Maplewood Woman Starts Farm Box Delivery Service Amid Pandemic

MAPLEWOOD, NJ — Maplewood native Danielle Schwab, who runs a blog about sustainable food, became concerned in March about food from New Jersey farms that wasn't going to restaurants anymore. She also realized that "People in my hometown of Maplewood were going to need fresh food that they could get safely and reliably," she said.

Schwab, who grew up in Maplewood and whose parents live there, had previously started the blog Illuminate Supply Chains to help educate herself and others about where our food comes from and how to decipher the various labels around food and sustainability.

But amid the pandemic, she did something more: came up with a way to send weekly food boxes, and recipes, to families who subscribe, using growers throughout the state, from South Jersey to Newark.

With the help of Zone 7, an NJ distributor who works with small local farms, Danielle started Illuminate Food. She adapted the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) model where people in various communities can order weekly fresh food from area farms, and get it more inexpensively than if they did it on their own.

Each box includes around six to eight seasonal veggies and fruit, milk, eggs, yogurt or cheese, one to two specialty goods, and fresh bread from Liv Breads in Millburn.

The food was just available in her area at first, but Schwab recently added more delivery areas, like Hoboken and Jersey City. She now delivers to: South Orange, Maplewood, Montclair, Bloomfield, West Orange, Chatham, Morristown, Hoboken and Jersey City.

Schwab includes customized recipes each week and there is a Facebook group, "Illuminate Food Community" to share recipes and tips with each other.

This week, the featured recipe in the group was ricotta pancakes. But the participants shared photos of their success with other recipes, too.

"This sunchoke recipe (from the email) was quick, easy, and delicious; made it last night," posted a customer on Tuesday.

"We also partner with other local makers and restaurants to support their businesses," Schwab said. "For example, I have included a jerk sauce from HLS, pies from Three Daughters Bakery, salt from Saltopia and oats from River Valley Community Grains. "

The box will be delivered every Wednesday. Customers can choose the one-time box option or sign up for a subscription and get the box weekly or every other week. There are also themed boxes like a holiday box.

Schwab — who graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood, as well as Bard College and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies — has a background in global trade and supply chains.

She says she has learned a lot about "how the food we eat not only affects our health, but also has an environmental impact as well as an impact on communities who grow, harvest, process, distribute and sell it. I started my website as a way to educate myself because finding answers to where our food comes from is not simple."

She added, "This past year has felt like a crash course on food systems. I feel driven to deliver much of what I've concluded to my fellow consumers. I truly believe changing the food system will have many ripple effects and these solutions don't come with new technologies like block chain or hydroponics, but rather in the repair of the relationships to our food. I will be using this platform to connect eaters to producers so that more of us can join in."

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