Vegetable + Butcher owners Turner Hoff and Ariane Valle have announced their first major regional expansion to the Annapolis and Baltimore markets. Founded in 2016, Vegetable + Butcher is a Washington, D.C.-based meal delivery service focused on healthy dishes with sustainably and locally sourced ingredients. Hoff and Valle have leaned on chef-driven recipes, staff nutritionists, and partnerships with prominent local restaurants to keep their menu choices fresh over nearly six years of steady growth.
While many similar businesses leverage industrial agriculture and multinational parcel services to ship products across the nation, Vegetable + Butcher is notable for its focus on supporting the local and regional food economy and its dedication to environmentally conscientious packaging and delivery practices. Just four months ago, they signed a lease for a 46,000-square-foot facility in Upper Marlboro, MD, with a planned move in the first part of 2023.
“As we expand, we will always prioritize our local markets first,” said founder Turner Hoff. “It will always be part of our mission to support our community of farmers, small businesses, and people who live in and support our region. Having a presence in Annapolis and Baltimore allows us to do that in a bigger way but still keep our mission intact.”
Since launching in October 2016 and serving just two zip codes in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., the company has expanded delivery to 147 Washington-area zip codes, most recently to Ashburn, Va.
After launching the business by themselves, Hoff and Valle now lead a team of nearly 150 people, including 90 full-time and part-time employees and close to 60 contracted employees. When the Upper Marlboro facility is complete, they anticipate growing to more than 250 full and part-time positions.
Vegetable + Butcher maintains an exceptional commitment to reducing its environmental impact. When it comes to delivering meals, owning the entire supply chain is the harder way to do things. But it’s also the most rewarding. “We’ve spent an incredible amount of energy streamlining a vertically integrated approach to our business,” says Valle, “and we aspire to take our approach much further. When we commit to securing a regional farmer’s harvest, we create impact. When we build embedded supply chains that support local communities, we become a catalyst for change. And when we let our values lead the way, we can completely redefine what it means to be a food ecosystem.”
So far, Vegetable + Butcher has pioneered a low-waste, compost-friendly experience across each touchpoint. In addition to sourcing its ingredients from eco-friendly farms and producers, Vegetable + Butcher packages meals in compostable containers and delivers them in reusable, insulated bags with reusable ice packs. Those bags and ice packs are picked up three times per week, cleaned, and reused. The company works with D.C.-based partner Compost Cab to dispose of customers’ meal containers and turn them into soil that’s used on local farms, creating a uniquely closed-loop ecosystem.
V+B composts nearly 2,500 meal containers weekly, amounting to more than 117,000 containers last year, the equivalent of almost 48 tons of biodegradable material.
Vegetable + Butcher also works with the routing software OnFleet to offset carbon emissions from its delivery vehicles. Carbon credits are purchased through OnFleet’s partner Pachema, who redistributes the funds to verified forestry projects in North and South America. In 2021, V+B offset more than 37 tons of C02. As the company looks for growth opportunities, it will put its sustainability efforts at the forefront and only expand as much as its values will allow. “What’s unique about the company we are building is that the more we grow, the greater our opportunity for impact. To the extent that no longer holds true, we will halt growth to focus on our environmental contributions as we know where our priorities lay,” says Hoff. “It’s empowering to see the support we’ve garnered in the D.C. area as it is a direct indication of the world our customers want to see—people are voting with their dollars.”
