Is this the CSA model of the future?
Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
This is the headquarters for
Get Winter Soup Club
A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter.
Enter Email
Sign Up
Instead, customers sign up online (Family Dinner is primarily subscription-based, although one can also order a la carte), choosing a half, whole, or double share according to dietary preference: omnivore, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, paleo, gluten-free. In addition to the local produce, meat, and fish, shares might include eggs, baked goods, or prepared foods; customers can add on dairy, bread, fresh pasta, mezze, and more. Don't like beets? Make a note of it, and you won't get them. Ever. The order will be delivered to your front door on Saturday or Tuesday, your choice.
Advertisement
"A couple nerds at the helm make a few things easier,' says Family Dinner owner Erin Baumgartner, who uses data science to strengthen the local food system.
Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
Family Dinner owner Erin Baumgartner, currently at the eye of the delivery storm in black T-shirt and clogs, long brown hair pulled up in a ponytail, pauses between hoisting boxes in the sweltering heat to check spreadsheets and route maps on a laptop. She speaks as passionately about perfect summer tomatoes and the importance of local food as she does about tech stacks and data analytics. Baumgartner and husband Tim Fu founded Family Dinner in 2017. He was at MIT's Sloan School of Management; she helped lead MIT's Senseable City Lab, using data science to understand and find solutions for complex urban issues — everything from waste management to opioid use.
They were also passionate about food. Why not use a data lab approach to begin tackling some of the issues around the way we distribute, access, and consume it? 'We started Family Dinner because nothing is more broken and complex than the food system,' Baumgartner says.
Small family farms are shutting down across the country, facing challenges from rising costs to changing weather patterns. According to the USDA's most recent
Advertisement
The way we distribute food, across countries and continents, is bad for the planet: Transportation accounts for nearly 20 percent of the worldwide food system's total carbon emissions, found a
And much of the food then goes to waste. The USDA estimates the country wastes more than 30 percent of its food supply annually, approximately 133 billion pounds.
Family Dinner uses data science and software to support local farmers and transport food efficiently while minimizing waste. Its reach gives farmers access to a greater geographical range and market share.
The refrigerator at Family Dinner's Woburn headquarters contains crops and goods from producers all over Massachusetts, plus a few from the rest of New England.
Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
'This is one stop for me, and we have a bunch of produce,' says Rodgers of Clark Farm, a fairly small-scale operation with 10 to 12 acres of crops. 'Just to be able to drop it here — there's no way I'd be able to sell a bunch of turnips and cilantro to someone. It's not happening. This is our biggest wholesale. If you add up all of our other wholesale customers, then they equal Erin.' Family Dinner also showcases its purveyors on social media, which draws new people to visit the farm in person.
'We're all just tiny, small companies, right,' Baumgartner says. 'We can't be competitive on a larger scale without working together. In some ways, people would think us advertising their CSA or their events would look like competition. That's not how we view it.'
Advertisement
When customers sign up, they input their aversions and allergies, metadata that helps direct Family Dinner's orders each week. If 10 customers don't like mushrooms, the system places 10 fewer orders, replacing the offending fungi with something they find more palatable. Knowing how much is needed of each item means there is no waste on Family Dinner's end: Supply meets demand exactly. Tracking what customers order also allows the company to forecast future demand; farmers can then plan, plant, and harvest knowing there will be a buyer at the other end. Route optimization software allows Family Dinner to maximize each driver's time and minimize their miles. The company now delivers CSA shares for
Skylar Howes delivers CSA shares from Red Fire Farm.
Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
'A couple nerds at the helm make a few things easier,' Baumgartner says. 'When we can automate things, it becomes so much more efficient. As we automate, it becomes more scalable. How do we scale something like this to work for 2,000 people? It's no more complicated, because all the systems are already there.'
Family Dinner started with 10 weekly customers. It now delivers to almost 700, working with more than 80 local producers. The company recently joined forces with
'It's a unique opportunity to be able to partner with somebody with the same mission and same goal to fix the food system and create access for everybody to this food that's good for the environment,' says Farmers to You CEO Andrew Kay. 'How do we become more 21st century in our operational processes? This is what that move does. Being as efficient and tech-forward as we can be and scaling on a sustainable level, and to be able to repeat that and bring in more farmers, that's really the goal here — to build a New England food shed that everybody has access to but that's not cost-prohibitive to run and operate.'
