Women On a Mission: Veritable Vegetable Delivers Organic and So Much More

What goes into a more sustainable food system? We know that the choices we make as consumers and the choices farmers make both have an impact, but what about how we get organic produce from the farmers to your co-op?

That is a gap that San Francisco-based and women-led Veritable Vegetable has been filling since the early 1970s. Started by changemakers Mary Jane Evans, Karen Salinger and Bu Nygrens, Veritable Vegetable began as part of the collective known as The People’s Food System, a movement that sought to bring low-cost, nutritious food to neighborhood co-ops and community storefronts. The need to get produce from organic farms to eager consumers quickly grew beyond the Bay Area. Veritable Vegetable filled the gap by establishing relationships with organic growers, distributing their produce, and demonstrating a radically different approach to doing business.

Today, Veritable Vegetable continues to be a values-based business, and their distribution area includes the entire state of California, and parts of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Southwest Colorado (they also ship to Hawaii). Though they’ve grown in their 45 years of operation, they still support their community of customers, growers, and community partners, impact food and agriculture legislation, and honor labor by paying growers and their staff fairly. To demonstrate their commitment to their values, they became a certified B Corporation, using the power of business to solve social and environmental challenges. This led to them registering as a Benefit Corporation in the State of California and joining the CA Green Business Network as a certified Green Business.

The company’s focus on the environment touches every part of their operation. Not only do they divert 99% of waste that would ordinarily go to landfills and run an award-winning near zero-emission fleet of trucks, they also insulate their warehouse with recycled jeans and went solar to offset over 25% of the company’s energy use.

"With Co+opportunity's values directly aligned with Veritable Vegetable's practices, bringing them on as a organic distributor at both of our locations was only natural," says Lena Tito, Marketing Director of Co+opportunity. "Quality, transparency and product knowledge are second to none and we appreciate that we're still connecting with local organic farms we wouldn't otherwise be able to get into our produce aisles."

Farm to table fresh from sustainably-focused female change makers, learn more at veritablevegetable.com.

Photos © Veritable Vegetable