn’t showing up. I mean, you should see all your discounts prior to finalizing payment, right?
So that was the last straw. I didn’t want to deal with them anymore. The cost of it was justified when the produce was good, but the lower standard of quality on my subsequent orders forced me to suspend my account indefinitely.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I eventually asked them to refund the credit to my card instead of applying it to an order. They arranged to pickup any remaining bins and containers and included any material deposits with the credit. That went pretty smoothly.

I started using Spud! about a month and a half ago. I didn’t do any comparison shopping, I just happened to stumble across their page one morning when I was frustrated about my grocery duties. I don’t own a car and I don’t want one, but I want to eat healthy and so this led me to Spud!
My first order was delivered a day late, but magically appeared on my stoop probably from the good luck of my neighbors. What I appreciated though was that eventually after a call to their offices the delivery driver himself called me back to discuss the situation. Although he was also mystified as to what happened to the box we determined he delivered next door. He seemed to genuinely care and I even ran into him the next round of deliveries. I like that its not just a faceless online service. All of my other orders have gone smooth as silk.
I do wish they had more local farmers involved, but I guess that’s why you can opt to go with a CSA (community supported agriculture).
I like that Spud! is more like a grocery store and I can customize my orders. Perhaps down the road they’ll get more locally involved. I do appreciate that all products are organic.
And all my deliveries have been top-​notch – even the late one! All the food looked fresh and tasted great.
For my orders I’ve mainly focused on produce in my deliveries because those tend to be the basis of my diet (and produce is heavy), but they also have meats, eggs, milk, snacks, bread, soy products, non-​dairy – like I said – just like a regular all-​natural grocery store.
Sometimes I’ll throw in an Amy’s Organics prepared meal for my freezer because sometimes I need the extra convenience and well, Amy’s are tasty. I’m glad I can still get a lot of the brands I normally would at say PCC. Only now its delivered to my doorstep.
They also have a connection to Eat Local and though I haven’t tried those prepared meals yet I have visions of hosting a beautiful dinner party with some of their goodies!
Above all I’ve accomplished my goal of eating healthier in a way that fits into my lifestyle.

I’m a little surprised to see so many negative reviews for Spud here… I’ve been using Spud for vegetable and fruit delivery for several months now and have not had any problems. No billing issues. No weird substitutions. Everything comes as promised.
I used to be a Pioneer Organics customer years ago. And I absolutely loved them! Their produce was always fresh and I loved the fact that they made me try new foods by providing some very nifty recipes along with the vegetables.
Spud isn’t perfect. There are no recipes. Their website can be confusing. Also, the freshness of produce varies (although it’s never unacceptable). Still, I would not hesitate recommending Spud to a friend. It beats going to the supermarket.

I wrote this review under the spelled out name of the SPUD acronym, but I think I need to add it here as well. I originally wrote this review May 2008.
I have used this service for 9 weeks, and there will not be a 10^th. The kicker was the latest delivery which SPUD did not pack a very expensive meat purchase, which of course I was charged for, as well as not receiving a refund on the glass container and freezer bag deposits from the previous week. The freezer bags are $ 3.50 a piece, and containers $ 1.75. At 7 bags and 20 glass containers, as well as over $ 30 in meat, I am owed a bit of money.
I called immediately (as usual… this isn’t the first time with SPUD) following delivery, got voice mail. I have sent an email and filled out the 100% satisfaction guarentee form to receive my refund on the non-​exisitant meat… I am still waiting to get an acknowledgement after four days.
Don’t buy into thinking you are «being green» with this company, because if you aren’t a guard dog over your invoices, they will be padding their pocket with forgotten deposit refunds. I even tried making it easier for the person in charge of counting the deposit returns by inserting a large sheet of paper with Sharpie Marker numbers for bags and bottles being returned in the bins… that worked for just two weeks.
Good business concept with questionable customer service.
ETA 5÷27÷2008
I’m still waiting for my refund of $ 131.48 which was finally acknowledged. My contact attempts (3 this time) to find out when the refund will reach my bank account have only been met with:
«At the moment, we may be experiencing a higher-​than-​normal volume of email and phone calls. We’ll get to your inquiry as soon as we can.»

Updated — I’m lowering my initial rating some, but not due to any problem with Spud itself.
Unlike some of the other reviewers, I’ve never had any problems with Spud’s customer service, my orders, etc. It sounds like the merger with Pioneer hosed a lot of things in their billing system or something. I still feel like they’re a decent little company who likely took longer to respond to calls/​emails than a major company because they’re so few employees comparatively.
Unfortunately, now that I’ve tried amazon fresh I can’t really consider spud a 5 star rating by comparison. It’s somewhat unfair to rate them equally because amazon’s such a large company, but the web interface, shipping speed (same day delivery of orders), etc. make amazon fresh quite appealing. Spud’s prices seem to me to be equivalent to most other places that sell organic/​local products, delivery, etc. so I don’t think they’re unreasonable, and I still wouldn’t rule out using them again. Although it sounds like the pioneer merger upset former pioneer customers, it’s more appealing to me as a non-​pioneer customer because I’d like having a box of fruits/​veggies in addition to my Spud order.

After dealing with a few hiccups surrounding the fact that I had an account at each company before the merger took place, my acquisition woes are over. Furthermore, because I myself work in the service industry and have weathered many an acquisition from the other end of the computer, I refuse to hold a grudge. Having said that, here is my updated review:
Their customer service is every bit as pleasant and professional as I recall. I am giving 3 stars not for the price, but for the convenience of having nutritious meals, snacks, and beverages delivered to my home as I head into a horrifically busy season at work. To me, the monetary difference is worth the time I save myself by not trekking to the store. If I didn’t have spud, I’d be eating crap due to a lack of time and energy. I’m especially happy with the addition of Eat Local meals. They’re yummy!

I was one of the holdovers from Pioneer Organics too (R.I.P.) I was not pleased when they contacted me about the $ 80 I supposedly owed Pioneer Organics. Whatever. They had my credit card and automatically charged me, so I find that story a little hard to believe.
Buuuut, time is money and this one… it wasn’t worth my time. I gave them my credit card number (ok, I know this is sounding bad) and thought everything was taken care of. Well, no, it was not taken care of because I get another email a couple months later. This one claimed I owed them $ 130. Finally, I called and talked to a customer service rep, I paid them whatever they wanted and I’m crossing my fingers that this is the last of it.
I keep requesting that they take me off the spam list. No, I don’t want you to check in with me and no, I don’t want to sign up for delivery. Please lose my number, er, email.

I have to say I’m impressed. Maria C. mentioned this place a long time ago in a talk thread and I was curious as to how good it could be. Living downtown it’s a trip to go retrieve groceries and I was getting tired of eating out. So I gave them a try.
The organic vegetable/​fruit selection was fairly good, a few ones were missing that I would have liked. But overall I was please with the choice and quality. All the food and meat was great. I mean, the choices were good for me. Mostly healthy organic things and a few sweet things for fun. Even ready to make cookie dough! Lots of local names and products I already love. And it all came packed in two giant tupperware containers, dry ice where needed.
So what I liked the most was that they are a small Seattle/​Vancouver BC company. And they try to get all their foods locally. I mean I got a list of all my items and where they came from and how many miles away they were. You can track where your all your produce and meat came from. As well as all your local goodies.
While I don’t order every week since I tend to horde goods. The service works perfectly for me and I really recommend it to anyone wanting to cut down trips to the grocery store but want more than just produce delivered.