The Ottawa Good Food Box is unpacking its plans to celebrate 20 years in the heart of Centretown.
The non-profit community-based program has been selling affordable boxes of locally grown fruits and vegetables to Ottawa residents since 1996. Prices for a box of food range from $10 to $25, with $5 bags also available.
The pricing is set according to the amount of food each package contains and remains low since it is purchased at wholesale pricing. A program co-ordinator regularly compares their prices to those of various grocery stores, where one could spend $15 to $20 to buy the amount of food in a $10 Ottawa Good Food Box.
The program is mainly run by volunteers, while operational and administrative costs are covered in part by the sale of boxes and a City of Ottawa grant.
According to the program’s co-coordinator, Vitalie Nyembwe, OGFB has been working on a new logo, a new French name for the service and an updated website.
The changes will be unveiled to the general public at the program’s 20th anniversary open house, which is set to take place Nov. 25 at its offices at the Centretown Community Health Centre on Cooper Street.
“Our current website is very outdated, so we’re hoping to reveal something that is more fresh, more modern,” says Nyembwe.The ultimate goal is to make the website more simple and accessible to everybody, she says.
The current French name for the program — La Boîte Verte — is being changed due to the rise of composting in Ottawa over the past 20 years.
La Boîte Verte literally translates to “The Green Box,” which could be misinterpreted as the better-known City of Ottawa composting green bins.
The Ottawa Good Food Box sells more than 500 boxes per month.
Six fresh produce suppliers deliver fruits and vegetables to a team of volunteers who gather on a monthly basis to assemble the boxes.
Customers can place orders for the boxes on the Ottawa Good Food Box website or by calling the organization’s head office. Customers then pick up their monthly order at one of the program’s 35 distribution centres across the city.
Centretown’s distribution centre is located at the CCHC.
“The program has been invaluable to me given my limited budget,” says Naomi Sanders, a law student who lives in Centretown and who has been buying good food boxes since the winter of 2014.
Although the program is open to all citizens, it does provide a cheaper alternative to healthier food for individuals and families living on a tight budget.
“However, given the day that it is available, I sometimes have to miss class,” she added. “I don’t think this is a fault of the program. Rather, these programs are limited given the capacity of the organizations and people helping to run the programs.”
Nyembwe is aware of these concerns and says that distribution centre availability for the program is related to the amount of funding they obtain both from the city and the public.
“Unfortunately we only have funding to have the boxes delivered once a month. In order to expand, we would need additional staff — at the moment we are only two,” says Nyembwe, “and thus additional funds to pay for warehouse storage, deliveries and produce.”
Chantale Vaillancourt, co-owner of Ferme aux pleines saveurs (located about an hour away from downtown Ottawa), says she looks forward to many more years of providing organic vegetables to the program.