#no for real and I recently opted in for package delivery

[bighornerherder]

This payment is WILD, the package is just a dinky old poker chip. Anyway, wish me luck everyone!

[railrecipee]

Food in Train with RailRecipe: Elevate Your Travel Dining Experience

Traveling by train in India offers a unique opportunity to witness the country's rich landscapes and vibrant cultures. However, one challenge during long train journeys is finding good, hygienic food. RailRecipe addresses this concern by delivering delicious meals right to your train seat, enhancing your journey with convenience and culinary delight. Let’s explore how RailRecipe simplifies food in train with its user-friendly process and highlights from satisfied customers.

Easy and Convenient Food Ordering Process

Ordering food with RailRecipe is designed to be straightforward and efficient. Here’s how you can place your order:

Visit the RailRecipe Website or App: Start by visiting the RailRecipe website or download the RailRecipe app from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

Enter Your PNR Number: Input your PNR (Passenger Name Record) number on the RailRecipe platform. This allows the system to fetch your travel details, including train number, coach, and seat information.

Browse the Menu: RailRecipe offers a diverse menu catering to various tastes and preferences. Whether you crave North Indian, South Indian, Chinese, Continental, or local specialties, RailRecipe ensures a wide selection. You can also choose from a range of beverages and desserts to complement your meal.

Customize Your Order: Select your desired dishes from the menu and customize your order according to your preferences.

Select Delivery Station: Choose the station where you want your meal to be delivered. This ensures that your food arrives fresh and hot at the right time.

Choose Payment Method: RailRecipe provides multiple payment options, including debit/credit cards, net banking, UPI, and cash on delivery. Select the payment method that suits you best.

Track Your Order: Once your order is placed, you can track its status in real-time through the RailRecipe app or website. Receive updates on preparation and delivery so you know when to expect your meal.

Enjoy Your Meal: Sit back and relax as your delicious meal is delivered directly to your seat at the designated station. Enjoy restaurant-quality food while on the move.

Customer Positive Reviews

RailRecipe has garnered praise from numerous satisfied customers who have experienced its services firsthand. Here are some testimonials highlighting their positive experiences:

Anita Sharma: “During my journey from Delhi to Mumbai, I used RailRecipe for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and taste of the food delivered to my seat. It was hot, fresh, and delicious. I highly recommend RailRecipe to all travelers.”

Ravi Kumar: “As a frequent traveler, I rely on RailRecipe for my food needs on trains. The ordering process is seamless, and the variety of food options is impressive. The meals always arrive on time and are of excellent quality. RailRecipe has become my go-to for train travel.”

Sneha Patel: “I recently traveled from Bangalore to Hyderabad and opted for RailRecipe for my meals. I was impressed by the prompt delivery and the hygiene maintained in packaging. The food tasted great, and I felt reassured knowing I could rely on RailRecipe for quality food on trains.”

Ajay Mehta: “RailRecipe exceeded my expectations with their efficient service and delicious food offerings. I had reservations about ordering food online for train journeys, but RailRecipe proved to be reliable. The customer support was also commendable. I will definitely use RailRecipe for all my future trips.”

Priya Singh: “Traveling with children can be challenging, but RailRecipe made our journey from Kolkata to Patna much easier. The kids loved the food options available, and I appreciated the convenience and reliability of RailRecipe. It’s a game-changer for train travel.”

Conclusion

RailRecipe has revolutionized the dining experience on train journeys across India. With its simple ordering process, diverse menu choices, and commitment to quality and customer satisfaction, RailRecipe ensures that passengers enjoy delicious and hygienic meals without any hassle. Positive feedback from customers underscores the reliability and excellence of RailRecipe’s service.

Next time you embark on a train journey, leave your food worries behind and rely on RailRecipe to provide you with a delightful dining experience. Whether you're traveling solo, with family, or for business, RailRecipe ensures that your journey is accompanied by delicious meals delivered right to your seat. Enjoy the convenience and culinary delight that RailRecipe brings to train travel in India.

RailRecipe truly turns every train journey into a delightful culinary adventure. From the moment you board the train until you reach your destination, you can rely on RailRecipe to provide you with meals that are not only delicious but also meet high standards of hygiene. This service makes traveling by train in India a much more pleasant experience, ensuring that you can focus on the journey while RailRecipe takes care of your dining needs.

So, embark on your next train journey with the assurance that RailRecipe has your culinary needs covered. Enjoy the scenic beauty of India while relishing the delectable meals delivered by RailRecipe, making your travel experience truly delightful.

[sweetenthusiasthideout]

Sending Across the Country with Confidence with Urgent Couriers' Nationwide Delivery

In today's fast-paced world, the need for efficient and reliable delivery services has never been greater. Whether you're a business owner sending important documents or an individual needing to get a special gift to a loved one across the country, a nationwide couriers NZ service can be a lifesaver. Recently, I had the opportunity to experience Urgent Couriers' Nationwide Delivery service, and I'm here to share my positive experience.

My situation involved needing to send a valuable piece of artwork to my sister living in Christchurch, all the way from Auckland. As the artwork was both sentimental and fragile, I needed a courier service that offered not only speed but also guaranteed safe handling. Urgent Couriers' Nationwide Delivery service stood out with its commitment to both aspects.

Here's a breakdown of my experience:

Nationwide Reach and Convenient Booking

Urgent Couriers' nationwide network ensures they can deliver to virtually any location in New Zealand, which provided peace of mind knowing my artwork could reach my sister regardless of the distance. Booking the service was simple and could be done online or through a phone call. The user-friendly interface and helpful customer service team made the process smooth and efficient.

Transparency and Tracking Options

One of the features I appreciated most was the transparency offered throughout the process. Urgent Couriers provides clear pricing information and various delivery options, allowing you to choose the one that best suits your needs and budget. Additionally, real-time tracking allowed me to monitor the progress of my package in real-time, providing valuable peace of mind.

Secure Handling and Timely Delivery

Knowing my artwork was fragile, I opted for their additional secure handling service. This ensured the package was treated with extra care throughout its journey. Upon delivery, I was pleased to find the artwork arrived at my sister's doorstep in pristine condition, exactly within the promised timeframe.

Overall Impression: A Reliable and Trustworthy Partner

Overall, my experience with Urgent Couriers' Nationwide Delivery service was exceptional. They provided a reliable, efficient, and secure way to get my valuable package across the country. Their commitment to transparency, tracking options, and secure handling instilled confidence throughout the process. If you're looking for a nationwide courier service in New Zealand that prioritizes both speed and safety, I highly recommend Urgent Couriers. They offer a trustworthy and stress-free solution for all your delivery needs.

[xcherry-popx]

explain something u like

Before starting an Etsy shop, you may want to have a couple of products prepared in advance. While you don't have to have list any products immediately, as soon as you name and create your Etsy shop, it will take you directly to the "Create a listing " page, so it's nice to be able to start right away.

When you list an item, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. First, each item costs $0.20 to list for 4 months. This is each listing, not each page - if you have 5 items available, and list them under one page, it'll cost $1. However, if you sell them together, they would cost $0.20 to list. It's like the difference between buying 5 pens individually from the same store and buying 5 pens in a package.

Next, you'll have to include certain information in your listing. You'll need to designate what the product is, along with how and when it was made. Also, include the material it is made of. For example, a painting may specify that is an Oil painting on canvas drawn in 2019 by artist John Doe. You will also need to give the item a title and a description - look up Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for the best way to include keywords that will allow your works to be found. Additionally, you should periodically browse Etsy like you are a customer and pay attention to the suggested search results - this tells you what people are looking for.

Speaking of making sure your listings are found, you should remove listings every four months and relist them. Not only do listings expire every 4 months, even if you automatically renew them, the Etsy search algorithm prioritizes more recent listings. Additionally, if you keep paying to renew items that won't sell, you may end up paying more in fees than the product itself is worth.

When listing a product, you will need to include a photo of your work. Ideally, the product should be photographed in natural light, so take your photos outside or near a window. Watch for cast shadows. Typically, you will want to lay the object on a flat surface, although many choose to include another photo of the item being physically held as a way to verify that it is real and not an auto-generated product.

Another thing to look for is the price of the object. There are a couple fees aside from the $0.20 listing fee mentioned earlier. These include a 6.5% transaction fee on what you've charged for the item, a 6.5% fee on the amount you have charged for shipping/gift wrapping, a 3% plus $0.25 Etsy payment processing fee charged on the total transaction cost, and either 12% or 15% of the sales price of items bought from offsite ads, depending on if you've reached some arbitrary milestone in your shop sales that I don't remember off the top of my head. You can opt out if your business is small enough, but I just assume 15% may be taken off to be safe in my calculations. These fees must be factored into the price of your product to ensure you actually make a profit, not even including all of your initial product costs.

Once you decide a price, check the prices of similar items. Make sure you aren't charging too high, or worse (for you), too low. In these cases, reconsider the amount you want to be your profit, and redo your calculations accordingly.

Ideally, your product will arrive safe and on time after shipping. To ensure that this is the case, insure and track the package, and share this tracking info with the client. You may also want to require a signature upon delivery and to contact the client after they've received your product.

Anyway thank you anon for giving me an excuse to organize my notes for my future Etsy shop lmao

[iwillgiveyoumyhappiness]

전웅, Jeon Woong

anonymous asked:

I suddenly had an idea where you text your number neighbour and it turns into a sweet and hella flirty text flirtationship and one day you two decide to meet up for real and they are the cutest person you have ever seen?? It sounds cute to me aaah -1102 :)

Group: AB6IX

Member: Woong

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She would hate to admit her dissatisfaction with life to anyone, but at the same time, she wanted to rant and scream about it. 

It wasn’t that she hated life itself, nowhere near being depressed and filled to the brim with self-loathing, it was just that sometimes living as an adult was the hardest thing to accomplish. Between bills, rent, deadlines and all of the above, it often weighed on her mind. 

In summary: she was being crushed by a mountain of things to do and she had no escape or outlet for her frustrations. She was drowning in the common grind and it was draining her. The dark circles under her eyes were proof enough of that. 

That’s why when she saw a sign hanging out of her across-the-hall neighbor’s door that said: “I’m bored, single and lonely—text if you are, too” with a big smiley face and a phone number, she was of half a mind to actually accept the offer. 

She stared at the sign for a moment, contemplating. She tilted her head from side to side, almost as if searching for any trickery that could’ve been hidden there. 

Nothing. Just a piece of cardboard stuck onto the door with blindingly fluorescent duct tape. Maybe the handwriting was a little messy, but other than that, she didn’t see any reason to be suspicious. 

With a shrug, she pulled her phone out of her pocket, taking a quick picture of the sign. She’d forget the number if she didn’t have some sort of memory of it now, she knew that much. 

She wouldn’t call right away. She wasn’t that desperate for something outside of the norm that she’d text him that quickly. At least... She didn’t think so. 

Though, it came to her attention that she could’ve been wrong when she realized that after cooking up dinner for herself, the first thing she did was open up a text conversation with her mystery neighbor’s number. 

She’d never met her neighbor before, if she was being honest. Which—in this situation—she considered a good thing. He’d moved in just recently and she’d only caught brief glimpses of him when they both left for work in the mornings.

They didn’t even end up leaving the building together. He always took the stairs, but she opted for the elevator since she was a self-proclaimed zombie when she first woke up. 

Accepting her fate, she huffed out an, “I’m insane” before typing out what she hoped would be a good opener.

Hey.

Sure, it wasn’t the most interesting thing to say, but it was always a reliable ice-breaker, in her opinion. She waited for a moment before three familiar dots started hopping about near the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. 

Sorry, who’s this? 

That was to be expected, but still, it made her roll her eyes a little. 

Haha! XD Sorry about that. I’m your neighbor from apartment 24.

Oh, hi! How’d you get my number? 

She furrowed her brows. She went into her picture gallery, tapping the picture she’d taken of the sign outside his door. She sent it with that caption: “This is how”. 

About a minute passed before be replied back with:

Oh my God. 

My friends came over last night super drunk, so I bet that was them. That has ‘Kim Donghyun’ written all over it.

Her eyes widened. 

Oh, she typed back. Well, this is awkward. 

A little bit, yeah. 

She could feel her cheeks heating up with embarrassment. 

I guess I’ll just go then. 

She honestly didn’t expect a reply back at all, but the one she received back shocked her even more than anything she could’ve thought up. 

Wait a moment. Shouldn’t I be the one to decide that? I mean, you texted me first, after all. 

Her interest was piqued. 

And how are you going to decide that, sir? 

Send me a selfie. That’ll help me decide. 

The thought ran through her head to mess with him a little. 

Oh? Are you a very shallow person, then? she asked. 

The answer was fast, no break in between. It was a rapid-fire conversation, in a way, all initial awkwardness having melted away. 

Why do you think so?

It seems to me like your trying to decide my worth by how pretty I am. 

Who says you’re pretty?

Who says I’m not? 

Their playful banter went on for about two more hours before they realized that they were getting nowhere. And that it was almost midnight. 

Huh. Well, I haven’t succeeded in getting a picture of you.

And I haven’t gotten one of you, she replied. So, we’re both a little stuck, aren’t we?

Guess we’ll just have to continue this conversation at a later date, then. 

Guess we will. 

Oh, by the way! You should take the sign off your door. 

Why? You don’t want me talking to anyone else? 

She chuckled at the bold response, nibbling her bottom lip in concentration while she tried to think of an answer. She kept wavering between something a little coy and something equally as forward. They both had their drawbacks. 

What if I don’t want you to? What’re you going to do about it?

There was too long of a pause between messages. She groaned to herself, “I knew I shouldn’t have chosen the gusty one.” Just as the words left her mouth and she was about to toss her phone on the other side of the couch, her notification bell dinged. 

She stared at her phone with a mixture of surprise and hesitance. 

Guess I better go take that sign off, then. Hate to disappoint a pretty neighbor.

How do you know I’m pretty?

How do I know you’re not?

Maybe her answer wasn’t so bad after all. 

That’s how they remained for weeks on end. Despite living directly across from each other, neither of them had taken the jump off of the proverbial cliff to visit each other. 

She knew it would be easy to do so—stand up off the couch, walk a few feet across the hallway and knock on the door—simple as that. But there was something holding her back; an undeniable force. 

Sometimes, she even made the stretch to run back into her apartment if she saw him coming. Probably making herself look like a complete fool to any witnesses, but she felt it was worth it. It was as if she liked him so much that the very thought of him terrified her. 

It was a strange, twisted feeling that she could quite place. 

He made her chest tighten and her stomach do way too many uncomfortable back-flips, and she didn’t even really know what he looked like. Blurry glances and uncomfortable side-long looks from out of her peripherals didn’t give her a very good make on his features. 

But for whatever reason... That had absolutely no baring on the way she felt. 

She didn’t even really know what she was feeling. Just weird.  