Advertisement
Most subscription shares at Family Dinner range from $62-$148 each week, delivery included. Farmers to You has a $40 weekly minimum. Scaling up can help make these services more accessible to more people, Kay says: 'To become truly affordable on both sides of things, it's how much volume can you offer people. When you build a strong and deep customer base, you're able to control operating costs better and order more from your vendors, which creates a more sustainable pricing system.'
It is a good time for growth. During COVID's peak, when supply chains were threatened and people didn't want to go to the store, there was a surge of interest in food delivery; Family Dinner had a 900-person waitlist. Now we are in another uncertain time, with ICE raids that threaten the immigrants who make the food system run, tariffs potentially raising food prices, government cuts that could affect food safety, and a developing dietary agenda for the country via the Make America Healthy Again movement.
Consumer behavior has shifted, too. Red Fire Farm once had waitlists for its CSA, launched in 2001. 'CSA was really a hot, relatively new concept that was just catching on and there was a tremendous amount of demand that allowed our farm to grow quite a bit,' says co-owner Ryan Voiland. 'That lasted during the 2000s, and then I'd say by around 2012 or so things started to get weaker with the market. Especially the last 10 years or so it has gotten harder to find sales.'
Advertisement
Changing times call for changing models. As Baumgartner says in a
For more information, go to
.
Iron Ox Farm radishes, ready for delivery to Family Dinner subscribers.
Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
Devra First can be reached at
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Yahoo
CNBC ranks Oregon among most expensive states. Here's why
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – CNBC released a list of states where inflation is hitting the hardest — naming Oregon among the most expensive states to live in. According to the report, published July 11, inflation has come down from its post-COVID high; however, cost-of-living remains lofty in some states. 'One of the biggest problems with inflation is that once it has burrowed into an economy, it is very difficult to rid of it. Just when Federal Reserve policymakers thought they might have finally gotten the better of the inflation that gripped the U.S. economy following the pandemic, along came the specter of tariffs,' CNBC explained. Largest skateboard mural in U.S. will be unveiled at Portland Dream Plaza The outlet rated states based on an index of prices for goods and services calculated by the Council for Community and Economic Research while also considering housing affordability in each state. CNBC named Oregon among the most expensive states, citing housing prices as a major factor. 'The cost of housing is chewing up household budgets in the Beaver State. One-third of Oregonian homeowners and renters are paying more than 30% of their household income on housing,' CNBC said. Adults-only pinball space and social club is Vancouver's latest addition The outlet noted, 'life can be expensive in other ways as well in Oregon. A loaf of bread in Portland, Oregon, will cost you 12% more than it would in Portland, Maine. According to MIT's , a living wage for a family of four in Oregon, where two adults hold jobs outside the home, is $31.48 per person. In Alabama, each adult would need to earn only $23.38.' According to CNBC, average home prices in the Portland metro area are over $723,000. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Washington was also named among the most expensive states. 'Getting your greens in the Evergreen State will cost you some extra green. A bag of frozen sweet peas in Kent goes for about 30% more than it does in Salt Lake City,' CNBC said, adding, 'Housing is also expensive in Washington State. A state advisory commission found last year that a lack of affordable housing has reached 'critical levels' statewide, leading to increased homelessness, housing instability and higher living costs, especially for low- and moderate-income families. The state Commerce Department's Affordable Housing Advisory Board recommended more funding for affordable housing, reducing regulatory hurdles for new construction, and promoting new types of housing, all aimed at building the one million homes the group said are needed over the next 20 years.' According to CNBC, the average home price in Kent, Washington is over $846,000. The most expensive state on the list is California, with other expensive states including Arizona, Louisiana, Texas, Maryland and Massachusetts. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
21-year-old MIT dropouts raise $32M at $300M valuation led by Insight
