Transparency is one of the core values of Harvie. In our sourcing standards, we highlight this:
“You deserve to know everything you can about what you put on your family’s kitchen table. We always label products accurately, verify certifications and tell you everything we can about the products you purchase.”
Last week, we had an issue where a small number of the grapefruits that we distributed were not grown by Putt Family Farm as advertised – rather they were bought in from a farm in Texas and sold to us in Putt Family Farm boxes.
I am proud to say that Harvie was able to identify the issue and take steps to mitigate the impact.
Transparency in the food system at large is very much lacking and adding transparency to what we eat is one of the key goals of Harvie. There is a long list of bad behavior in this area, see: The Great Organic Food Fraud or the mislabeling of fish to pick a few examples.
If we can’t stand behind our sourcing and tell you where your food is coming from, you may as well purchase this food from any other grocer. Your trust in Harvie is our most important asset as a business. We will continue to defend our sourcing standards and take action where necessary.
Here’s what we did in the case of the grapefruit: if we know you were affected we sent you an email with details of the situation, we gave you a credit for the offending grapefruit, and we gave a $500 bonus to the staff member who brought attention to this sourcing issue, as per our internal policy.
Although this is not an easy situation for us, values are what you do when there is a cost associated — otherwise, values are empty words. I’m proud that the team here at Harvie has the mechanisms in place to defend our sourcing standards and take care of issues as they arise.
The email that was sent to members directly affected by the issue is below for further details.
As always, thank you for your support!
-Simon
Hello,
I am sending you this notice because you may have received a grapefruit in your most recent delivery that was not in fact from Putt Family Farm as advertised on Harvie. Last week we found a small number of the grapefruit that had been sent from Putt Family Farm was in fact bought by Putt Family and not grown by them. This issue was discovered by our warehouse team and when we checked with our local supplier Clarion River Organics were told that these grapefruits were in fact from Putt Family Farm. Unfortunately, today we found out this was not the case.
Like you, we care deeply about sourcing from small farms
Here is a letter from Clarion River Organic’s owner Nathan about the issue:
As organic growers, we try to source and support good family farms that share the same values we do. Searching for organic citrus we found the Putt family trying to organize a group of growers similar to ours in California. We have had a direct relationship with Sam Putt and his family for 5 years, and have enjoyed buying their citrus for our community.
This year we helped source these for Harvie. We were not told that they sourced grapefruit outside of their coop, and when we saw the sticker assumed they must grow for that brand. But after calling the farm we found out that these were sourced from a farm in Texas.
I am very sorry, we gave Harvie bad information and that was shared with you, their customers.
Transparency of where and how products are grown are why we grow and sell to Harvie. It pains me to feel that we were part of some unfortunate and unintentional misinformation.
Thank you for your understanding and know that Harvie’s staff was only going off of our information. We didn’t ask enough questions. Lesson learned.
Thank you for your critical eye and questioning of this problem, and please accept our most
sincere apology,
Nathan Holmes
Clarion River Organics
We are deeply sorry for having accidentally misrepresented the sourcing of this product. We know that you trust us to source from small, high-quality growers and an issue like this can break that trust. Here is what we have done to remedy the issue so far:
1.)We have issued a credit for all members where we know that they received a non-Putt Family Farm grown grapefruit. If you received a grapefruit with a sticker on it from “Paramount” and did not receive a credit, please reply to this email and we will issue you a credit.
2.) We have rewarded the staff member who originally identified this issue (we have an internal bounty of $500 for any staff member who finds an issue with our sourcing).
3.) We have replaced all grapefruit orders for the rest of the season with a new, certified organic grower.
We take our duty of bringing you only the best, most well-sourced products very seriously, we hope that these steps make this clear.
We want to thank you for your continued support and feedback as we work to make Harvie the best way to buy groceries in Pittsburgh.
Thank you,
Simon
CEO Harvie