She supposed a big reason she was scared about meeting him in person—despite him having suggested it a couple of times—is that she was afraid that he wouldn’t like her as much in person. 

They could be all fun and flirty with each other over the phone, but she knew she would buckle the second she came face-to-face with him. She was worried she would disappoint him if they met. 

She could be cool and collected for a distance, but if she met him, what if she wasn’t as pretty as he expected? What if she wasn’t as charming as she was over text? What if, what if, what if. It was a frustrating cycle. 

And underneath it all, there was an underlying fear that she would be disappointed by him as well. What if he was this fun, slightly awkward, likable person over the phone, but in reality, he turned out to be a massive asshole?

She was worried about not living up to expectations, but she was also worried about being let down, silly as it was.

She flopped down on her bed, exhausted after a day that she thought was too long. Getting reprimanded always took a lot out of her, especially when she wasn’t even clear on what she did wrong. Sad as it was, she’d gotten used to the verbal abuse to the point that she was almost numb to it. 

A familiar brrrring made her head pop up from her mountain of pillows. 

She glanced at the clock. Almost 10 at night. She walked to the front door, leaning toward the peep-hole. She couldn’t make anyone out. 

“Hello?” she called through the wood. “Is anyone there?” Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out, reading the familiar contact name of: ‘Neighbor Boy’. She knew his name—a pretty one, Jeon Woong—but she still refused to change his contact info. 

He would always be Neighbor Boy to her. 

She unlocked her phone and read the message in her head. It was stupid, but she’d always played around with different tones of voices in her thoughts. What does he really sound like? she wondered.

Hey, there’s someone at your door?? I don’t recognize him, but he looks like  a delivery man. 

She furrowed her brows. 

A delivery man this late? Still, with a shrug she shot back a quick, “Thanks, hot-stuff”—a nickname she’d given him that she would only ever use over the phone; if she said it out loud, she’d explode with embarrassment—and opened the door.

What she expected was a package to be laid at her feet. What she got instead was a bouquet of vibrant irises shoved in her face, obscuring her view of whomever was on the other end of it.

She raised her hand and pushing the bouquet out of her nose, sneezing right after. She tried to shoot the mystery-florist a look, but they’d covered their face. 

She cleared her throat. “Excuse me?” she said. 

The person—a man, she assumed by the physique—stayed quiet, his face hidden behind the fragrant purple petals. Slowly, he pulled the arrangement down, revealing his face inch-by-inch.

He had pale, clear skin, the softest, floppiest-looking hair, a sharp jaw-line, a nose that rounded out cutely at the tip, naturally pouty lips and soft, kind eyes that were painted with the most beautiful shade of milk chocolate. His ears were stained with a bright, embarrassed red. 

Her eyes widened. Without any words being exchanged, she knew. She just knew who this person in front of her was. 

“Hot-stuff?” she breathed out, the nickname unintentionally slipping out. She tried the play it cool, but it was hard when her neighbor turned out to be literally the most attractive person to breathe air. 

At least... To her, he was. 

He gave a shy smile. “Hi, Gorgeous,” he chuckled adorably, returning the nickname. His tone was even better than she’d imagined. Not too deep, not to high. Slightly velvety, she’d say. A solid baritone. 

He rubbed the back of his neck, gulping visibly. It was hard to believe that this cutie in front of her was the same forward and confident tease she’d been chatting with for a few weeks now.

He cleared his throat. “I know this is kinda sudden,” he started off, “but I just really wanted to meet up with you, and well...” He held the flowers out to her, avoiding eye contact. “We were both taking too long.” 

Her eyes widened a little. “Oh,” she stuttered dumbly. “Oh.” The realization finally dawned on her to take the bouquet he was so delicately offering to her. “Irises,” she said, taking them into her arms and giving them a quick sniff. 

“They’re very pretty,” she told him, nibbling her bottom lip. She was never the one who received flowers. Usually, she’d be the one giving them out. It felt nice to be doted on, for once. “Thank you.”

He nodded, trying to keep his smile at a minimum. It wasn’t working. “No problem,” he said, shifting his weight from the balls of his feet to his heels periodically, giving off the vibe of a child waiting at the bus-stop. “I just... I thought you deserved something cooler than roses,” he admitted. Another precious chuckle. “So I Googled the meaning of different flowers.” 

She couldn’t help but laugh at that, successfully breaking through any tension that they might’ve had. “Oh, yeah?” she asked. “And what did doctor Google say about Irises?” 

“Hope,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets.

She quirked a brow. “Hope, huh? Hope for what?” 

He took a deep breath, seemingly trying to gain a little courage. “Hope that you’ll agree to become my friend. And hope that if you like me enough as a friend, you’ll want to date me.” 

Her jaw dropped.

He gestured to the bouquet. “That’s why I got those flowers,” he said. He gave her a heart-melting smile. “I was hoping to brainwash you into liking the me outside the screen.” 

She looked down at her feet, a small smile playing on her lips. “Can I tell you a secret?” she asked softly. He nodded. 

She leaned forward with her hand cupped around her mouth, like she was going to reveal a grand truth or tell an old tale. He leaned in too, turned his head so that his ear was angled toward her; he didn’t want to miss a word, already stuck on her voice.

“I already do,” she said simply. “I like the fact that he’s just as awkward and nervous as I am in real life. I like the fact that he’s trying to woo me. I like the fact that he Googles things he doesn’t understand fully, ‘cause bro, me too. I like the fact that he makes me laugh and I like the fact that he’s convenient.”

He pulled away with furrowed brows. “Convenient?” he echoed.

She nodded, a grin on her face. “For sure!” she said. “If I end up liking the real you enough to date you, I’ll only have to go across the hall for date-night.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t get much more convenient than that.” 

His cheeks heated up a little bit. “Well, then...” he said. “I guess I’ll just have to try really hard to get you to like the real me enough. It’d be a shame to pass up such a golden opportunity.” 

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Maybe I love him. Just maybe. 

Hey, 1102! I hope things are going well for you and that work’s not killing you too much. Keep fighting and being your cool-self and it’ll all work out! 

This is a pretty late posting, but thank you so much for this request. It was literally the cutest and I loved writing it. I, too, have been swamped as of late, so I haven’t had as much time for writing recently. :’) Lord, give me strength.

Have a good day/evening/night!

[phantasticworks]

Special Delivery

I wrote this based on a prompt I found on @dailyau which I thought was really cute. I’m not sure I did the prompt justice as I’ve been in a bit of a writing slump but here it is! 

read on ao3

Words: 7.6k

Description: Dan Howell definitely did not order this package, but the man who did is definitely very interesting. And the object he’s ordered is also... interesting.

Warnings: Nothing really, there’s one masturbation scene and references to sex toys but nothing explicit!

If there was one thing Dan could complain about, it was the fact that his Amazon deliveries always came at an ungodly time of morning. It wasn’t like he slept that late, but on the days that he did, it always seemed like those were the very days a package was delivered. And he couldn’t just sleep through it; the way the apartment complex handled package delivery forced him to get out of bed when he heard the buzzing to let the delivery guy come upstairs. It was totally inconvenient of course, but for some reason Dan didn’t feel that he should just stop online shopping. Where else was he meant to get cool video game character collectibles and anime merch?

Despite his total aversion to waking early, it was unavoidable on this particular Thursday, because at some ungodly hour of the morning, the buzzer goes off. He groans into his pillow, cursing every god and goddess he can think of, then realizing that maybe he should be asking them to curse the delivery guy instead. Rather than wallow in his misery and let the incessant buzzing continue, he shoves himself out from under his duvet and goes to the front door where the intercom was located.

“Yeah?” He says, putting as much malice and hatred into the one syllable word. It was early, too early for kindness and things like manners.

“Er- I have a package?” The voice says, sounding timid. Dan figures it’s probably someone new, as he generally didn’t have people who were this afraid in the face of his anger.

“Alright,” Dan smashes the button to allow him inside before moving over to the kitchen. If he was already awake he might as well make some coffee and get his day started.

As he goes through the motions of turning the kettle on, he begins pondering which of his purchases was meant to arrive today. The more he thought of it, however, the more confused he was. He didn’t remember ordering anything that was meant to get here this soon. The last thing he had ordered was a cool jacket he found online, and he had only ordered that two days ago. It definitely hadn’t been long enough for it to arrive yet.

He sighs and just opts to wait and see what it is. Sometimes when he was lonely and drinking by himself he would order things and had real no recollection of them until they arrived, so it was like giving himself a little surprise every time. He hadn’t had one of his pity solo drinking parties recently, though, so again, he’s quite puzzled.

As he pours his coffee into the Hello Kitty mug (it held more liquid, okay?) there was a knock at the door, indicating the surprise package was finally there. He tries not to be too annoyed with the delivery guy, as he was just doing his job, but it was difficult not to be as it was because of him that Dan was up at such an ungodly hour. After checking the time, he notices that it’s actually already nine; so maybe it’s not like super early, but it was early for him.

“Sign here,” the delivery man says the second Dan opens the door. Dan quirks an eyebrow but shrugs and takes the clipboard, signing his name neatly on the line. “Thanks, here you go.” The man seems to shrink in on himself as he hands the box to Dan, and suddenly he feels a little guilty for being sort of hateful to him when he buzzed him in. Before he gets the chance to apologize, however, the man is gone, down the hall and out of sight.

“Okay…” Dan mutters to himself as he closes the door and carries the package to the kitchen. He really didn’t know what was in this, and it was much too small to be the jacket he had ordered, but he assumed it was probably yet another one of those dumb things he’d ordered on a whim without properly thinking it through.

Taking a knife from the drawer beside his sink, he slices across the top of the box, barely glancing at the label in his hurry to get it open. After successfully opening it without any damage to himself, he flips it over, shaking the contents out. It’s only after he flips it that he thinks of the possible repercussions of this, but luckily, what falls out sounds very plasticky.

Now, Dan was certain he’d ordered his fair share of useless things in his life, but he was pretty certain he would remember ordering a new dildo.

Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly what this is.

After a little closer inspection, Dan realizes that although it is definitely phallic-shaped, it’s also got a very distinctive pickle-shape to it. So, unless he was just projecting his desire to get laid on this object, it was decidedly not a sex toy. That in no way lessens his apprehension of the object, however. If anything, it just makes him warier.

Slowly, as if moving too quickly would bring him some sort of pain, he slowly picks up the object to inspect it. It was definitely nothing he’d ever seen in his life, that was for sure. After flipping it over a few times, he realizes there’s little holes on one side, indicating that it should make some sort of sound. This just makes him even more curious, so naturally when he finds a little battery compartment with a slip of plastic to pull out, he does it almost immediately.

Now, when he presses the button on the side, he’s definitely not expecting much. It’s a pickle, he’s decided, so really all he expects is maybe a Rick and Morty reference. The ungodly sound that leaves the phallic-shaped device is absolutely not that, however, so when it begins yodeling, he drops it immediately, almost flinging it to the floor in his haste to get away from it.

“What the absolute fuck,” he breathes, staring down at it with wide eyes. It’s nearly vibrating on the floor as it continues making the sound, and if he was less shocked, he’d probably have stomped on it to destroy it.

Now, fully deducing that he had not been the one to order this cursed object, he quickly grabs the box from the counter and flips it over, reading the name on the label.

Phil Lester

Well, whoever Phil Lester was could probably be considered a creepy fucker in Dan’s book, just from this one object. After realizing that the pickle has finally gone silent, Dan debates what he should do. He glances down at the label on the box again, and suddenly the mix up makes sense. On the second line of the recipient address, at the end of the line, is the numbers 906. Dan’s apartment was 609. That explains the mix up, at least on the delivery man’s part.

Sighing loudly, Dan debates what he should do. Would it be acceptable to call the delivery service and just demand they come retrieve it and deliver it to the proper person themselves? Or would it be easier on everyone if he just sucked it up and went up a couple floors to deliver the package himself?

After several moments of heavy debate, he groans before stomping to his bedroom to put some proper clothes on. If he was going to be a good person and deliver the damn thing, he was going to have to put some actual clothes on first. It was only as he was tugging on a pair of sweatpants that he realizes he answered the door in just his boxers earlier. Maybe that explains some of the awkwardness of the delivery man, actually.

After tugging on a white long-sleeved tee, he grabs his phone and the box, sticking the pickle back in with as much distaste as he can. It really was such an offending object. He honestly didn’t know who this Phil Lester guy was, but he imagined he’d be meeting a shifty fifty-year-old pervert in about five minutes, if he were to guess.

The journey up to the ninth floor of his building is uneventful, as most people are probably at work right now, on a Thursday morning, so he didn’t run into any other residents of the apartment complex. He’s thankful for this, actually, because he doesn’t think he can handle anymore forced conversation then he absolutely has to, and this interaction of his special delivery was going to fill his socializing quota for the day.

He’s writing a whole script in his head of exactly what to say to the man he was about to meet, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for why he opened it without reading the name. Honestly, though, he’d been so traumatized by the whole pickle experience, he felt that he didn’t really owe anyone an explanation. If anything, this Phil guy would owe him payments for a therapist after this.

Having worked himself up into a proper state of irritation when he reaches the door with the number 906 on it, he knocks three times, sharply. He stands with his arms crossed, the small box clutched in his left hand and tucked under his arm. Impatiently, he taps his foot as he waits, fueling his annoyance for this whole situation as he waits for the door to open.

There’s the sound of footsteps and then the door is swinging open, and Dan has a glare on his face, ready to chew out this absolute freak for ordering such a cursed thing, but the words die in his throat as the occupant comes into view. The man standing there raises an eyebrow at Dan, clearly wondering who the hell he is and what he wants, although that’s not what catches Dan’s attention. He can’t be much older than Dan, maybe a few years, but he’s got to be one of the most attractive men he’d ever laid eyes on.

He’s got black hair that looks like it’s been dipped in ink, quiffed up away from his forehead, which is a little wide. Distracting from that, however, is his glasses, which sit slightly skewed on his nose, making him only that much more endearing, honestly. Dan’s eyes dart down to take in his clothes, and he nearly snorts at the NASA shirt and black jeans. He looked adorable and slightly dorky, and absolutely Dan’s type.

Dan nearly swears as he realizes that the man before him is very much not a pervert, but then he realizes he’s just standing there staring at him and not speaking. So, like the idiot he apparently is, he remembers the box in his hand and shoves it forward, nearly hitting the man in the process. “Here,” he mumbles out.

The man, Phil, he’s assuming, takes the box, glancing at it in confusion before his blue eyes dart back up to meet Dan’s. “Um…” He starts, looking a little lost for words.

“Sorry, uh-“ Dan shakes himself. Get it together. You can’t lose your shit just because he’s cute, you know. “The post came, and I online shop a lot, so I just assumed it was mine and didn’t read the name before opening it, so yeah, I’m here to return it.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants, chewing his lip thoughtfully before nodding to the box. “Uh, interesting buy there, though.” Then he blushes, realizing how weird it was for him to actually know what it was that this stranger had ordered.