Karun Kaushik and Selin Kocalar weren't planning to raise a Series A so soon. Their AI compliance startup, Delve, which announced a $3 million seed round in January, was growing fast and signing customers at a steady clip. Then, inbound interest started rolling in, COO Kocalar told TechCrunch. Delve, which automates regulatory compliance with AI agents, ended up fielding multiple term sheets, eventually closing a $32 million Series A at a $300 million valuation. The round was led by Insight Partners, which took up most of the round, with participation from CISOs at Fortune 500 companies. Insight has been 'amazing to work with, and we felt they were the right long-term partner for us,' said the COO. Delve's new valuation represents a roughly 10x jump from its previous round. Similarly, its customer base has grown from the 100 companies it reported back in January to over 500, many of them fast-growing AI startups like recently minted AI unicorn Lovable, Bland, and Wispr Flow. And while the 2-year-old company, made up of AI researchers from MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley, has seemingly struck gold by using AI to eliminate hundreds of hours of manual processes, its story began much differently. Kaushik and Kocalar met as classmates during their freshman year at MIT. Both had deep interests in AI and health tech. Kaushik had already scaled a COVID diagnostic system to thousands of users during the pandemic. In 2023, they began working on an AI-powered medical scribe to help doctors handle patient documentation. However, handling sensitive healthcare information meant they quickly encountered the costly and time-consuming world of HIPAA compliance. Instead of continuing with the medical scribe, they started building tools to help other companies get HIPAA-compliant faster and more affordably. That pivot got the team into Y Combinator last year and helped them raise their seed round from General Catalyst, FundersClub, Soma Capital, and others. The founders dropped out during their sophomore year in 2023. What started with HIPAA quickly expanded. 'As our customer base grew, they started asking for support with other frameworks: SOC 2, PCI, GDPR, ISO, basically the whole alphabet soup of compliance,' Kocalar narrated. Compliance paperwork can be necessary in everything from launching products to closing enterprise deals. But instead of driving growth, its manual work can become a bottleneck. 'Compliance frameworks are standardized. Businesses aren't,' says CEO Kaushik. 'That mismatch is why traditional software breaks down and teams fall back to duct-taped workflows across email, Slack, and shared drives.' Delve replaces that busywork with AI agents that run in the background (after integrating with customers' tools) like internal team members. These agents collect evidence, write reports, update audit logs, and track configuration changes across fragmented systems, automating compliance workflows in real time. Kocalar says compliance is just the wedge into broader back-office operations. Long-term, the AI startup wants to automate a billion hours of other work — eventually expanding into adjacent areas like cybersecurity, risk, and internal governance. Insight Partners' interest reflects this roadmap. 'Since compliance touches every part of how a business runs, from scaling operations to closing deals to building customer trust, modernizing this function will modernize the entire organization,' said Praveen Akkiraju, managing director at Insight. 'That's what makes Delve's approach so important.' Still, the startup won't be without competition. Several AI companies are emerging with agents to automate business workflows. In addition, larger AI labs like OpenAI are releasing general-purpose agents capable of performing complex tasks. That said, Kocalar says these developments are a validation, not a threat, to Delve's business. She points to the company's domain depth in contrast to more general-purpose agents. 'We're positioning ourselves to improve as AI advances and labs roll out more sophisticated agentic technologies. But what truly sets us apart is the deep, domain-specific knowledge we're building into the platform,' she said. 'Compliance is always shifting as new regulations emerge and existing ones evolve, with companies interpreting them in different ways. That's where Delve stands out.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
Trillium's got new canned cocktails, including a rum punch and margarita
'When we started our spirits program in earnest five years ago, we envisioned offering a full complement of bar essentials,' says JC Tetreault, Trillium cofounder, who mentions rum, vodka, and whiskey, including bourbon and single malt, as examples. 'This breadth of product enables us to offer handcrafted cocktails for our guests, as well as fuel the development of these new canned beverages.' Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up Available now at Trillium locations are a canned rum punch and margarita, both utilizing Trillium spirits. Lemonade and pink lemonade also dropped last week. Advertisement 'In a growing market segment full of choice, we've stuck to our roots and crafted an array of top-shelf beverages that Trillium fans and discerning consumers will appreciate,' says Mike Dyer, Trillium's VP of sales and marketing. The plan is for Trillium to begin offering the new canned products at select retail establishments, including bars and restaurants. And of course, if you want a juicy Fort Point Pale Ale, Trillium still makes that, too. Roadrunner's collaboration beer Advertisement If you're heading to a show at Roadrunner later this summer, there's a new beer there to match the venue. Bent Water Brewing has teamed up with the Brighton music venue on a beer called Backstage Pils, exclusively available at Roadrunner shows. Upcoming shows where the beer will be featured include Megan Moroney (Aug. 2), Mac DeMarco (Sept. 9), and Alex G (Sept. 11). A portion of sales will go toward ZUMIX, a Boston music nonprofit. Honey Dew and Vitamin Sea combined on a doughnut inspired by Vitamin Sea's Pool Water seltzer. HANDOUT Honey Dew's Pool Water Doughnut In doughnut news, Honey Dew and Massachusetts brewery Vitamin Sea are combining on a doughnut inspired by Vitamin Sea's Pool Water seltzer. The doughnut is vanilla-blue frosted with a lemon cake base, and is as vibrant a blue as the namesake seltzer. Gary Dzen can be reached at
