Firsthand Foods

We celebrated our 14th birthday last week with all the essentials! ✅ Cake from Mad Hatters's Café & Bakeshop ✅ Cocktails at Congress Social Bar ✅ Our awesome team Thanks to all of our customers, farmers, processors, friends, and family who have helped make our dream a 14-year reality. Here’s to the next 14! 🥂

Thanks to Partner Community Capital™ we were able to invest in a new freezer/cooler that allowed us to scale up our operations and store more product. Now we're able to better respond to customer demand throughout the year and reduce waste by better utilizing the whole animal. It was a game changer!

We're excited to be working with the NC State B Corp Clinic this semester as we gear up to get our B Corp recertification! They’ll be helping us collect the data we need to demonstrate the social and environmental impact of our business and identify ways we can improve the sustainability of our operations. Recertification comes along every three years and we're so grateful to be partnering with this amazing program!

Do you like working with farmers? Do you have a strong background in pasture-based livestock production? Are you looking for a flexible, part-time job with a purpose-driven company? You could be a great fit for our Farm Network Coordinator! Click below to read more about the position and send a cover letter and resume to info@firsthandfoods.com by October 11th.

Our Fall Flash Sale is happening now! Save 15-20% on our regular retail pricing and stock up on pasture-raised beef, pork, lamb, chicken, and more. It’s the perfect time to fill your freezer for fall, so click the link and shop the sale today! https://lnkd.in/euMsYhgs

It’s back to school time and exciting changes are coming to a lunchroom near you! Breakfast and lunch at Durham Public Schools are now FREE for all students and DPS is taking a creative and inclusive approach to food. Aiming to introduce students to a diverse range of food and flavors, @dpsgoodfood (go follow them on Instagram!) is developing new and improved menus for all schools in their district. Starting this month, DPS is rolling out a culturally-relevant, environmentally-conscious, and a student-led menu design. On this menu, you’ll see more vegetarian and culturally-diverse options, more seasonal fresh fruit, and more variety of flavors and ingredients. They’re also partnering with many local producers (like us!) this year to feature more GOOD FOOD on students’ plates. Eating locally-grown foods is crucial for supporting North Carolina farmers and reducing the environmental impact of long-distance food transportation. Kudos to DPS for forward-thinking programs like this one! We’re so pleased to partner with them and get more pasture-raised products on lunch trays in Durham.

We were thrilled to join NC Choices for the Carolina Meat Conference in Boone, NC a few weeks ago. Networking is always the best part and we had a great time seeing old friends and making new connections. Drew really enjoyed the presentations by Jennifer Marten from Colorado State University about meat quality and the role of proper refrigeration. Melissa was grateful to connect with so many of our customers like Todd Dumbke from The Well•Spring Group, Tanya and Bobby of Belmont Butchery, Aaron Stiennessen from the Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC, and Jacob Boehm of Snap Pea Creative Dining. Tina got a lot out of the presentation by Todd Churchill about the Principles of Financial Regeneration and Greg Fischel gave a really good talk about climate change and the importance of taking our political ideologies out of the equation and listening to scientists instead. We can’t wait to go back next year!

We celebrated three of our amazing team members last week! Greg has been with us for four years now, Melissa for three, and Drew for five. These three have been instrumental in growing our business and we’re incredibly lucky to have them. And they’re so much fun to work with! Happy workaversary, y’all!

In May, we had the privilege of hosting a dinner for the folks who make our business possible - our producers! It’s the first time we’ve ever had all of our producers (beef, pork, & lamb) together and our first big farmer gathering since COVID. We got to show off our new warehouse, share our latest products, and introduce our new staff face to face. It was a special evening and we think about it often. We’re looking forward to seeing some of these folks and other partners at the NC Choices Carolina Meat Conference next week!

Our core values reflect what’s important to us. They remind us of how we want to focus our time and energy and make strategic business decisions. We recently refined our core values to be consistent across our entire organization. The hard part wasn’t identifying all the values we care about, it was narrowing them down to a few fundamentals that we can easily remember and refer to. Now that our process is complete, we’re excited to share the results! Firsthand Foods’ new and improved core values are: ❤️ Dare to Care – We want everyone we work with to love what they do and live full lives. We listen to promote open communication and maintain a thoughtful, human-centered workplace. We strive to provide exceptional customer service and meet rigorous standards for product quality. 🔑 Collaboration is Key – Nothing is more important to us than building deep, reciprocal, sustainable relationships with our team, partners, suppliers, customers and community. 📖 We’re an Open Book – No surprises here! We do what we say and say what we do. We take pride in being transparent, honest, responsive, reliable and loyal.