The ebony haired man looks confused for a moment before he pulls one of the flaps on the box open, inspecting the contents of the box. “Oh,” he gasps out, reaching in and pulling it out, his face lighting up. He catches Dan’s uncomfortable gaze then, and something crosses his face before his cheeks flush. He must’ve realized how strange the object looked at first sight, and by the look on his face now, he was embarrassed that someone else had been unfortunate enough to open it. “I am so sorry, oh my god- I know this looks like a- well, um…” He presses his lips together and looks down at it before quickly dropping it into the box.

Dan, more comfortable with the situation now that Phil’s embarrassed too, shrugs. “Looks a bit like a dildo, mate.” He smirks when Phil’s eyebrows shoot up, their gazes meeting before Phil quickly looks away.

“Erm, yeah.” Phil sounds incredibly uncomfortable, and Dan almost feels guilty for saying it. Almost.

“I’m Dan, by the way,” he says after a moment of silence. He doesn’t hold his hand out for a handshake, being the awkward human he is, but Phil just nods.

“I’m Phil, but I guess you figured that out,” he laughs quietly, bringing his hand up to scratch the back of his neck in what Dan thinks is probably a nervous habit.

Dan smirks at this before nodding. “Yeah. Nice to meet you, Phil.” Considering his job done, Dan takes one last appraising look at Phil before smirking once more, lifting a hand up to give a little salute. “See you around, mate. Have fun with your…well, you know.”

If it’s even possible, Phil’s cheeks flush even more, bringing Dan to stifle a giggle as he walks away. Just as he’s taking a few strides away from the door, he hears the other man’s voice call his name. Turning back around, he hums in question. Phil hesitates before holding up the box. “This is for a video. I don’t just buy yodeling pickles for myself.” He looks very concerned as he says this, as if he’s very concerned about what Dan leaves thinking about him.

Dan only smiles, shrugging. “Sure thing, Phil. Have a good day.”

He’s not positive, but he thinks that just before the door shuts, he hears a quiet, “I promise I’m not weird.”

Either way, he knows this man is weird, but he thinks he might just like that.

---

It’s nearly three weeks before another incident happens. This time, however, Dan feels that it’s almost the universe’s way of telling him that he should’ve done more than just stare at Phil last time, like maybe ask for his number, or something intelligent. Regardless, this time when Dan receives the package, he’s careful to read the name on it first. He almost calls the delivery guy back to tell him he’d brought it to the wrong door yet again, but he decides against it. After all, he can’t look at Phil if the delivery guy takes the package to him.

So instead, he pulls on his shoes and grabs his phone before making his way up three floors to room 906 yet again. He’s humming to himself as he goes, in a surprisingly good mood for once. The delivery hadn’t been at an ungodly hour for once, so he was actually quite pleased with the day’s events. Maybe this time he’ll be less sleep deprived and more able to hold an actual conversation with the cute stranger who orders questionable things.

He raps on the door three times, stepping back and rocking back and forth on his heels as he waits patiently for the door to open. This time, he promises himself, he’ll ask for Phil’s phone number, maybe flirt a little more. He didn’t honestly think he had a chance, but there was really nothing stopping him. He was in a reasonably good place for once, so it made perfect sense for him to shamelessly flirt with the cute guy on the ninth floor, and who knows, maybe it’ll go somewhere.

All of his optimism comes crashing down, however, when the door swings open, revealing a man who is very much not Phil. And as if his mind has blanked and he doesn’t know how to properly speak to a stranger, the only thing Dan can think of is-

“You aren’t Phil.”

The man, who’s shirtless, Dan notices with a blush, regards him with a blank expression before letting out a sharp laugh. “Well, no, I’m not.” He sounds friendly enough, but something about the fact that he’s in Phil’s flat, shirtless, really annoys Dan. His subconscious helpfully adds that he doesn’t look like that when he’s shirtless, and Dan struggles to shove that voice away.

He realizes that the Adonis look alike is standing there looking at him, an impatient look on his face as he waits for Dan to speak. “Oh, er-“ he quickly hands over the package. “Phil’s package got sent to my flat again, I was just bringing it up to him.” He shrugs then, tucking his hands in his pockets.

Adonis looks down at the package, a look of understanding on his face. “Oh, thanks! What did you say your name was?” He asks, glancing up at Dan with an easy, polite smile.

“Er- I didn’t,” Dan mumbles awkwardly, mentally slapping himself as he takes a step back. “Anyway, have a nice day!”

As quickly as possible, and ignoring the confused, “Wait!” thrown his way, Dan hurries to the elevator, seriously wishing he could crawl under his blankets for the next month after that embarrassment.

How could he let himself seriously get his hopes up over some guy he didn’t even know? Like sure he’s cute and probably dorky if his NASA shirt and stupid mismatched socks and glasses were any indication, and maybe he did make interesting online purchases that made Dan want to know more, but he couldn’t honestly expect anything after only this much information. He forces himself to keep this in mind as he goes back to his own flat, reminding himself again that he needed to let it go. It wasn’t a big deal; hell, it wasn’t even a small one. He was just delivering packages that had been misdelivered in the first place, and if the cute recipient had a boyfriend that looked like a Greek god, then that was really none of his business, was it?

---

“Fuck,” Dan whimpers. He was currently in what some could consider a compromising position, but as he lived alone and was a twenty-seven-year old man, he felt that it was well within his rights to be laying in his bed at eleven on a Friday morning, working a hand over himself in the safety of his room. He was chewing on his bottom lip harshly, trying to quiet himself as much as possible. He knew he was alone, but sometimes whenever he had the occasional hookup he was reminded of how loud he was in the bedroom, a fact that made him incredibly self-conscious. So sometimes when he was alone, getting himself off, he would try and train himself to be quieter. Sometimes he thought he was making a lot of practice, but then other times it would dawn on him that he just got louder as he got closer to his release, and when his head was swimming with pleasure it was difficult to focus on much else.

On this particular morning, he had been working over himself for nearly ten minutes, slightly edging himself (he had nothing better to do) and he knew his body well enough to know he was getting close. He felt incredibly wound up and he knew just a few more strokes and he’d be gone.

Just as he feels he’s about to burst, however, he’s completely interrupted by a knock on his front door. His flat wasn’t very large, and it was kind of open plan aside from the door separating the bedroom to the rest of the flat, so when someone was knocking at his door, he could hear the sound very well through his bedroom door. A little too well, if he was being honest.

Embarrassingly, even as he jumps at the sound, the thought of someone being so close, yet so unaware of what he’s doing, is enough to send him over the edge. He has the common sense as the pleasure is washing over him to cover his mouth, thoroughly stifling the obnoxious whine that was breaking free as he came over his hand. He barely has any time to be disgusted with himself before the knocking has returned, and he scrambles to get up and clean himself up.

“Goddammit,” he mutters sourly as he grabs a dirty t-shirt from the floor, cleaning himself quickly before tucking himself back into his pants neatly. He cringes as he passes the mirror by his bedroom door, catching a good look of himself as he does. His hair was a right mess and his face was flushed with pleasure. There was little doubt what he’d just gotten up to, but there was literally no time to waste as he had to go answer the door.

He’s muttering to himself, cursing out whoever is on the other side of the door as he walks over, because whoever it is has to be the most inconsiderate, selfish- he swings the door open then, and his inner monologue hushes.

There, looking rather sheepish, is Phil Lester. He waves shyly, looking a little awkward as he does it. “Hi, there.”

Dan had honestly almost forgotten all about the incident with Phil, as it had been about a month and a half since he had taken the package up to his flat, only to be met with Adonis’ twin instead of Phil himself. During that time, he’d come to terms with how silly he had been to feel so attracted to the man, and after he realized that it hadn’t taken him long at all to forget about the whole thing entirely, or at least repress it enough for it to be manageable.

Granted, in this time of repressing Dan had plenty of time to remember stupid things, like how Phil’s glasses sat just so on his nose, and the fact that he had worn mismatched socks, one blue with pizzas all over it while the other had been green and covered in little neon flamingoes. So, really, he hadn’t completely forgotten about the stranger; but standing before him now, he realized that he had probably done him the injustice of misremembering him for how attractive he truly was.

Today, Phil stood wearing a pair of black skinny jeans like before, but unlike last time, he’s wearing a green hoodie that’s got a few well-placed holes in it, clearly a bold fashion choice, that Dan personally thinks looks fantastic. His glasses are gone this time, probably replaced with contacts, and it takes Dan a moment of just looking at him to realize he’s not empty handed. “Um… hi?” He stutters out, confused.

Phil shifts, his gaze dropping to the box. His cheeks appear a little flushed, and Dan wonders if he looks even more fucked out than he thought. He sends up a little prayer that he doesn’t have any… evidence… of his most recent activity anywhere visible on his clothes, but a discreet glance down proves that he doesn’t. “I feel this is a little backwards,” Phil laughs out awkwardly, holding the box out to Dan. “I got your package this time.”

Dan’s surprised, one, because this has happened yet again, even if it is in the opposite direction, and two, because he doesn’t really remember ordering… oh. Oh no.

As he takes the narrow package from Phil, his cheeks flush. It’s not until it’s in his hands that he realizes that there’s small strips of scotch tape holding it closed, meaning it had already been opened. This just causes him to feel even more embarrassed, because if his guess is correct, the item in this box is a little less… innocent than the one that Phil had received. One glance up at Phil, who is chewing his lips as he stares at the box, a rosy tint to his cheeks, proves that what he’s thinking is exactly what is in this box.

“Um… thank you,” Dan stammers out, his finger brushing along the tape that was carefully placed on the box.

Phil’s eyes follow this action, and he closes his eyes, taking a deep breath before opening them and bringing his gaze up to meet Dan’s. “I may have… well, I did accidentally open it, thinking it was mine. I was expecting a package I was really excited to get, and I just-“

Dan cuts him off then, a sudden flare of annoyance rising up, completely unwarranted since he’d done the exact same thing. But when he speaks his voice his bitter, and he almost immediately regrets it. “Oh, were you expecting a vibrator too?” He snaps.

He holds his breath after speaking, his eyes widening in surprise at himself. He honestly hadn’t expected that kind of reaction, even from himself. But there it was in the open, and now he just had to wait for Phil’s reaction. He waits with bated breath, pretty certain the man in front of him was about to blush and stammer out an awkward goodbye before putting as much distance between them as possible.

Since he was so certain that was the reaction he was about to get, he’s thoroughly shocked when Phil’s eyes widen before a smirk tugs at his lips and he rolls his shoulders back. “I was, actually,” he responds smoothly, crossing his arms and quirking an eyebrow, almost in challenge.

Then it’s Dan’s turn to blush, and he looks down at the box in his hands, a little more than uncomfortable with this turn of events. Sure, he can talk, but when he actually gets a response that rivals his own lewdness, he’s a little taken aback. “O-oh. Well, um… I hope you get yours soon.” He feels his face is literally about to burst into flames with how warm his cheeks are, and he almost wishes they would, just to save him from this embarrassment.

Phil leans against his doorframe then, causing Dan’s eyes to widen as he shifts a little further away as subtly as possible. His hand comes to rest on the door handle, ready to shut it but not wanting to be rude. “Mhm, me too,” Phil hums. He tilts his head then before nodding to the box in his hands. “Do you need any help with that?” He asks, his gaze heated as he waits for Dan’s response.

Apparently just this question, and the implications behind it, renders Dan a little speechless at first. He stutters out something that isn’t words before clearing his throat and shaking his head once. “I’m not- I don’t…” he shakes his head again, trying to clear his thoughts. Suddenly, a memory comes to him, one of an Adonis look-alike, shirtless, in Phil’s flat. He suddenly frowns, anger flaring up at the idea that this man is here flirting with him, when he has that to go home to. “No, I don’t need any help.” He puts as much force behind his words as he can manage, moving to close the door. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a homewrecker; he wasn’t about to continue allowing this interaction to happen when this man was clearly taken.

“Are you sure?” Phil’s smooth voice meets his ears, and Dan glares at him.

“Positive,” he hisses. “I’m sure your boyfriend would be delighted for you to help him with something like that when yours comes in, but I’m all set, thanks.” He takes the surprised look he receives as his opportunity to shut the door. “Have a nice day,” he mutters, slamming the door and sliding the lock into place, satisfied by the loud click it makes as it slides over.

Without even waiting for any sort of noise on the other side, Dan stomps to his room, tossing the package on his desk to be dealt with. Right now, he just needed a shower, and probably an Advil if his blossoming headache was anything to go by.

---

A couple uneventful days pass after the awkward interaction with Phil, giving Dan more than enough time to get over his embarrassment. Well, sort of. Maybe he lies awake at night, replaying the conversation and blushing every time he thinks about how blunt Phil had been, but honestly no one is there to prove it.

He's sat at his kitchen table on Friday, his laptop in front of him with a script for his radio show open in a word document. He was working on the show for next week, but the more he tried to focus, the more distracted he felt. His eyes would flit over to the balcony and he’d focus on the pigeons for a few minutes before his mind would wander to something else, like his rent coming due or his grandma’s birthday or-

A buzzing sound interrupts his distracted thoughts, and for a moment he’s relieved that at least now he has a good reason to be distracted. Then he’s annoyed, because he hadn’t been expecting anyone. And because of the last time he had an unexpected guest, he’s more than a little wary to go check the intercom. “Yeah?” He says carefully, pulling off the button to hear the answer.

“Er, I have a delivery to make,” the man says, and Dan groans. Maybe this was his HDMI cables he had ordered, which would be great, considering he’d waited long enough.

“Right, come on up.” Dan presses the button to unlock the door for him, shuffling over to his kitchen table to wait.

A few minutes later, there’s a sharp rap on his door. When he tentatively pulls the door open, he’s a little embarrassed to see the postman standing on the other side. It’s the same one it was over two months ago, the man who saw Dan in only his boxers that day he brought the strange pickle thing that Phil bought. Dan can’t help but frown at him, eyeing the box in his hand suspiciously as he signs for it. “Here you go, sir.” He hands the box over without fuss, and Dan nods, waving before shutting the door.

He swears loudly when he looks at the label then, seeing a name that is arguably not his own at the top of the label. Groaning, he swings the door open again, ducking his head out in search of the delivery man. “Sorry, sir? This isn’t mine.”

The uniformed man turns, a surprised look on his face. “Um…” He looks nervous, and Dan has to remind himself that this guy is new at this.

Dan holds up the box and waves it around for emphasis, hearing something within it rattle. “Yeah, this says Phil Lester, I’m not Phil Lester.”

