It’s been quite a month+ for everyone at Harvest Kitchen, but we are putting our best creative problem-solving skills to use in adapting to this new period of uncertainty.
Like many other small food businesses, we face the challenge of feeding our community from a distance.
We closed our local foods cafe to the public on March 16th to maintain a safe and sanitary processing space for our line of Harvest Kitchen products. On the upside, we are excited to see the success of our expansion of sibling-program Market Mobile to include home delivery!
We have sold cases of our jarred products to wholesale buyers on Market Mobile for years, but with the overwhelmingly positive response from the local food community, we’ve expanded our offerings on Market Mobile to include individual jars of our product line as well as delicious individual-sized frozen soups, made fresh at Harvest Kitchen with ingredients from local farms! Chef Sean has been cooking up some delicious recipes with lots of local meat and vegetables ordered through Market Mobile — you can order your meat and vegan options on Market Mobile every Monday and Thursday!
A selection of some of our freshly made frozen soups are available on Market Mobile.
You can still find us at the farmers market in Pawtucket.
First with the Farm Fresh Winter Market recognized as an essential food access point by the state, and now with the Hope Street Market opening in a temporary location at the Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket, we are continuing to sell our products every Saturday. We’ve been heartened to see the persistent community support of our business and fellow producers and farmers over these many weeks.
Charlotte sets up for one of the last Winter Markets of the season.
Like so many other educators across the state and country, our teaching staff is working hard at learning the ropes of remote education.
Heidi and Chef Bernard have continued to hold online group classes with our youth trainees, incorporating fun homework activities that encourage students to explore the culinary environments at home.
In the “mother sauces” lesson, students were asked to create an artistic interpretation of a mother sauce and 3 sauces you can make from it.
Despite the transition to virtual learning, we are still right on track for weeks 6-7 of our program curriculum! Our youth have been learning about: Food Justice, Healthy Eating, Basic Culinary Knowledge, Customer Service, and Farmers Market Retail Sales.
Fridays are movie days! We screen-share educational films like Food, inc. and Soul Food Junkies, and have virtual discussions about the films. Recently, Charlotte (who you may know from the farmers market) joined class time to discuss farmers markets and participate in class activities. (Thanks Charlotte!)
We also give homework assignments based on daily class lessons. Last week, students designed their own business pitches, Shark Tank-style! We have also been working on ways to give food to our students, so that they can apply cooking techniques at home using Harvest Kitchen recipes.
One student had fun with food coloring, making blue oatmeal with apples!
We miss seeing our students and customers in person, but your outpouring of support online and through Market Mobile orders means the world to us. We’d love to see what you’re cooking at home! Send us a message on Instagram (@HarvestKitchenRI) and share what you’ve made using a Harvest Kitchen product — and we’ll feature it on our page!
