Delivery Review: Baldor Specialty Foods

Several weeks ago, I told you about how I was getting grocery delivery from a local restaurant supply company, Northeast Restaurant Direct. It's excellent for many reasons, but I still needed some other things (like tofu!). So I added another restaurant supply company to my arsenal, in part because they had tofu.

Baldor Specialty Foods is a much larger company and delivers to restaurants (and now homes) throughout the region. They have more selection--in addition to tofu, theoretically non-dairy yogurt, Daiya cheese, Beyond Burgers and Beyond Sausages, fresh juices, and a variety of basic groceries like oils, yeast, and flour are available. However, one must often order those things in rather large quantities, and though delivery is free, the minimum order is $250. That is not a typo. Two hundred and fifty dollars. If you have a deep freeze, though: Now is your chance to buy 40 Beyond Burgers at once! And maybe 50 Beyond Sausages! And a couple of 5-pound bags of shredded Daiya!

I would note, too, that some of their prices (at least in my area) are a bit outrageous, while others are reasonable or even good. It's confusing. They are charging nearly nine dollars for an 8 oz. bottle of peanut oil, but only about $2.50 for a block of tofu (and you can order individual blocks). But I'm not going to order the equivalent of $250 in things like nine dollar bottles of peanut oil, and $250 in reasonably priced groceries is going to overwhelm my apartment.

With a situation like this, one has to get creative. So when I ordered the tofu you saw above--and though I didn't have to, I ordered a full case of 12, because I knew I could freeze it if I couldn't get through it quickly enough (ha!)--it was piggybacking on a friend's order. (In the end, I gave 6 of the 12 blocks to a neighbor.)

Very shortly after that, a different friend invited me to piggyback on her order, so I got some produce and yeast.

Their produce selection is larger than Northeast Restaurant Direct's, so I was excited to get raspberries, Boston lettuce, and four little mini heads of mixed species of artisan lettuces, which I couldn't otherwise get, as well as bananas (the biggest bananas I think I've ever seen!), yellow peppers, plum tomatoes, grape tomatoes, some of the red hot chiles my friend didn't want (she got rather a large quantity of them), and a pound of instant dry yeast (they were out of regular active dry yeast, which is what I usually would get).

A pound of yeast is a lot, of course; I will be splitting it up and giving half to my friend.

Because I have not personally placed an order myself, I'm not able to fully evaluate it, but my friends have reported good experiences, enough to place repeat orders. They seem to communicate well (I always knew the exact date things would come) and unless there is a supply chain issue (which you will know at the time of the order) it comes pretty quickly, within a day or two. And maybe most importantly: they will deliver tofu!

I do have one last note on the packaging: All of their stuff came in cardboard boxes (one of my friends asked me to come get my stuff off her porch before she gathered her own, so I saw a full order). There is some plastic in it but no more than the average shopper would get from a routine grocery shopping trip. There wasn't any bubble wrap or anything. So that is also a plus in my opinion. It is a bit chaotic--you'll find produce scattered throughout the boxes alongside things like that bag of yeast, and I could discern no logic in it--but it doesn't really matter.

Total score: 3.5 out of 5 for pandemic; 3 out of 5 for imaginary normal times (though I doubt they'll bring things to your house in normal times)