Walking back over slowly, the man glances down at his delivery slip, then stares at the number on the door. “Sorry, this says 609. I delivered it to 609.” He shrugs then, as if there’s nothing more he can do. Dan stares down at the package and sees that he’s right; instead of 906, the address is clearly labeled with the number to his own flat. Phil likely just made a mistake typing it in, but that wasn’t Dan’s fault.

When the postman turns to walk back down the hall toward the elevator, Dan shakes his head, his eyebrows knitting together. “No, can’t you like take it up to him instead?”

The man barely looks at him, shrugging as if he feels sorry. “No, sorry, mate. I delivered it to the address specified on the package.” With that, he disappears around the corner, leaving Dan staring after him with a glare etched onto his face.

“Fucking… ugh,” Dan grumbles to himself as he walks back into his flat. Despite the fact that the postman is out of sight and cannot hear him, he slams the door, seething. How the hell was he meant to go up there and face Phil, yet again, especially after what happened just a few days ago? He couldn’t. He would die of embarrassment, he was absolutely sure of it.

Still, he couldn’t exactly keep it. He debated opening it to see what it was, almost wondering if it would even be something worth keeping. He wipes that thought away quickly, though, when he remembers what package Phil had said he was waiting on. A shudder involuntarily wracks Dan’s body, and he tries desperately to ignore the swell of arousal he feels at the thought. Nope, he was definitely not keeping it. Maybe he’d just knock on the door and leave it outside, like the coward he felt he was.

He quickly dismisses that thought as well. He knows himself well enough to know that he wouldn’t go as far as denying himself the pleasure of seeing Phil again, if only to admire his looks. He’s taken! The voice in his head reminds him. He sighs, but he knows it’s true. So, this will have to be a quick trip, strictly business.

Even with that thought, he is a bit excited as he slips his shoes on and tucks his phone in his back pocket. Just because he can’t touch doesn’t mean he can’t look. He can’t order from the menu, but he can certainly look at it.

He makes a quick trip up to the ninth floor, and when he gets to Phil’s door he knocks twice, rather loudly. Trying not to allow himself to back out now, he stuffs his empty hand in his pocket, tucking the package under his other arm as he rocks back and forth on his feet. He’s already envisioning how cute Phil will look, how perfectly hot and untouchable he’ll be, and the thought is enough to make his knees go a little weak.

However, when the door opens, he’s met with a completely different sight than the well put-together man he’d seen on the other occasions. Instead, Phil was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie from York University, and over his shoulders was a thick blanket, which he clutched with the hand he was currently not using to steady himself on the door. So, to put it bluntly, he looked like death.

Dan allows himself a moment to stare at him before he raises an eyebrow. “Not to be blunt, mate, but you look like shit,” he says eloquently, trying to hide a smile when Phil ducks his head.

“Sorry,” he croaks, his voice scratchy and hoarse. He was clearly ill, and Dan felt a strong pang of sympathy. His dulled blue eyes drop to the box Dan’s still holding, and a rosy tint appears on the apple of his cheeks.

Smiling slightly but feeling a little awkward about his earlier perverted thoughts due to Phil’s clear lack of wellbeing, Dan hands him the box. “If this keeps happening we might just have to become friends, just so this isn’t so awkward anymore,” he jokes, putting his hand in his pocket when Phil takes the box.

Phil smiles weakly, glancing down at the box. He sighs then, looking sort of resigned. “I’ll be honest, Dan, I may have put your number on the address on purpose.” He blushes as he confesses this, his gaze flicking down to the floor.

Dan, left a little speechless by this revelation, can’t really process it at first. “Sorry, you what?” He definitely didn’t understand why Phil would have done this. He didn’t seem like the type to just enjoy being an inconvenience for other people, and while Dan knew their last encounter had ended on strange note, he really didn’t think Phil would have actually done it to be flirtatious. He had a boyfriend, after all.

Nodding, Phil pushes his hair up a little, away from his forehead. “Yeah. I… I wanted an excuse to see you again.” He sounds only slightly embarrassed now but seems to grow more confident when he sees Dan’s confusion. “Obviously I’m ill and gross now, so like, that failed, but still.” He shrugs as if it isn’t a big deal, then shifts so he’s leaning more on the door.

Dan realizes he should probably leave now and let Phil rest, so he takes a step away from the door. “Oh, well… I should get going, actually. I have… yeah. I’ll let you get some rest.”

Before he can turn around, Phil steps closer. “Actually, Dan, um…” He hesitates then, before seemingly making up his mind. “Could I get your number? I know we don’t know each other, but I’d love to get coffee sometimes.” His voice is hopeful, and Dan is so inclined to say yes, but all he can think of is the shirtless man who opened the door that one day. Dan couldn’t comprehend that Phil was actually willing to ruin it with that man, and although Dan was sufficiently jealous of the boyfriend for getting Phil all for himself, he wasn’t going to knowingly be part of an affair.

Deciding to just be honest, Dan sighs. “Phil… I would, but I can’t… do that…” He trails off, but at Phil’s disappointed expression, he rushes to explain. “I mean, sure, if you were single! I absolutely would. But… I’ve been cheated on before, and I would never, ever, willingly help someone else do it, I just… can’t.”

At first, Phil’s face is disappointed, but the more Dan talks, the more confused he seems to get. By the time Dan’s done, Phil is staring at him, his head tilted and eyes squinting, as if that’ll give him a better look at Dan. Feeling uncomfortable under his intense gaze, Dan shifts, waiting for the other man to speak.

“I’m not dating anyone, Dan,” he says finally, his voice sounding amused.

Dan’s mind blanks suddenly, and it takes him a moment to fully comprehend what he means by that. “Oh… you’re… you’re not?” When Phil shakes his head, Dan’s eyebrows knit together. “But I thought… there was that guy, here. He answered the door… shirtless...” The more he talks, the stupider he feels, so he just shakes his head. “I’m sorry, what?”

Phil smiles, covering his mouth to cough as he goes to answer. Dan steps forward, concerned, but Phil waves him off. “I’m not dating anyone. I haven’t in a long time, actually.” He shrugs, tugging his blanket closer to him. “I think you might’ve seen my friend PJ, actually. He stays over sometimes when he’s in the city.”

The explanation checks out, obviously, because Dan doesn’t have any evidence to prove otherwise, but he still feels a little dumb for just assuming in the first place. Rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, he can’t help but laughing at how ridiculous the situation was turning out to be. “Right… Well, that just makes me look like a massive twat,” he says awkwardly.

A sweet smile crosses Phil’s face as he tilts his head to rest against the door. “You look pretty good to me, actually,” he says smoothly, causing Dan’s already flushed cheeks to brighten even more.

“Come off it,” Dan laughs before bringing his hands back to his pockets. He stands there for a moment, unsure of what to say, before something occurs to him. Phil is single, apparently, and also interested in Dan. Which means…

“Do you mind coming inside for a minute? So, I can put this down and grab my phone? You still need to give me your number.” Phil steps away from the door and ushers Dan in, and he’s sort of helpless to deny it, as he’s literally being guided into the flat.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” Dan steps in and closes the door behind him, suddenly hyper-aware of his surroundings. He’s actually in Phil’s flat, following him to the kitchen.

Phil drops the package onto the table before looking around, a confused look on his face. “Well, um, I thought my phone was in here…” His face suddenly lights up and he reaches a hand back, tugging it out of his back pocket, a triumphant smile on his face. “Here you go,” he says brightly, handing it over after unlocking it.

Dan tries to hide his small smile as he programs his name in, but it’s hard. He was relieved that Phil was single, even more so now that he knew that Phil was also interested in him. Even still, he doesn’t send himself a text to get Phil’s number, still a little too shy to do that. “Here,” he hands Phil his phone back, tucking his hands in his pockets as he watches Phil’s face as he looks down at the screen.

“Your last name is Howell?” He asks, smiling. Dan rolls his eyes, expecting the joke that he knows is coming. “If you decide to have kids, you should name one of them Wolf.” A smirk makes its way onto Phil’s face, and Dan pretends to be surprised.

“Oh my god, that’s brilliant, I’ve never had literally anyone make that same exact joke before!” he says sarcastically, his smile giving away that he wasn’t actually annoyed.

Phil laughs quietly, leaning back against the counter and tilting his head. “I know, Dan. I’m just really original, it might be a lot to handle at first.”

Dan raises an eyebrow before nodding seriously. “Oh, yeah, of course. I’ll have to learn a thing or two from you with all that originality,” he jokes, dragging a hand through his hair, half-nervous from their banter.

“Oh, I can definitely teach you a thing or two,” Phil smirks and winks, but he clearly doesn’t know exactly how to do the winking part and it just looks like he’s blinking to clear something out of his eye.

“Okay, ew, I’m gonna go now before you molest me,” Dan giggles, inching backwards towards the door.

Offended, Phil shakes his head. “Excuse me, I would never! I’m a gentleman!”

Dan smirks at this, shrugging. “Ah, that’s too bad. I like it rough.” He winks this time, and since he can actually complete the motion without looking like he’s in pain, it has a different effect on Phil, who visibly gulps.

“Oh, um…” Phil, clearly at a loss for something flirty to reply with, glances around the room before finally sighing, looking at Dan with an embarrassed smile. “You win. I can’t do the whole flirtatious banter thing,” he admits.

Shrugging, Dan says, “Neither can I, but I can fake it.”

Phil smiles at this, his head tilting to the side adorably as he studies Dan. “You’ll answer if I text you, right?” He asks tentatively, his voice full of hope.

Dan smiles a little, nodding. “Sure, Phil.” He tries his hardest to play it off in a cool way, although the truth is he feels giddy at the prospect of actually getting to know Phil or, heaven forbid, going on a date with him.

“Good, I’m sick of ordering things and having them sent to your apartment to try and get you to come see me.” Phil’s cheeks flush as he says this, and he looks down as if he hadn’t actually meant to say it aloud at all.

Dan, surprised by this revelation, takes only a second to process it before laughing loudly. “You didn’t- oh my god, Phil. That’s precious.” He can’t hold himself back, giggling at the very idea of this man ordering things and intentionally putting in the wrong number to get them sent to Dan’s flat. Maybe the first time it was a mistake, but he was implying that the times after that had been on purpose. The very idea of this sends Dan into another fit of giggles, and Phil pouts at him. “Sorry-“ he breathes, calming himself down. “That’s just… that’s fucking cute, mate.”

Phil rolls his eyes, crossing his arms. “I thought it was romantic, and clever,” he mumbles, and Dan grins, unable to help it as he takes a couple steps forward, brushing a strand of Phil’s hair back before leaning forward and pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“It was definitely something,” he admits, smiling at the pink patches across Phil’s cheeks. “I’ll answer your text when you send it, though, so you don’t have to worry about going through that much trouble anymore.” He smiles again at the knowledge that Phil had honestly tried that hard to flirt with him, shaking his head as he steps back.

“You better,” Phil warns teasingly. Dan rolls his eyes before moving to leave, stopping when Phil calls his name. “Oh, um… you might get another one of my packages soon…” he says awkwardly, a blush covering his cheeks.

“Oh my god,” Dan cackles, wondering what on earth it would be. “Seriously?”

Phil pouts. “Well, how was I supposed to know that it would work out this time and you would actually like me back? It just so happens that I ordered a couple things on the same day and, well…”

Dan rolls his eyes, but nods nonetheless. “Sure, Phil. I guess I’ll see you in a couple days with your package.”

Phil grins then, and Dan can tell by the cheeky smile that something awful is coming. “You can see me with my package whenever you’d like, Dan,” he giggles at the horrible innuendo, and Dan groans.

“Goodbye! I’m leaving now!” he calls obnoxiously as he steps out of the flat and into the hallway.

Phil responds in a similar way, and Dan makes his way down the hall to the elevator.

So, what if he smiles to himself the whole way back to his flat? And so what if, when he gets a funny text from Phil a few minutes after stepping into his lounge, he sits and giggles at it for a full minute and a half before responding? That’s his business.

[orbemnews]

