Pizza delivery is surging, mac-and-cheese consumption is up, and fast food is getting by with a little help from a friend in the White House. What’s a lowly vegetable to do? If it’s smart: get frozen by Daily Harvest, a Jolly Green Giant for the direct-to-consumer era. The company, which is based in Manhattan, sells on-trend concoctions of greens and beans—kelp “pad Thai” ($8.99), chickpea “cookie dough” ($7.99)—that offer the benefits of the produce aisle without the ordeal of masking up, lining up, wiping down, and, as the case may be, breaking down. “Every ingredient is frozen on the farm within twenty-four hours of harvest,” Rachel Drori, the founder and C.E.O., said the other day, via videoconference from Long Island. She wore a pink T-shirt and had an unfussy ponytail; behind her was an unmade bed. There is no evidence that COVID-19 is transmitted through food, but, “if you’re as neurotic as I am, there’s an extra layer of security,” Drori said. “I haven’t been to a grocery store in four weeks.”
Though most of Daily Harvest’s two hundred employees have been working from home since March 12th, when Drori temporarily closed the company’s Flatiron headquarters, increased demand—seventy per cent more new customers than anticipated—meant that a critical part of the business could not flag: taste-testing potential new products. “Vegetables are hard,” Drori said. “You have to know what to do to make them, like, really amazing.”
Ashley Lonsdale, Daily Harvest’s head chef, in Brooklyn, joined the videoconference to pick apart a couple of meals in development. “This is a fresh production sample,” said Lonsdale, who wore a black shirt, had a halo of brown curls, and was seated in a blond-wood kitchen. “It’s a bowl created for customers looking for low-sugar breakfast options.” Price: $5.99. Ingredients: chia seeds, riced cauliflower, and maca, a Peruvian root. Also: mission fig, vanilla, and coconut cream.
“Let me go to the kitchen and grab my chia,” Drori said, as her image jumbled. Shouts of “Mom!” followed. Usually, the company invites customers into the office for taste tests; for now, two toddlers would do. “But I need you to be helpful, O.K.?” Drori said. Little heads nodded. Lonsdale scooped up a spoonful. “I’m getting more vanilla flavor than our last sample, which is nice,” she said.
“The salt brought that out,” Drori said.
“Salt, vanilla, and fat make this really great, magical taste,” Lonsdale said, “like a salty cookie”—or the opposite of cold cauliflower.
“Should the figs be cut up smaller?” Drori asked. To one of the testers: “No, you cannot steal a fig.” Her husband entered the shot and set down another bowl: avocado, maca, chocolate, cherries, and oats. “It’s scorching hot and I know I’m gonna burn my face, because I’m not patient,” Drori said.
“Make sure it’s stirred,” Lonsdale said. “Get the chocolate distributed.”
Drori sampled it. “Do you think it’s too sweet?” she asked. “Do you think people want that much chocolate for breakfast?” Yet what was breakfast, these days, but a construct? They discussed how the marketing team could position the dish (“energizing,” “anti-inflammatory,” “smooth and decadent”) and which customers to target (those who positively reviewed cacao-avocado smoothies). Drori’s image jumbled again, and she was back in the bedroom. “Ashley, two thumbs up from the kids,” she said. “They were fighting over the cherries. I had to leave. I was, like, ‘I’m out.’ ”
Daily Harvest has explored other ways to make vegetables more palatable. In April, to promote a new line of flat “breads” (one is cauliflower-based), the company enlisted one of its customers, Neil Patrick Harris, to host a vegetable-themed bingo night on YouTube—a few winners received flatbreads, as did City Harvest, a nonprofit—and sent him a shiny raffle drum filled with inscribed Ping-Pong balls. “This says ‘reishi,’ ” Harris said, turning over one of the balls. “I’m going to guess that it’s a Latin root vegetable.” (It’s a mushroom.)
“We wanted to create a good, heartwarming moment,” Drori said. “You go on any site right now, it’s just doom and gloom.” But even the most magic of mushrooms can’t solve everything. “There’s somebody in my house who’s sick—not with COVID—but I had to run to the pharmacy,” Drori said. “I had to suit up and I was so stressed out.” ♦
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