MEDIA COVERAGE | THE BUZZ
Miami Food Co. - Miami's most innovative online grocery store that offers restaurant industry seafood, meat & pasta by the box to the public for the first time ever - has thrilled South Florida journalists and foodies. We've been featured in Miami Herald, Miami.com, El Nuevo Herald, MiMi Miami, TimeOut Miami, Digest Miami, Miami On The Cheap & more! As the leader in Miami's online grocery shopping scene, we're thrilled to be recognized as South Florida's #1 provider of professional ingredients to the public.
Frustrated with supermarkets and delivery apps, Miami shoppers turn to local options
Written by Carlos Frias. Read on Miami Herald website. Read on the Miami.com website.
Publix is packed. Sedano’s, swamped.
While grocery stores hustle to keep high-demand items in stock and shoppers inch their way through lines six feet apart, some are finding new ways to shop for groceries while avoiding the coronavirus.
Some are ordering meats, eggs and cold cuts directly from distributors that once only sold to restaurants, grocery stores or specialty markets. Others are supplementing their fresh produce from local farms that deliver or offer pick-up sites where workers drop bags into their trunks to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19. And some restaurants even have flipped their model to sell groceries from their purveyors and ready-to-heat meals directly to shoppers — offering delivery and pick up.
Even as most grocery stores, from locals like Sedano’s and Milam’s to Fresh Market and Whole Foods, now offer scheduled pickups or delivery through Shipt or Instacart, here are some new options shoppers are using to keep their pantries and refrigerators stocked.
Miami Food Co.
This is another great option for the Costco and BJ’s crowd. This local company has partnered with distributors to sell large quantities of meat and seafood that were destined for Miami’s shuttered restaurants. The items are sold in cases of 10-20 pounds of meats for those with the storage space to accommodate it.
Miamifood.co (Note: no ‘M’ at the end of the link)
This new delivery service lets you buy restaurant-quality meat and seafood directly from local suppliers
Written by Virginia Gil. Read on the TimeOut Miami website.
Try placing an Instacart order and you’ll quickly notice we’ve all but ransacked our local stores with all of our stress baking and Tik-Tok–inspired whipped-coffee making. Eggs for your next carb creation? Ha! Chicken for tonight’s dinner? Good luck.
Before you consider hitting the black market for your next grocery delivery order, consider Miami Food Co.: a new local service that ships a variety of restaurant-grade meats and seafood straight to your door. Basically, it gives consumers access to the wholesale items previously destined for Miami’s restaurants—going straight from one freezer (the supplier’s) to another (yours at home).
Delivery takes from 24 to 48 hours from when your order is placed, and it’s available pretty much everywhere in Miami-Dade, as far north as Aventura and as far south as Pinecrest. Delivery is $19.99 or free if you purchase more than $250.
Hundreds of dollars worth of meat might seem excessive but stocking up now could mean fewer trips to the grocery store and one less meltdown when Instacart inevitably screws up your order.
With access to the highest-quality groceries, Miamians can now become restaurant industry insiders.
Written by Digest Miami Staff. Read on the Digest Miami website.
Restaurant-grade food always has to be magazine-ready. Chefs grab the perfect portion of a beautiful product, prepare it in a professional environment and then serve it to their patrons. Diners expect an elevated freshness and quality that surpasses grocery store and home chef level. Now consumers can create that same experience at home in just a few clicks.
Miami Food Co. is providing full cases of individually portioned restaurant products - including beef, poultry, pork, lamb, fish, and shellfish of vastly superior quality to the grocery on their website www.MiamiFood.co – a game-changer in the wholesale-to-consumer freezer-to-freezer service.
Sold by the case only, Miami Food Co.'s beef, poultry, pork, lamb, fish, and shellfish are conveniently individually portioned, and vacuum sealed airtight for freshness. As is typical within the restaurant industry, each portion is deep flash-frozen to -40 degrees within moments of harvesting.
Miami Food Co.'s pricing, for example, on fully trimmed all-natural chicken breast, is $5.99/lb vs. Publix Greenwise chicken breast at $9.99/lb. Miami Food Co.'s pricing on pork chops is $3.99/lb vs. Whole Foods pork chops at $7.99/lb. On the higher end, Miami Food Co.'s pricing on Wagyu beef burgers from Snake River Farms is $10.99/lb, while the company sells them for $14.00/lb. And families with kids can order their favorites like chicken tenders and chicken wings for only $5.99/lb.
Each order placed is delivered from the suppliers to the delivery vehicles, and then to customer's houses or buildings by a single person wearing a mask and gloves within 24-48 hours. And, in an effort to minimize the current spread of the pandemic, Miami Food Co's team has implemented no-contact delivery.
Miami Food Co. sells cuts and quality of ingredients that are unmatchable. Daily Flash Sales specials on super high quality, limited quantity meat & seafood are published on the site for you to stock up and create experiences at home with restaurant-grade ingredients.
WHY I FOUNDED MIAMI FOOD CO. AS A PUBLIC GOOD TO COMBAT CORONAVIRUS AND FEED SOUTH FLORIDA
Written by Dirk DeSouza. Read on the MiMi Miami website.
As a resident of Miami for 28 years, most people know that by day I’m a marketing and communications professional and accidental professional writer. I had written for glossy magazines for the past 10 years before founding MiMi as a way to flex creative muscles and keep readers engaged with the very best of Miami. What I hadn’t counted on was coronavirus destroying my career. Three weeks ago in a 48 hour period, I lost every single client I had – phone call after phone call of bad news due to my clients experiencing instantaneous economic devastation, and marketing and comms were the first things on the chopping block. Cue the wine.