Analysis: Bezos leaves behind a company that's created value but has also triggered a national reckoning Bezos, the world’s richest person until recently, has gone from selling books out of his garage to running a company that makes consumer electronics, produces award-winning films and TV shows, offers organic groceries and hosts some of the world’s biggest websites. His company’s ambitions include delivering packages to households using flying drones and spreading facial recognition technology to virtually every consumer’s front doorstep. With each new innovation, Bezos and Amazon have offered the promise of making life easier, more convenient and enriching for customers. But these services also became testaments to Amazon’s ever-expanding power, influence and self-interest, inspiring fierce criticism from the company’s opponents: that Amazon kills brick and mortar businesses; that it bullies workers; that it uses the data from its massive online storefront to maintain a monopoly; that its partnerships with law enforcement have made it an accessory to discriminatory policing. “The guy was just obsessed with the end user. They were the highest priority,” said James Bailey, a professor of leadership development at George Washington University’s business school. “It’s one of those situations where your biggest asset is also your biggest liability.” Now, as he prepares to step down as CEO of the $1.7 trillion business he built and take on the role of executive chair, Bezos leaves behind a company that’s created immense value for consumers, investors and many small businesses, but which has also triggered a national reckoning over the costs it may have created for everyone else. A model for building online companies Bezos’s ambitions were large from the start: He launched Amazon at a time when few people knew what the internet was and chose the name, he later told journalist Brad Stone, in part because the Amazon river is “not only the largest river in the world — it’s many times larger than the next biggest river. It blows all other rivers away.” To achieve his vision, Bezos frustrated some shareholders by investing heavily in the business. It wasn’t until the end of 2001 that Amazon had its first profitable quarter, and its first profitable year didn’t occur until 2003. Amazon would continually flirt with profitability for the next decade. This approach would become a model for many others in Silicon Valley, and perhaps even something of an excuse for cash-hungry startups that seemingly burned through money without a pathway to profit. “Bezos created the blueprint for building internet businesses, being hyper customer-centric, and scaling disruptive innovation,” tweeted Aaron Levie, the CEO of enterprise cloud company Box.com. No other innovation symbolized Bezos’s appetite for losses like Amazon Prime, which was launched as a $79-a-year subscription plan and introduced what became the company’s most recognizable offering: free two-day shipping. On the surface, Amazon Prime stood to lose money. The cost of its benefits — which came to encompass not just fast shipping but streaming media, digital photo storage and discounts on groceries — outweighed what the company made in subscription fees. But it was another example of Bezos’s long-term plan to lure new customers into Amazon’s orbit and persuade them to become mega-spenders on the platform, thereby allowing Amazon to lower its costs even further to attract yet more customers, creating a virtuous cycle, or what Bezos called a “flywheel effect.” The company last year announced it has more than 150 million Prime subscribers worldwide. Relentless, or ruthless? As Amazon became a bigger player in retail, it inevitably came into conflict with others, both big and small. In some cases, it effectively drove them out of business. The bookseller Barnes and Noble announced in 2019 it was going private after a decade of trying to keep pace with Amazon. Toys”R”Us has blamed Amazon’s aggressive pricing for crushing the quintessentially American toy store. Rightly or wrongly, Amazon is often listed as a contributing factor behind the so-called retail apocalypse. And these days, the mere mention of Bezos’s interest in a new service is enough to send an entire industry’s stocks into a downward spiral. Like Walmart before it, Amazon has come to be viewed as “the new big bully, at least in the internet retail space,” said Bailey. Amazon famously clashed with book publishers over who controlled e-book pricing. It deliberately lost money selling diapers in order to thwart Diapers.com — then, according to a landmark antitrust investigation by US lawmakers, it acquired the company before raising diaper prices. (Bezos has said he does not recall giving an order to raise prices.) Amazon’s growing clout has allegedly given it immense leverage to squeeze its suppliers and to use third-party sellers’ own sales data against them to gain an anti-competitive edge. Bezos has argued that Amazon prospers not at others’ expense, but rather when it helps grow the whole pie. “Amazon’s success depends overwhelmingly on the success of the thousands of small and medium-sized businesses that also sell their products in Amazon’s stores,” he told Congress. Bezos also ruffled feathers when he held a highly publicized contest for the privilege of hosting Amazon’s newest headquarters. The so-called “HQ2” was pitched as an engine for local job creation and economic growth, particularly to small and mid-sized cities seeking development. For months, dozens of city leaders jockeyed for Amazon’s favor with offers of tax breaks and real estate. Ultimately, though, Amazon opted for Northern Virginia — just outside of Washington, D.C. — and New York, two of the nation’s wealthiest and most obvious metro areas, leaving many onlookers perplexed. (It later withdrew from New York after facing backlash from members of the community.) The entire episode was a bizarre flex of Amazon’s power and influence. To some critics, the good that Bezos has created does not negate the alleged harms. On the 2020 campaign trail, figures like Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for Amazon to be broken up, and regulators are circling. “The US and Europe are coming for Big Tech, and I don’t think the lawsuits against Facebook and Google are the end of it,” said Paul Gallant, an industry analyst at Cowen & Co. What’s good for customers isn’t necessarily good for workers Just as Bezos’s growing empire raised questions about whether it was good for other businesses, it also raised questions about whether it was good for workers. Rising automation, complaints about working conditions and a tough stance against unions all contributed to years of employee walkouts, petitions and, in some cases, lawsuits. Many of the company’s white-collar workers have also protested Amazon’s impact on the environment, calling on Bezos to make stepped-up commitments on climate change. (Amazon and Bezos later pledged to do more, with Bezos committing an initial $10 billion of his own money to fight climate change.) Early on in the pandemic, Amazon faced a warehouse worker revolt over a lack of hand sanitizer, masks and other protective gear. After one New York-based employee organized a protest over the issue, Amazon fired him for violating the company’s Covid quarantine policy. Amazon has since said it’s put in place temperature checks at fulfillment centers, ramped up its cleaning regimen, and established some 150 “process changes” to keep workers safe. Amazon has won plaudits for increasing its minimum wage to $15 an hour, but only after intense pressure from labor groups and some US lawmakers, including Sen. Bernie Sanders. And the same day that Bezos announced his plans to step down as CEO, the Federal Trade Commission said Amazon would pay more than $60 million to settle allegations that it withheld tips from its contract delivery drivers. In the coming weeks, Amazon workers in Alabama will vote on whether to form the company’s first US union. In response, Amazon has pushed for in-person voting despite the ongoing pandemic and launched a campaign to discourage unionization. “Jeff Bezos built his multibillion-dollar empire on exploitative practices including wage theft and surveillance tactics designed to bully workers into silence and prevent them from organizing,” said Rashad Robinson, president of the civil rights group Color Of Change. A tech icon whose reputation reflects his industry’s Despite the criticisms, Bezos will undoubtedly be remembered in the business world as a brilliant strategist and a disciplined entrepreneur. Bill Gurley, a prominent venture capitalist, called Bezos’s tenure at Amazon “the most spectacular CEO run of my lifetime.” In many ways, Bezos’s story with Amazon mirrors that of Silicon Valley. He began with a small idea in his garage that would change the world. He was lauded for innovating his way to success, putting in hard work and taking calculated risks. But those same choices also led to claims that his company had grown too powerful for its own good, and for the good of society. Now as allegations about Amazon’s power and approach to competition may be leading to a showdown with Washington, the billionaire CEO is tapping out. In a letter to employees this week, Bezos said he plans to spend more time on his newspaper, The Washington Post, and his spaceflight company, Blue Origin. He also plans to get more involved with his philanthropic initiatives, perhaps following in the footsteps of another transformational tech CEO — Microsoft’s Bill Gates. “Bezos wants to go out on top,” said Gallant. Source link Orbem News #Analysis #Bezos #company #Created #JeffBezos'scomplicatedlegacyasCEOofAmazon-CNN #Leaves #National #Reckoning #Tech #triggered

[easyfoodnetwork]

The Local Food Revolution Goes Online — for Now

sunlover/Shutterstock

To survive uncertain times, small farms are pivoting to online orders to serve their local communities and compete with big box grocers like Amazon and Walmart

This story originally appeared on Civil Eats.

“We are so busy this may not be my most lucid moment,” Amy McCann says when she picks up the phone, which hasn’t stopped ringing in days. McCann is the CEO of the Eugene, Oregon-based Local Food Marketplace, a software platform that farmers and other local food aggregators across the country use to reach customers online.

In a normal year, McCann said, her team takes on about 50 new sellers offering everything from produce to dairy and jam. Due to an onslaught of demand, however, they’ve added 20 new users in just the last week.

In a very short time, COVID-19 has virtually upended the food system. And for farmers who sell directly into local markets, it has made the in-person sales they depend on — usually facilitated at farmers’ markets, restaurants, schools, and other communal places — especially unsteady.

As peak harvest season approaches, growers have been scrambling to move their sales online, where orders can be fulfilled without face-to-face interaction, either for through traditional community supported agriculture (CSA) boxes or other creative models. At the same time, groups that support local food economies have also been working to direct consumers to these new systems so that they can continue to buy local food from home.

In Seattle, where farmers’ markets have been shut down, Seattle Neighborhood Farmers’ Markets compiled a list of its market vendors’ “alternative sales options,” and has been highlighting them on Instagram. In Chicago, Green City Market created a guide to farmers offering online ordering with pick-up or delivery. And in the Mid-Atlantic, Future Harvest put together a map of more than 500 farmers and markets selling local food that received over 15,000 views in just a few days.

With social distancing guidelines now extended through at least the end of April, it’s clear that a great deal of food will be purchased online for the foreseeable future. A survey released this week found that more than 30 percent of US households had purchased groceries online in the past month. That was more than double the number that had reported doing so in August 2019, and 43 percent said they’d likely continue to purchase groceries online after the crisis ends.

While markets for small, sustainable, and local producers have been taking shape online for over a decade, many have struggled to compete in the past.

But this moment presents a powerful opportunity for individual producers and local food aggregators to scale up their online presence. While competing with massive companies like Costco and Walmart is a daunting challenge, worker strikes at Amazon and Instacart may also inspire some socially conscious shoppers to support independent producers.

Farmers will also have to tackle many obstacles as they attempt to redesign entire business models right before harvest season, improvise home deliveries, and figure out how to ensure shoppers using food assistance benefits can access online ordering. But that’s not stopping a range of people and groups from jumping in—and expanding their efforts—in the evolving local food landscape.

Previously a Rocky Road for Local Foods Online

Before the pandemic, online grocery sales in the U.S. were projected to double between 2017 and 2021. But while the practice had picking up steam year over year, the vast majority of Americans still bought their food in stores. That was even more true with local food, especially since many people who prioritize shopping local often valued personal relationships with farmers and gathering as a community at markets or through CSA distributions. But that’s all changing rapidly.

Several “online farmers’ market” platforms have come and gone over the past decade, and many companies that have survived in the space—like Good Eggs and Farmigo—have struggled or had to pivot to stay afloat. “Those were mostly tech companies that thought you could solve the [logistics] problem with technology alone,” McCann said.

Good Eggs, an online marketplace for small farms that had raised almost $53 million in venture capital, shut down operations in three out of four cities and laid off 140 employees in 2013, with co-founder Rob Spiro citing the fact that the company grew too fast “before fully figuring out the challenges of building an entirely new food supply chain.” It homed in on one city, San Francisco, and has been operating successfully there, although it now stocks specialty foods beyond what’s available from local producers, like fruit shipped from Mexico and gluten-free pizzas made in Colorado.

According to the company, Good Eggs has been experiencing two to four times more demand since the coronavirus outbreak (and there are rumors of shoppers logging on after midnight to place orders as soon as new items are added to the site). The company is working to expand to meet demand: coincidentally, in mid-February, it opened a new Oakland fulfillment center that significantly expands its capacity, and it is also hiring new employees. But it’s unclear whether the company intends to take on any new farms.

“Our customers have always looked to us as a source of local food from small producers, and we feel that responsibility now more than ever,” CEO Bentley Hally said in an emailed statement. “We are doing everything we can to support our producers during these uncertain times.”

Farmigo, which started selling software for CSAs and other local farm sales, had raised about $26 million to expand its operations by 2016. But the online farmers’ market it built did not succeed; it shut that part of the business down, claiming that the logistics of distribution were much more difficult than the team had anticipated. It has continued selling software to farmers and leaving those logistics to them, and its CSA platform is remains popular among farmers.

Farmigo did not respond to our efforts to reach them for comment. But as the company’s arc illustrates, many farms and local food communities that have moved their sales online are managing their businesses and distribution themselves, rather than relying on other companies that sell their food for them.

Grassroots Organizing, Online

In Tallahassee, Florida, for example, four women started the Red Hills Small Farm Alliance about eight years ago to connect local farms to buyers in their community. The virtual market, which runs on Local Food Marketplace’s software, grew slowly and steadily, said interim director Cari Roth, and it now offers food from about 75 producers to around 500 members. (Shoppers pay $20 annually for a membership and then pay a la carte for purchases.)

Although it’s online, its operations resemble an in-person market; the shop is open during a select window—8:00 a.m. on Sunday to 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday. Farmers receive orders and then bring their food to one of the Alliance’s distribution centers, where staff members and volunteers package the food from various producers into individual customer orders. Shoppers can choose to pick their food up or get it delivered for an extra charge.

Shoppers can opt to get a CSA share from one farm, or they can mix it up. “The beauty is that I can also order a bunch of carrots, a bunch of beets, mushrooms from another place, and scones from a bakery,” says Roth. “It’s like going to a real farmers’ market, but with even more variety.”

Red Hills had been growing its business long before the coronavirus emerged, but things took off even more in recent weeks. Roth said they picked up 174 new members in one week in March. More than 440 orders came in that same week, compared to an average of about 300.

And they’re not alone. In Maryland, Chesapeake Farm to Table operates with a similar model but was previously focused on aggregating food from small farms for restaurant sales. Now, its business collecting orders from individual community members and delivering to their homes has taken off. In Seattle, farm-to-table bakery Salmonberry Goods has been hustling to aggregate more food from small Washington farms to sell through its new online shop for weekly delivery.

“We’re really hoping that now that people are figuring out how easy it is to eat local, that they’ll stick with us,” says Roth.

Virtual CSAs

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, farmers across the country have also been reporting an increase in interest in CSA memberships. Since CSAs guarantee a weekly supply of produce (and sometimes other foods), they seem perfectly suited to a time when Americans are fearful of further disruptions to grocery supply chains. Signing up for a CSA that can be picked up or delivered can also mean saving a trip to a crowded supermarket.

Many small diversified vegetable operations, were already offering online purchasing before using platforms like Farmigo, but those that weren’t are now driven to do so.

Hearty Roots Farm in the Hudson Valley offers CSA memberships to residents of New York City and counties north, the area that is now the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. Before the pandemic, farmer Lindsey Lusher Shute was also hard at work on developing GrownBy, a new CSA software platform that she and other farmers were planning on using in a beta phase before adding other growers later on. Now, they’re opening it up more broadly right away to help the many farmers reaching out to quickly change their business model and move everything online to stay afloat.

Shute says one thing that sets GrownBy apart is that its built by farmers, for farmers—which means everyone involved in the development has a deep understanding of how marketing and sales channels typically work offline, making it easier to figure out how to move them online effectively.

Lusher Shute—who was a founder and long time director of the National Young Farmers Coalition—says her priority is the needs of direct market growers, not the profits of the software company, and that eventually, the plan is to evolve into a national cooperative, giving users the chance to share ownership in the technology. First, though, they simply have to make sure GrownBy is effectively making online sales happen.

“It needs to pull its weight on the farm and be seen as a valuable and critical piece of infrastructure,” she said. “We’re aiming to help farmers achieve efficiencies and a level of sales that they couldn’t on their own.” She also wants farmers to control their own data and to have software that is flexible enough that it can accommodate the variety that exists between operations.

One important flexiblity built into the software allows farms that accept food assistance benefits like SNAP and WIC dollars to offer an offline payment option, so they can recognize EBT (electronic benefits transfer, the payment system used for benefits) as a form of payment and then process that payment seperately.

And while she imagined farms would facilitate CSA share pick-ups, for instance, she just added a farm outside Albuquerque that, in the face of COVID-19, decided to offer home delivery, and was able to facilitate that aspect using GrownBy.

Indeed, farms across the country have been announcing home delivery of both CSA shares and a la carte food orders. Red Hills always had a delivery option but customers rarely chose to pay the upcharge. Now, it has gotten hugely popular.

“We’ve added drivers to accommodate it,” Roth said. On a COVID-19 call facilitated by Future Harvest for small farms in the Mid-Atlantic, several farmers discussed how to work with online orders and delivery protocols. Moon Valley Farm, which had trucks that normally ran restaurant routes in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., sitting idle, saw delivering CSA shares and a la carte vegetable orders as a way to replace lost purchases and keep drivers employed.

In many locations, however, home delivery presents real business challenges. “It’s really complicated and really expensive,” said Wen-Jay Ying, who has been barely sleeping while working to keep her company, Local Roots NYC, operating. Her goal is to continue giving New York City residents access to fresh, local food while buying from the small, independent farms nearby, which have lost significant restaurant business.

Local Roots has always used an online ordering system, but once members purchase shares, most head to local pick-up sites once a week to collect them. Most of those sites—cafes, restaurants, and bars—are mainly shuttered, and maintaining social distance at pick-ups in small spaces also became difficult. Ying has been able to keep two pick-up sites operating, but many customers chose to switch to home delivery.

So, she’s been hustling to hire workers to pack produce into boxes and do the actual deliveries, which can be time-consuming and complicated in a congested city where many people live in apartment buildings. “We’ve spent every waking hour for the past five days figuring out how to use a delivery routing software and organizing people based on these different routes,” she said, estimating that the cost per delivery for the farmer or aggregator can be as high as $15 per customer, a steep price when compared to Instacart and others like it.

And getting the food to customers after orders are placed is not the only challenge farmers face when looking to sell online. In rural areas, internet access is not a given, pointed out Hannah Dankbar, the Local Food program manager at North Carolina State’s Cooperative Extension. “In North Carolina, we don’t have broadband consistently across the state,” she said.

Farmers also may lack technical expertise, and they’re now hungry for knowledge related to online sales. In response to the pandemic, a colleague in Dankbar’s department set up two webinars on getting farm products online and more than 300 people tuned in to each one.

“Coronavirus has made the need for tech clear to many more farmers,” Shute said. And while many local food enthusiasts value the chance to mingle with community members and get to know growers at a farmers’ market, the efficiency expectation around groceries is only likely to increase as more people get used to a box of fresh vegetables from Amazon showing up at their doorstep within 24 hours.

“Some of those services sort of look like ‘local’ produce or higher quality produce,” she said. But they’re much less likely to support small-scale family producers.

“I’m concerned that if we don’t engage in this digital marketplace in a real way, we’re going to be left behind. Hopefully, the farmers’ market [will go back to being] a place people will congregate. But at the same time we have to be thinking ahead and moving the field forward.”

The best-case scenario, says Dankbar, is that buying fresh-from-the-farm food online will be “a trend that’s accelerated because of the virus.” If that happens, she’s optimistic that it could give local foods a permanent space in the larger online shopping arena. “The community building associated with local food—I don’t think those are going to go away,” she says.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2X4Djji https://ift.tt/2wXeqeP

sunlover/Shutterstock

To survive uncertain times, small farms are pivoting to online orders to serve their local communities and compete with big box grocers like Amazon and Walmart

This story originally appeared on Civil Eats.

“We are so busy this may not be my most lucid moment,” Amy McCann says when she picks up the phone, which hasn’t stopped ringing in days. McCann is the CEO of the Eugene, Oregon-based Local Food Marketplace, a software platform that farmers and other local food aggregators across the country use to reach customers online.

In a normal year, McCann said, her team takes on about 50 new sellers offering everything from produce to dairy and jam. Due to an onslaught of demand, however, they’ve added 20 new users in just the last week.

In a very short time, COVID-19 has virtually upended the food system. And for farmers who sell directly into local markets, it has made the in-person sales they depend on — usually facilitated at farmers’ markets, restaurants, schools, and other communal places — especially unsteady.

As peak harvest season approaches, growers have been scrambling to move their sales online, where orders can be fulfilled without face-to-face interaction, either for through traditional community supported agriculture (CSA) boxes or other creative models. At the same time, groups that support local food economies have also been working to direct consumers to these new systems so that they can continue to buy local food from home.

In Seattle, where farmers’ markets have been shut down, Seattle Neighborhood Farmers’ Markets compiled a list of its market vendors’ “alternative sales options,” and has been highlighting them on Instagram. In Chicago, Green City Market created a guide to farmers offering online ordering with pick-up or delivery. And in the Mid-Atlantic, Future Harvest put together a map of more than 500 farmers and markets selling local food that received over 15,000 views in just a few days.

With social distancing guidelines now extended through at least the end of April, it’s clear that a great deal of food will be purchased online for the foreseeable future. A survey released this week found that more than 30 percent of US households had purchased groceries online in the past month. That was more than double the number that had reported doing so in August 2019, and 43 percent said they’d likely continue to purchase groceries online after the crisis ends.

While markets for small, sustainable, and local producers have been taking shape online for over a decade, many have struggled to compete in the past.

But this moment presents a powerful opportunity for individual producers and local food aggregators to scale up their online presence. While competing with massive companies like Costco and Walmart is a daunting challenge, worker strikes at Amazon and Instacart may also inspire some socially conscious shoppers to support independent producers.

Farmers will also have to tackle many obstacles as they attempt to redesign entire business models right before harvest season, improvise home deliveries, and figure out how to ensure shoppers using food assistance benefits can access online ordering. But that’s not stopping a range of people and groups from jumping in—and expanding their efforts—in the evolving local food landscape.

Previously a Rocky Road for Local Foods Online

Before the pandemic, online grocery sales in the U.S. were projected to double between 2017 and 2021. But while the practice had picking up steam year over year, the vast majority of Americans still bought their food in stores. That was even more true with local food, especially since many people who prioritize shopping local often valued personal relationships with farmers and gathering as a community at markets or through CSA distributions. But that’s all changing rapidly.

Several “online farmers’ market” platforms have come and gone over the past decade, and many companies that have survived in the space—like Good Eggs and Farmigo—have struggled or had to pivot to stay afloat. “Those were mostly tech companies that thought you could solve the [logistics] problem with technology alone,” McCann said.

Good Eggs, an online marketplace for small farms that had raised almost $53 million in venture capital, shut down operations in three out of four cities and laid off 140 employees in 2013, with co-founder Rob Spiro citing the fact that the company grew too fast “before fully figuring out the challenges of building an entirely new food supply chain.” It homed in on one city, San Francisco, and has been operating successfully there, although it now stocks specialty foods beyond what’s available from local producers, like fruit shipped from Mexico and gluten-free pizzas made in Colorado.

According to the company, Good Eggs has been experiencing two to four times more demand since the coronavirus outbreak (and there are rumors of shoppers logging on after midnight to place orders as soon as new items are added to the site). The company is working to expand to meet demand: coincidentally, in mid-February, it opened a new Oakland fulfillment center that significantly expands its capacity, and it is also hiring new employees. But it’s unclear whether the company intends to take on any new farms.

“Our customers have always looked to us as a source of local food from small producers, and we feel that responsibility now more than ever,” CEO Bentley Hally said in an emailed statement. “We are doing everything we can to support our producers during these uncertain times.”

Farmigo, which started selling software for CSAs and other local farm sales, had raised about $26 million to expand its operations by 2016. But the online farmers’ market it built did not succeed; it shut that part of the business down, claiming that the logistics of distribution were much more difficult than the team had anticipated. It has continued selling software to farmers and leaving those logistics to them, and its CSA platform is remains popular among farmers.

Farmigo did not respond to our efforts to reach them for comment. But as the company’s arc illustrates, many farms and local food communities that have moved their sales online are managing their businesses and distribution themselves, rather than relying on other companies that sell their food for them.

Grassroots Organizing, Online

In Tallahassee, Florida, for example, four women started the Red Hills Small Farm Alliance about eight years ago to connect local farms to buyers in their community. The virtual market, which runs on Local Food Marketplace’s software, grew slowly and steadily, said interim director Cari Roth, and it now offers food from about 75 producers to around 500 members. (Shoppers pay $20 annually for a membership and then pay a la carte for purchases.)

Although it’s online, its operations resemble an in-person market; the shop is open during a select window—8:00 a.m. on Sunday to 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday. Farmers receive orders and then bring their food to one of the Alliance’s distribution centers, where staff members and volunteers package the food from various producers into individual customer orders. Shoppers can choose to pick their food up or get it delivered for an extra charge.

Shoppers can opt to get a CSA share from one farm, or they can mix it up. “The beauty is that I can also order a bunch of carrots, a bunch of beets, mushrooms from another place, and scones from a bakery,” says Roth. “It’s like going to a real farmers’ market, but with even more variety.”

Red Hills had been growing its business long before the coronavirus emerged, but things took off even more in recent weeks. Roth said they picked up 174 new members in one week in March. More than 440 orders came in that same week, compared to an average of about 300.

And they’re not alone. In Maryland, Chesapeake Farm to Table operates with a similar model but was previously focused on aggregating food from small farms for restaurant sales. Now, its business collecting orders from individual community members and delivering to their homes has taken off. In Seattle, farm-to-table bakery Salmonberry Goods has been hustling to aggregate more food from small Washington farms to sell through its new online shop for weekly delivery.

“We’re really hoping that now that people are figuring out how easy it is to eat local, that they’ll stick with us,” says Roth.

Virtual CSAs

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, farmers across the country have also been reporting an increase in interest in CSA memberships. Since CSAs guarantee a weekly supply of produce (and sometimes other foods), they seem perfectly suited to a time when Americans are fearful of further disruptions to grocery supply chains. Signing up for a CSA that can be picked up or delivered can also mean saving a trip to a crowded supermarket.

Many small diversified vegetable operations, were already offering online purchasing before using platforms like Farmigo, but those that weren’t are now driven to do so.

Hearty Roots Farm in the Hudson Valley offers CSA memberships to residents of New York City and counties north, the area that is now the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. Before the pandemic, farmer Lindsey Lusher Shute was also hard at work on developing GrownBy, a new CSA software platform that she and other farmers were planning on using in a beta phase before adding other growers later on. Now, they’re opening it up more broadly right away to help the many farmers reaching out to quickly change their business model and move everything online to stay afloat.

Shute says one thing that sets GrownBy apart is that its built by farmers, for farmers—which means everyone involved in the development has a deep understanding of how marketing and sales channels typically work offline, making it easier to figure out how to move them online effectively.

Lusher Shute—who was a founder and long time director of the National Young Farmers Coalition—says her priority is the needs of direct market growers, not the profits of the software company, and that eventually, the plan is to evolve into a national cooperative, giving users the chance to share ownership in the technology. First, though, they simply have to make sure GrownBy is effectively making online sales happen.

“It needs to pull its weight on the farm and be seen as a valuable and critical piece of infrastructure,” she said. “We’re aiming to help farmers achieve efficiencies and a level of sales that they couldn’t on their own.” She also wants farmers to control their own data and to have software that is flexible enough that it can accommodate the variety that exists between operations.

One important flexiblity built into the software allows farms that accept food assistance benefits like SNAP and WIC dollars to offer an offline payment option, so they can recognize EBT (electronic benefits transfer, the payment system used for benefits) as a form of payment and then process that payment seperately.

And while she imagined farms would facilitate CSA share pick-ups, for instance, she just added a farm outside Albuquerque that, in the face of COVID-19, decided to offer home delivery, and was able to facilitate that aspect using GrownBy.

Indeed, farms across the country have been announcing home delivery of both CSA shares and a la carte food orders. Red Hills always had a delivery option but customers rarely chose to pay the upcharge. Now, it has gotten hugely popular.

“We’ve added drivers to accommodate it,” Roth said. On a COVID-19 call facilitated by Future Harvest for small farms in the Mid-Atlantic, several farmers discussed how to work with online orders and delivery protocols. Moon Valley Farm, which had trucks that normally ran restaurant routes in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., sitting idle, saw delivering CSA shares and a la carte vegetable orders as a way to replace lost purchases and keep drivers employed.

In many locations, however, home delivery presents real business challenges. “It’s really complicated and really expensive,” said Wen-Jay Ying, who has been barely sleeping while working to keep her company, Local Roots NYC, operating. Her goal is to continue giving New York City residents access to fresh, local food while buying from the small, independent farms nearby, which have lost significant restaurant business.

Local Roots has always used an online ordering system, but once members purchase shares, most head to local pick-up sites once a week to collect them. Most of those sites—cafes, restaurants, and bars—are mainly shuttered, and maintaining social distance at pick-ups in small spaces also became difficult. Ying has been able to keep two pick-up sites operating, but many customers chose to switch to home delivery.

So, she’s been hustling to hire workers to pack produce into boxes and do the actual deliveries, which can be time-consuming and complicated in a congested city where many people live in apartment buildings. “We’ve spent every waking hour for the past five days figuring out how to use a delivery routing software and organizing people based on these different routes,” she said, estimating that the cost per delivery for the farmer or aggregator can be as high as $15 per customer, a steep price when compared to Instacart and others like it.

And getting the food to customers after orders are placed is not the only challenge farmers face when looking to sell online. In rural areas, internet access is not a given, pointed out Hannah Dankbar, the Local Food program manager at North Carolina State’s Cooperative Extension. “In North Carolina, we don’t have broadband consistently across the state,” she said.

Farmers also may lack technical expertise, and they’re now hungry for knowledge related to online sales. In response to the pandemic, a colleague in Dankbar’s department set up two webinars on getting farm products online and more than 300 people tuned in to each one.

“Coronavirus has made the need for tech clear to many more farmers,” Shute said. And while many local food enthusiasts value the chance to mingle with community members and get to know growers at a farmers’ market, the efficiency expectation around groceries is only likely to increase as more people get used to a box of fresh vegetables from Amazon showing up at their doorstep within 24 hours.

“Some of those services sort of look like ‘local’ produce or higher quality produce,” she said. But they’re much less likely to support small-scale family producers.

“I’m concerned that if we don’t engage in this digital marketplace in a real way, we’re going to be left behind. Hopefully, the farmers’ market [will go back to being] a place people will congregate. But at the same time we have to be thinking ahead and moving the field forward.”

The best-case scenario, says Dankbar, is that buying fresh-from-the-farm food online will be “a trend that’s accelerated because of the virus.” If that happens, she’s optimistic that it could give local foods a permanent space in the larger online shopping arena. “The community building associated with local food—I don’t think those are going to go away,” she says.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2X4Djji via Blogger https://ift.tt/2UEkwKf

[tsgaspencolorado]

7 Wedding Predictions for 2020 from Aspen Professionals

Proposal season is wrapping up, and a new year brought a new title to many. We’re talking about fiancé/fiancée status. Newly engaged couples, and those holding out for that perfect 2020 wedding date, are eagerly planning and prepping for their big day this year. We sat down with several Aspen-based wedding professionals and vendors to get their take on this year’s trends.

Images via TSG Aspen and Premier Party Rentals

1. Aesthetics are Everything | Colors will continue to thread wedding elements together in 2020 with textures and details adding a personalized, curated touch. “There is definitely a movement away from everything needing to match and strict adherence to symmetry, in favor of a more natural mix of colors and textures that add an organic feeling to an event space or outdoor venue,” says Jordan Matthews, co-owner of Go West Event Rentals. “Incorporating the look of curated and found items into wedding decor is one of our favorite trends that has crossed over from interior design.” Business partner and husband, Zac, agrees, “We love finding and creating one of a kind items that can be a functional and beautiful conversation piece.”

For Aspen events, natural colors are trending in 2020. “We’re working with couples that want warm hues and greens with some metals mixed in,” reports Kayli Pace of Premier Party Rental. And yes, mixing metals is a thing.  Copper, gold, and silver are all RSVP’ing yes to weddings this year. But don’t expect a full-on vintage vibe. Couples are veering towards small, eclectic accents paired with more minimalist pieces. “Think fun, colored cut glassware dotting the table,” says Pace. 

Images via Tara Marolda and Carolyn’s Flowers

Bridal bouquets, boutonnieres, and event details go beyond traditional florals, incorporating greenery for summer weddings and grasses for the fall. Carolyn’s Flowers of Aspen expects florals to continue to go beyond the table, with ceiling features and vertical installations showcasing blooms and natural touches. 