Rather than wallow, I learned a thing or three visiting grocery stores and ordering food online. First, grocery stores seemed unsafe – not all shoppers practice social distancing and stockists, other shoppers, cashiers and bag boys were all touching my food. Second, the meat & seafood I wanted was almost always out of stock due to panicking hoarders. Third, meat & seafood was getting more expensive due to high demand and low supply, again due to hoarders.
My tech-challenged parents are 85 and 79 and do not have smart phones or the Instacart app or Amazon / Whole Foods accounts. As the most vulnerable demographic to coronavirus, I know that millions of older Americans now lack food security, my parents included. Going to the grocery store is anxious business these days. Miami is chocked with 65-90 year olds. Oh goodness, this is a problem.
So I decided to start Miami Food Co. as a social good – to give people and families access to the volumes of food they really, actually need during quarantine. I had a few goals for the business. First, fewer (unsafe) trips to the grocery store, zero out of stocks, and fewer/lower grocery app delivery fees. Second, pricing below grocery store pricing but for superior products because Miami Food Co. sells – for the very first time – restaurant-grade, top quality food that was previously destined for now-shuttered Miami restaurants (to which consumers have never had access to.) Third, to build on my long history of philanthropy and contributing to greater good, which started with my Haiti Relief work in 2010. Greater good means benefitting both the citizens of Miami (a coronavirus epicenter now) and the suppliers of meat & seafood that are clogged with inventory and employ lots of people who are job-insecure if their employers don’t move more food.
So on Monday, March 30th, I laid out my business plan. By Tuesday, March 31st suppliers were lined up. By Friday, April 3rd the website was built. By Saturday April 4th, the business was live and getting de-bugged. And on April 6th, I got the word out. Remarkably, Miami Food Co. was conceived, allianced, written, designed, built and broadcast in 5 days and conducted its first sales in 7 days.
Miami Food Co. is officially a smash hit, with orders pouring in and no-contact deliveries now being made from Pinecrest to Aventura and everywhere in between. The cases of food are surprisingly compact because there’s zero packaging beyond the vacuum-sealing. Placing 10 lbs. or 30 lbs. of food in a home freezer is likely not an issue. Ten pounds of All Natural Chicken Breast, which Miami Food Co. sells for a whopping $4 less per pound than Publix may “seem” like a lot of chicken, but it’s just 9 meals for a family of 3. For families with kids, we sell premium, restaurant-grade chicken tenders and chicken wings – that Publix and Whole Foods does not sell – for a fraction of the cost of grocery store chicken. On the higher end, we sell things like USDA Prime (read: super premium) burgers for $7.99/lb and U10 Peruvian Scallops that aren’t available at grocery level at all, period. For our South American heritage customers, we even sell Corvina fish for making mind-boggling ceviche, and aged skirt steak for making unbelievably tender churrasco.
Inadvertently due to coronavirus, Miami Food Co.’s customers are now restaurant industry insiders. Our coupon code RESTAURANTINSIDER is good for 10% off a first purchase. When our customers see the cases that are marked with supplier logos from Snake River Farms or Emperors Choice Seafood, they’re thrilled because they have likely never seen the names of these restaurant suppliers before.
Miami Food Co.’s mission is to feed South Florida while battling coronavirus through extreme distancing and safety. I have even reached out to various city officials suggesting they purchase products at deeper discounts and use Miami Food Co. to deliver bulk food to vulnerable, independent living senior citizens who are unfortunately relying on the kindness of neighbors. Our “freezer to freezer” model means that all cases are sealed and the portions inside have never been touched by anyone – not even us. Our seamless deliveries within 24-48 hours are by a single driver who’s wearing a mask and gloves, for their safety and moreover, for the safety of our customers.
I”m proud to have built this project and who knows? Maybe it’s an entirely new career since I’m unemployed. If you have time – but let’s face it you have lots of time now that you’re tragically trapped in your house – feel free to browse around Miami Food Co. by visiting www.miamifood.co.
Frustrado con los supermercados y aplicaciones para entrega en la casa, el público de Miami busca opciones locales
Written by Carlos Frias. Sigue leyendo El Nuevo Herald sitio web.
Los Publix están llenos. Los Sedano’s, repletos.
En momentos en que los supermercados enfrentan serias dificultades para mantener en los estantes productos de alta demanda, y los compradores recorren los pasillos tratando de mantener un distanciamiento social de seis pies, algunos clientes buscan nuevas formas de comprar víveres y otros artículos al tiempo que tratan de evitar el coronavirus.
Muchas personas ordenan carne, huevos y pollo directamente de los distribuidores que antes solo le vendían a restaurantes, supermercados o mercados especializados. Otros, están buscan los vegetales y hortalizas de granjas locales que hacen entregas a domicilio y tienen sitios dónde ir a recoger los productos y los empleados de las diversas compañías colocan las bolsas en los baúles de los autos para de este modo reducir el riesgo de propagar el coronavirus en la comunidad. Incluso algunos restaurantes han cambiado y han decidido vender víveres de sus suministradores directamente a los compradores, con ofertas de entregas a domicilio y lugares dónde el público puede ir ir a recoger.
Muchos supermercados del área, como Sedano’s, Milam’s, Fresh Market y Whole Foods, ahora brindan la posibilidad de la entrega a domicilio y de recogidas mediante aplicaciones como Shipt o Instacart. A continuación, algunas nuevas opciones que el público está usando para mantener sus alacenas y refrigeradores llenos.
Miami Food Co.
Esta es una excelente opción para evitar las multitudes en Costco, Sam’s Club y BJ’s. Esta compañía local se ha asociado con diversos distribuidores para vender grandes cantidades de carne, pescado y mariscos que antes estaban destinados para los restaurantes de todo Miami, ahora prácticamente cerrados. Las mercancías se venden en cajas de entre 10 y 20 libras para aquellas personas que tengan espacio para guardarlas.