Beyond the décor details, expect to see personal touches around every corner. “The specialty cocktail world is getting very elaborate! Think candied jalapeno's, brandied cherries, edible flowers, and infused simple syrups,” says Julie Wiig, venue coordinator for T-Lazy-7 Ranch.

Image via TSG Aspen

2. A Wedding is More Than One Day | It’s about a marriage, yes. But it’s also about stretching out the celebration throughout a weekend (or more). Matthews tells us that, “Welcome parties, rehearsal dinners, farewell brunches and beyond allow couples to ensure their guests enjoy the local culture and take part in the couple's favorite activities. Whether it is a field day and picnic in the park complete with lawn games, lounges, and the smell of fresh kettle corn popping or a group hike, bike, or river raft to a spectacular farm to table dinner, the setting has to be perfect.” And yes, couples can rent a tipi restroom, canopied lounge, and relaxing swings for an extended day outdoors with guests.

Images via Bundles Gift Co. and TSG Aspen

3. Sustainability is Here to Stay | A new decade brings an enhanced focus on creating eco-friendly events. Wiig says, “I find that wedding planners and florists are shifting to eco-friendly policies.” A move that aligns well with T-Lazy-7′s ethos to take care of the land upon which they have spent generations serving the community.

Couples looking to lessen the impact their event has on the environment are looking at everything from food to flowers to what guests find in their welcome bags. Reusable water bottles are frequently spotted in welcome bag deliveries by Bundles Gift Co. Not only good for the environment, but they also go a long way in keeping guests properly hydrated at Aspen’s high altitude.

Images via Tara Marolda

4. Capturing the Moments | From destination engagement photography sessions to a post-wedding brunch, Aspen photographer Tara Marolda sees wedding work that extends beyond the ceremony and reception moments. “The majority of my couples choose to have a first look moment,” she notes. And a resurgence of keepsake images is happening. “Black and white photography is classic and timeless,” Marolda says, “and any wedding photographer should always include b+w images with a wedding package.”

Photographers are stepping into bridal suites to capture the getting ready process. One trend Marolda sees for wedding dresses? “Many of my brides have opted for more modern, clean, and simple silhouettes. They are choosing more sophisticated gowns with fewer frills,” she says.

Image via TSG Aspen

5. It’s All About a Great Guest Experience | From the minute a wedding guest arrives in Aspen, the imaginary red carpet is rolled out. “Couples want their guests to have a unique experience and enjoy their favorite places and things, says Matthews. “Whether it is the ability to relax in a tipi hammock and take in the views or belly up to a specialty bar offering regional craft beers on tap or spirits from a local distillery.” Don’t be surprised when the Go West Piaggio pulls up at a wedding. The mobile bar makes a great conversation starter and serves up prosecco on tap.

EKS Events always provides a welcome bag or letter to guests when they arrive in town. “Knowing where to go, when events are, and what you can do in your downtime is key to setting the foundation for great guest experiences. It’s a must-do for every couple,” owner Elizabeth Slossberg says. 

Welcome bags and gifts are often found at check-in or inside hotel rooms for out of town guests, with the help of Bundles Gift Co. We caught Wesley Brown, owner of Bundles, delivering for guests at The Little Nell. Inside the welcome bag? Something salty, something sweet, drinks, and an itinerary. Critical items to any good welcome gift. When guests travel for an event, couples not only want to give them a great hello and say thanks for coming, but keep their guests fueled, hydrated, and happy.

Images via EKS Events

6. Extravagance is Back | Small, intimate weddings are making way for large affairs. Pace says, “we see a lot of inquiries for extravagant in 2020!” With guests flying in from all over the country and a beautiful mountain backdrop, it comes as no surprise that events are stretching out into longer guest lists and more event days.

Splurges on extras are all about the experience, Slossberg indicated. Think tarot card readers in the bathroom and guest portrait sessions during cocktail hour. In 2020, couples will opt for a more elevated and immersive wedding. Something memorable, not only for the beginning of their marriage but for their friends and family. Surprise appearances by country music stars, outfit changes by the bride, dogs in tuxedos, and late-night lounges add that special touch to this once-in-a-lifetime moment.

One area of extravagance for 2020 includes just the couple. Bride and groom gifts are on-trend, from heirloom family mementos to a unique piece of jewelry. Commemorating the start of a marriage with more than a wedding band is one gift trend on the rise. We recently spotted an engaged couple perusing Meridian Jewelers with an eye towards investing in keepsake jewelry.

Images via EKS Events, Tara Marolda, and TSG Aspen

7. Location, Location, Location | The old real estate adage holds true for weddings in 2020, with destination events on the radar of many engaged couples. EKS Events not only plans weddings in Aspen but often travels to coordinate celebrations abroad. It’s not uncommon to see Slossberg and team at the Aspen airport, orange luggage in tow. Greece, Italy, Antigua, Bahamas, and France are just some of their latest jaunts.

Beyond the zip code the event takes place in, look to unique spots for ceremonies and receptions. Brides skiing down the mountain to a cocktail hour at The Little Nell, a couple rowing away from their service in a canoe, and tents popping up in the middle of fields are all on-trend for 2020. T-Lazy-7 has long hosted ceremonies and weddings at their ranch, with the Maroon Bells overlooking the couple, and weddings with an ode to the old wild, wild west are here to stay in 2020. McCabe Ranch now offers a serene Old Snowmass setting with bookings for this year in the works. Perfect for rehearsal dinners, welcome parties, or couples inclined to more casual nuptials.

Whether a couple opts for small and cozy or large and loud, weddings in 2020 will be personal, detail-filled affairs that produce long-lasting memories. Especially when in Aspen. Matthews sums up 2020 wedding trends well when she says that, “an overall wedding design inspired by the surrounding environment is always beautiful and timeless.”

Looking to plan an Aspen wedding? Look no further than these local vendors. Planning | EKS Events Photography | Tara Marolda Florals | Carolyn’s Flowers Venues | T-Lazy-7 Ranch, McCabe Ranch, The Little Nell Lodging | The Little Nell Rentals | Go West Event Rentals, Premier Party Rental Welcome Gifts | Bundles Gift Co. Rings/Jewelry | Meridian Jewelers Need additional local wedding resources? Visit the Aspen Chamber Resort Association website.

[bigyack-com]

What Will We Eat in 2020? Something Toasted, Something Blue

If you’re the sort of person who uses the annual avalanche of food and drink predictions as an anthropological window into the state of the American psyche, prepare for a stripped-down, no-nonsense 2020. Mold and sobriety will be popular. Porridges like jook and arroz caldo are the new comfort foods. Saving the planet will have a new urgency, so bring your own mug to the coffee shop and learn to embrace the term “plant-based.” “There is a sense that the rose-colored glasses are off,” said Andrew Freeman, president of AF&Co., the San Francisco consulting firm that for 12 years has published a food and hospitality trend report. This year’s is titled “We’re Not in Kansas Anymore.”“The world just feels different,” Mr. Freeman said. “The labor market is tight, the political landscape is a mess. All of us are trying to navigate it.”That doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun, though. If the forecasters can be believed, joy will be found in towers of buttered toast piled with ice cream, sourdough doughnuts, CBD-infused everything and even more fried chicken sandwiches.Here, then, is a sampling of what could be in store for 2020.

Country of the Year: Japan

That recent Instagram uptick in soufflé pancakes and the fish-shaped ice cream cones called taiyaki isn’t a coincidence. With the 2020 Summer Olympics set for Tokyo and a rise in travel to Japan, the country’s influence will extend into the American culinary landscape, said Amanda Topper, associate director of food service for Mintel, the global market research company. Trendspotters also predict more interest in food from India, with a special emphasis on spicy Keralan dishes built from rice, coconut and fish, as well as foods from West Africa, Vietnam and Laos.

Cause of the Year: The Planet

As farmers grapple with climate change and consumers grow increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of what they eat, restaurants and food producers are doubling down on earth-friendly ingredients and practices. Vegan dishes and meat alternatives will show up on more menus, both fine-dining and fast-food. Regenerative farmers, who focus on soil health, are the new organic farmers. Chefs are exploring how to cook cover crops like peas and buckwheat, which regenerative farmers plant between harvests as a way to improve soil, control weeds and sequester carbon. Look for more edible and biodegradable packaging, and reusable everything, from cups to cutlery. “The companies that will win in the next 10 years will be those that fuel the new era of conscious consumption,” said Jenny Zegler, the associate director of food and drink research for Mintel.

Color of the Year: Blue

The hue started catching the eye of tastemakers a few years ago, but this year blue and its moody sibling, indigo, are expected to color more food. Butterfly pea powder tea (the new matcha!) is showing up in moon milk, a sleep remedy that is the latest adaptation of ayurvedic tradition. Ube, a purple yam, is the new “It” root vegetable; orach, also called mountain spinach, could be the new kale. Pop culture seems to be driving this one: Pantone has declared classic blue its color of the year, and blue food plays an outsize role in the novels of Percy Jackson, whose musical “The Lightning Thief” is on Broadway.

Toasted

The latest star imported from Asian tea shops is brick toast, built from thick slices of pain de mie that are scored, buttered, toasted and covered in sweet custard, syrup or ice cream. Variations on the dish, sometimes called honey toast, abound in different parts of Asia. In Japan, where it is also called Shibuya toast after the Tokyo district where the style began, a substantial portion of a loaf is hollowed out and filled with squares of toasted bread, ice cream, syrup and fruit. The Taiwanese style is more subdued, topped with condensed milk, custard or cheese. A second cousin is kaya toast, popular in Singapore, made with a thick slab of salted butter and a jam of coconut and pandan leaves that is usually served with soft-boiled eggs.

Not Toasted

Low and no-alcohol drinks are in, but that doesn’t necessarily mean people want to face the next decade without a little help. Look for a rise in mood food and calming beverages awash in CBD or adaptogens, plants that may help relieve stress. “It’s not just a young person’s thing,” said Willa Zhen, a professor of liberal arts and food studies at the Culinary Institute of America. “I think we’re all anxious.”

Growing Up

This could be the year the children’s menu finally dies — or is at least radically re-engineered. Millennials, an unusually food-aware generation, are parents to more than half of the nation’s children. And as Americans opt for less processed food and more global flavors, chicken nuggets and mac and cheese may give ground to salmon fish sticks, agedashi pops and hemp pasta with ghee.

Generational Cooking

First-generation immigrants to America, and grandparents who live in other countries or have recently immigrated, will transform restaurant menus. This is part of a growing interest among chefs with mixed cultural backgrounds to create new dishes based on techniques and ingredients from both sides of the family.

Fresh Flours

Almond flour is so 2019. Look for alternative flours made from green bananas, sweet potatoes, cauliflower and watermelon seeds.

Tech Rescues

Artificial intelligence will flood restaurants, especially fast-food and quick-service operations, adjusting pricing in real time to accommodate fluctuations in supply and demand. Delivery apps and in-store menu boards will suggest foods in the same way Netflix recommends movies. Menu boards will use voice bots and face recognition software to customize and speed ordering. Unmanned rovers will bring you pizza; companies like Domino’s are testing them in Houston and some European cities, and robots are already bringing Dunkin’ doughnuts and Starbucks coffee to college students. Breakthroughs in food safety will result from better use of blockchain, a digital ledger that can track food as it works its way from the farm to the consumer.

And the Rest

Churros. Flavored ghee. Koji, the ancient mold responsible for miso and soy sauce. Cantonese pineapple buns. Makgeolli, the sparkling, fermented Korean rice liquor. Puffed snacks made from vegetable peels. Floral flavors. Halloumi cheese. Edible flowers and botanicals. Cane sugar alternatives. Food wrapped in bijao leaves. Ice cream with hidden vegetables (think mint chocolate chip with puréed spinach).Don’t be surprised if some of these fail to take hold. “The thing to remember is that it comes back to taste,” said Ms. Topper, of Mintel. “We can talk about various trends, but if it’s not something that first and foremost people want to consume, it won’t last.” Read the full article

[cyberman128]

Bartender, gimme an Amazon over Ice 9

What sort of world do we live in where Amazon, founded as an online alternative to brick and mortar bookstores, has opened its own brick and mortar bookstores after putting them all out of business? The ambitions of this juggernaut have turned to another mountain yet unclimbed: internet connectivity. Amazon Sidewalk, a mesh-network service, will go live in just a few days. It provides an alternate pathway for Amazon devices within proximity of one another to gain access to the internet in case of a local connection problem.

The merest mention of Amazon has the possibility of political undertones. A dubious path towards unionization, and poor warehouse conditions, contrast with Amazon’s decent environmental record, and recent stance in favor of marijuana legalization. With its near total domination of the cloud computing marketplace, coupled with strong IOT device offerings, Amazon has technology in it’s blood. 

As a shameless critic of Amazon, I cannot understate the effectiveness of this company. There’s a reason Amazon has done so well on so many fronts: I mean, clearly they’re doing something right. Amazon Sidewalk should be no exception, and on June 7th 2021, unless you opt out, your Amazon devices will be automatically enrolled in this mesh-network. So what is a mesh-network? In simple terms, it’s something like Apple’s Airdrop, only instead of sending memes to your fellow bus travelers, you’re getting a pathway to the internet through their device via a close range, vendor specific connection. Sidewalk turns devices into wifi extenders, providing no connection themselves, only forwarding you down the pipe.

Amazon Sidewalk is a fantastic idea, at least on paper. Security systems, perimeter lights, even voice activated devices like Echo are vital to some people. These devices must always be connected to the internet in order to fully function. After all, if your internet is down, how will your security system send a digital alert to your device if an alarm is tripped? Might not seem like a big deal sitting at your computer drinking coffee, but what if you were out of town? I’d like to know that there’s a backup in place for my security system in case the internet goes down.

Never fear, Amazon Sidewalk is here! Your neighbor, who just so happens to have a Ring doorbell (also owned by Amazon) has an internet connection. With Sidewalk, your devices can reach the glorious interwebs through the Ring doorbell’s short range connection. As per Sidewalk’s terms, a percentage of each device’s available bandwidth is reserved and dedicated to receiving connection requests from fellow Amazon products.

Sidewalk faces a number of issues in its life cycle. There may be legal ramifications to using an internet service provider’s connection as an independent connection source. Think stealing power from your neighbor. Free lights for you, they’re stuck with the bill. Sidewalk expands the attack surface of IOT devices and home networks, and finally, this service is opt-out. This creates a perfect storm for attackers with the combination of misconfigured IOT devices, and poorly secured home wireless networks which can be accessed via something as innocent as a security camera.

I’m a practical guy, and I don’t want to be an opponent to progress. Sidewalk is a fantastic idea, but I’d harbor some apprehension at these services even without Amazon’s name in the picture. The idea that your device can be accessed by another device in an informalized manner has poor security undertones.

With more companies diversifying into tech, the future is increasingly unclear as to the cyber threat landscape. Cyber attacks have been well documented, inhibiting blue collar workers as much as their white collar counterparts. The Colonial Pipeline incident, and the recent attack on JBS meat packers are only 2 of a great many examples. Amazon, the online retailer and technology company, also maintains an incredibly far reaching and efficient package delivery service. If Amazon is wound into every aspect of our lives (remember the physical stores too), without proper vendor diversity, we risk the population falling sick to one disease due to lack of variation and resilience.

We live in a world with inconsistent technological adoption. Technology transcends industries and lives, but it does not yet encapsulate them. There are workarounds, hold outs, late adapters and infinite configurations of technologies and systems in our very real world that need patching, translating, or modification to sync up. Soon, technology may become so seamless within our lives there is no way to avoid coming into contact with a particular product or brand. Thankfully, we’re not there yet.

In my opinion, we as a society have already placed too many eggs in Amazon’s basket. If every Amazon device is connected to other nearby Amazon devices, a single security incident could wreck all associated infrastructure from top to bottom simultaneously. Imagine a driver, maybe a few years in the future. He wears augmented reality contact lenses and carries a cell phone. His electric truck is controlled by an inhouse operating system and also connects to the internet. He delivers a variety of products using a map app, coordinating with his coworkers through yet another app. All of the products, in every aspect from production, to software, to connectivity are controlled by Amazon. And what if none of this will work properly because it got infected via a compromised Echo in a suburban cul-de-sac somewhere in America?

What’s next?  Will Amazon make smart earbuds, phones, start a cellphone service, or be an internet service provider? These aren’t crazy questions. Amazon, and by Amazon I mean Jeff Bezos, can literally do whatever they/he want.

There have been several notable AWS blackouts over the years. Usually they involve one particular AWS region and are not widespread. These blackouts don’t last long, and have not adversely affected digital  life as we know it for longer than an afternoon. So far that is... There’s a timer on this situation, and Sidewalk is a notch towards its completion. Nothing is too big to fail. More disturbing still, Amazon’s official reaction to the most recent blackout was tepid and uninspiring to say the least. Whether this was a cyber attack, a mistake, or some kind of failure, technical or otherwise, is unknown. All we got was a very corporate ‘We are working toward resolution.’ I think Kurt Vonnegut would have something to say about this. After all, just 1 piece of Ice 9 into the ocean, the whole world freezes. Let’s hope nobody's preparing to hold Amazon hostage with a piece of digital Ice 9.

With so many devices involved in this Sidewalk technology, and due to the sheer size of Amazon, security is paramount. Lack of vigilance in configuration and patching, coupled with future compatibility issues open up a swath of potential issues to contend with for security workers. Also, Sidewalk increases the attack surface for a small, and questionable gain. If any other company created Sidewalk, maybe it wouldn’t be news-worthy. However, anything Amazon does is newsworthy. I say, political opinions aside, never trust one company for everything. The question remains: am I disabling Sidewalk on my personal Amazon devices? Easy answer: I’d be sure to opt-out, if only I owned anything from Amazon.

[jessicakehoe]

How Beauty Brands are Taking a More Sustainable Approach to Packaging and Products

From ingredient sourcing to sustainable packaging, here’s how the industry’s forward thinkers are striving to tread more lightly as they produce the beauty products you see on the shelves.

RETHINK (INGREDIENTS)

The fine print on beauty labels tells us next to nothing about how responsibly sourced ingredients are. To muddy matters, calculating a product’s eco-footprint is far trickier than checking if the formula is all-natural or organic.

For starters, natural ingredients can still cause environmental havoc—take, for instance, palm oil and its derivatives. Widely used in beauty products, they can be found in everything from shampoo to lipstick. They are largely produced in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the destruction of rainforests to clear the way for palm oil plantations is rampant. “A lot of companies are coming in and bulldozing and forcing communities out,” says Lindsay Dahl, senior vice-president of social mission at Beautycounter. Although the brand initially wanted to eschew palm oil, it realized that palm derivatives are still the best choice for many of its products.

As cosmetics ingredients, palm oil derivatives are safe and non-toxic, explains Dahl. Plus, palm oil is the most efficient vegetable oil to grow, so switching to less efficient crops that demand more land could be more environmentally damaging. Beauty companies are therefore working to change how it’s produced: 100 per cent of L’Oréal Paris’s palm oil supply is certified by the non-profit authority Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and Beautycounter is currently pushing for all of its products to be RSPO-certified, too.

But sometimes there’s no way to harvest something in a sustainable way, so rethinking ingredients means taking to the science lab. A 2012 study by the ocean conservation non-profit BLOOM found that the cosmetics industry was the world’s biggest buyer of animal squalane, a moisturizer largely sourced from the livers of endangered sharks. So when Biossance got into the sustainable-skincare game, it opted to bioengineer 100 per cent plant-derived squalane—from renewable sugar cane—instead.

REVAMP (THROWAWAY PACKAGING)

Mixing non-recyclables with recyclables in the blue bin—something waste management experts have dubbed “wish-cycling”—can result in the whole batch getting trashed. Beauty products are extra-tricky: “If you look at a lipstick or a compact, it’s usually made from different kinds of material, and then there’s the size,” says Anthony Rossi, vice-president of global business development at Loop, a TerraCycle company. (Small-format items, generally anything less than eight centimetres by eight centimetres, often can’t be properly sorted.)

Plus, it’s not always obvious what can or can’t be recycled (a PET plastic shampoo bottle is OK but not the cap) and too often leftover goop hasn’t been rinsed off. “When something is contaminated with residual liquid, not only can you not recycle it but it ruins other recyclables,” says Calvin Lakhan, PhD, co-investigator for York University’s Waste Wiki project. A study done for Environment and Climate Change Canada reports that in Canada, we throw away 87 per cent of plastics.

But even if we only recycle what we should, the system is plagued by another problem: plummeting demand. “The big challenge with recycling today is that the cost of crude oil to make virgin plastics is so cheap,” says Rossi. “The incentive for companies to use recycled plastics is diminishing by the day.”

There’s no fast fix to throwaway packaging, but beauty companies of all stripes are making headway. Recently, Unilever switched to 100 per cent recycled-plastic bottles for all three of Dove’s ranges in North America and Europe in an effort to slash its use of virgin plastics. Last year, Beautycounter got rid of 800,000 unnecessary plastic parts—think inner lids and spatulas otherwise doomed to become landfill fodder.

Over at Burt’s Bees, prioritizing post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials has been a longtime goal, with some items now up to 80 per cent PCR content. Through its TerraCycle partnership, the brand also ensures that people have a free way to recycle items that can’t go in a blue bin, like lip balms and mascara.

In the haute-beauty space, Hermès’s answer to disposable consumer culture includes the new Rouge Hermès lipsticks, encased in colour-blocked lacquered, brushed and polished metal. Designed by Pierre Hardy, best known for his shoes and baubles, the plastic-free tubes are refillable keepsake objets—like all luxury items, they’re made to last.

REINVENT (THE SYSTEM)

“Reduce, reuse, recycle—it’s not just a catchy phrase,” says Lakhan. “It’s actually the order we’re supposed to do things, but we as consumers and policy planners neglect those first two steps.” Why jettison perfectly functional packaging, for example, when it could be refilled? That’s the question being posed by a growing number of manufacturers and retailers. In Vancouver, The Body Shop’s newly revamped CF Pacific Centre store has refill stations where you can buy your favourite shower gel in replenishable aluminum bottles.

Local indie shops focused on refillables are popping up across Canada, too. BYOC (bring your own container—anything clean will do) to Montreal’s Klova, Calgary’s Canary or Vancouver’s The Soap Dispensary & Kitchen Staples. Offering door-to-door service, Saponetti in Toronto will bring glass Mason jars with made-in-Canada soaps, shampoos and conditioners right to you and take away your empties for reuse.

Similarly, TerraCycle’s circular shopping platform, Loop, is a spin on the milkman delivery model, partnering with some major players in beauty, including P&G and Unilever. (Stateside, you can order Pantene, Love Beauty and Planet and Ren Clean Skincare—the same formulas you know but in containers designed to be refilled again and again.) Loop is slated to launch in the Greater Toronto Area this year with Loblaw; although it’s a pilot for now, it’s one more sign that reinventing our collective attitude to waste is not just urgent but doable.

Ready to make more eco-friendly choices in your life? Sarah Daniels has rounded up three zero-waste shops across the country make it easy to reduce your grooming footprint:

Photography via inStagram/@jakegrahamPhoto anD @megangloverPhoto

Photography by Fahim Kassam

photography by eleanor hannon

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Bare Market, Toronto

After working for social enterprises and running zero-waste pop-ups across Toronto, Dayna Stein opened a permanent packaging-free shop featuring groceries and lifestyle goods earlier this year. There’s olive oil on tap and a freezer stocked with smoothie-ready kale and blueberries, and everything from mouthwash and muscle rub to blush and dry shampoo is sold in bulk, including colourful French clays that can be used to make custom face masks.

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The Soap Dispensary & Kitchen Staples, Vancouver

Linh Truong launched her refill shop nearly a decade ago, long before sustainability was trending. “I had never heard of the words ‘zero waste,’” says Truong. “The three rs start with reduce and reuse,” so the idea to operate a store revolving around them just made sense, she says. Alongside pantry staples, household cleaners and grooming products—including Truong’s own private-label line—there’s also a selection of raw materials for those interested in crafting their own soaps and cosmetics.

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The Tare Shop, Halifax

Eco depression is real. Kate Pepler felt it after completing her environmental science degree at Dalhousie University, where learning about plastic-choked oceans and overflowing landfills was part of the curriculum. The 27-year-old decided to do something about it and opened the city’s first zero-waste store. Stocked with locally made beard balm, shampoo bars and candles, the bulk-goods destination meets coffee shop has become so popular that Pepler plans to open a second location in the future.

The post How Beauty Brands are Taking a More Sustainable Approach to Packaging and Products appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

How Beauty Brands are Taking a More Sustainable Approach to Packaging and Products published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

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Many unlucky online shoppers have fallen prey to 'porch pirates' who steal packages from their homes. It's a problem that could be exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. "Porch pirates" who steal Amazon packages have more opportunities as the coronavirus pandemic puts much of the world on lockdown, with a couple of new twists to ponder: Packages aren't on porches as long, because shoppers are isolating themselves at home, and most deliveries are of essential items -- not the latest hot gadgets. Experts predict a variety of outcomes in the near- and longer-term around package security, with sellers like Amazon, third-party product and software vendors, and customers themselves playing important roles. "I tend to think when you're looking at the security and responsibility of Amazon, they probably have done their part," said Steven Weisman, a law professor at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., and frequent commentator regarding online scams and other crimes. "You're paying a pretty good price that isn't building in the cost of security when it gets to you." Amazon customers do have some protections. The company will refund or replace a stolen purchase for items it sells in most cases, and offers the A-to-z Guarantee program for items sold by third parties on its platform. But it takes time to get a package replaced or one's money back, and there's a sense of violation that comes with any theft, whether it's a pair of sweatpants or the latest iPhone. Overall, porch piracy has been viewed as a crime of impulse and opportunity, Weisman said. "The organized scammers are probably not going to be doing this because there isn't enough of a guarantee that there's a worthwhile product [in the package]," he said. But the odds there will be something of value to porch pirates inside the box have gone up amid the pandemic, as Amazon and other sellers shift focus to delivering essential items, such as toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Porch piracy was already rampant before the crisis. More than 36% of 2,000 U.S. shoppers surveyed said they had a package stolen at least once, according to the 2019 Package Theft Statistics Report by C + R Research. And 56% said they knew somebody who had a package stolen as well. The pandemic should bring the problem to the forefront anew. But it's an open question how much more Amazon itself will do about it going forward. Some measures already taken include the option of getting packages delivered to one of the company's secure lockers at gas stations and other retail locations. Amazon has also offered Key, which gives delivery drivers keyless access to your home, but that service is currently suspended amid the pandemic. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on future porch-piracy related plans. The company is making aggressive investments in its last-mile delivery strategy, however, and some of that effort may address the matter. The shape of shipping Amazon's ultimate goal is to reduce the cost of shipping, and it already demands a lot from its network of delivery subcontractors, said Guy-Frederic Courtin, a former retail supply chain executive at Infor and close watcher of Amazon's business strategies. One possibility is a more granular approach to package delivery that can rob porch pirates of opportunity -- in exchange for a premium price paid by the customer. Instead of saying, 'ship it in two days or next-day,' deliver it on my schedule [at a premium price]. That, to me, answers a lot more questions. Guy CourtinFormer retail and supply chain executive, Infor "Is this something where it's about last-mile delivery, or delivery on 'your time,'" Courtin said. "Instead of saying, 'ship it in two days or next-day,' deliver it on my schedule [at a premium price]. That, to me, answers a lot more questions -- not just about guaranteed delivery and getting porch pirates. It's about better customer experience." Some third-party software vendors, such as Narvar, have already seen an opportunity along these lines. The company offers a suite of cloud-based applications that integrates with a retailer's e-commerce systems and seek to offer a better customer experience, from purchase to delivery to returns. One app, Concierge, coordinates product deliveries and returns through drop-off locations at 8,000 Walgreens stores as well as some Neiman-Marcus locations. Other applications handle package tracking and shipping notifications. Narvar’s more than 600 customers include the Gap, DSW and GameStop. Narvar's approach adds security to the online buying experience -- it's harder for thieves to steal packages from behind a Walgreen counter than off your porch -- as well as an improvement over Amazon's current processes, said CEO Amit Sharma. "You can set expectations all day long," Sharma said. "Customers now expect proactive communication. Are there any changes because of weather delays and supply chain disruptions?" Securing the home front In the past few years, a type of vigilante justice has emerged around porch pirates, as residents couple inventions such as the Ring video doorbell with social media sites like Nextdoor.com. The mix of technology and good old gossip has thwarted some would-be thieves, and Ring itself promotes success stories with real-life video clips captured by its cameras. Still, like Amazon, Ring has competition and there is constant innovation in the home security space. Vivint Smart Home, which offers whole-house security systems, recently released Doorbell Camera Pro, which uses machine vision to detect faces and the presence of packages on the stoop. Vivint collects anonymized data from customers' doorbells on an opt-in basis and uses it to improve the person and package detection algorithm. It also built the doorbell with a fairly powerful chip in order to provide the performance needed locally. When a package is delivered, customers get a notification letting them know. If someone approaches the package, the camera starts recording and the doorbell emits a sharp chime, which can scare off the would-be thief, said Mike Child, senior director of product development. Prevention, it seems, is one key to the porch piracy battle.  "We did a lot of testing around that -- the sound it plays, the volume it plays at," Child said. "We find that once they get your hands on [your package] they don't drop it. They just run away faster."

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