Meet Our New Local Partner - Trailhead Naturals

We are excited to welcome a new local partner to the Bloomingfoods family! Trailhead Naturals is a woman-owned business in Indianapolis making healthy vegan snacks that are 100% plant-based, gluten-free, soy-free, and naturally sweetened.

Each bite is a flavor explosion that is nourishing to your body, mind, and soul. You can feel good about indulging with sprouted nuts seeds, grains, and whole-food sweeteners like dates, raw honey, and maple syrup just the way nature intended it to be.

You can now find these delicious items in both Bloomingfoods stores!

Be sure to try them all, like the Amaranth Protein Balls, Maple Pecan Scones, Lemon Poppyseed Muffins, Chocolate Muffins, Almond Chocolate Biscotti, and Chia Crackers pictured below!

Meet Becker Farms

Bloomingfoods is proud to partner with Becker Farms again this year to provide fresh, healthy, free-range turkeys for your Thanksgiving meals.

Becker Farms is a grass-based diversified livestock farm in east-central Indiana. They specialize in pastured, antibiotic-free, non-GMO fed animals. Their farm is unique in that they raise multiple species in a grass-based rotation and use regenerative farming practices.  

Kyle Becker grew up on a very large farm in Cambridge City, IN where they milked 70 cows, had a feedlot, and raised all of their own replacements. He started out feeding and bedding calves and progressed to AI breeding the herd, fieldwork, and milking. 

In 2006 Kyle was a 4th-year veterinary student at Purdue doing a rotation with Monsanto animal health, working with the field tech services vet using a genetically modified bovine growth hormone. He spent every day on large farms selling the hormone. While on that rotation he was asked to read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, whose theory is that you are what you eat. Pollan stated that we “eat by the grace of nature, not industry”. The book was instrumental in shaping his ideals of a modern responsible agricultural enterprise. 

As a Food Animal Veterinarian for Becker Food Animal Health Services, Kyle is always working to help his clients raise their animals in a safe, healthy, and profitable way. He brings that expertise to his own farm to make it the best that it can be, as well.   

Kyle’s wife Emily also attended Purdue University where she received her B.S. in Food Science, then continued on to Indiana University where she attained her Master of Public Health degree. Emily loves working at home on the family farm, helping with the veterinary business, and raising their four adorable children.

The Becker Children
Charlotte, Stella, Griffin, and Wyatt

The children are also very involved on the farm. Due to their natural curiosity and interest in the animals they raise, the children began helping out at an early age.  Some of their first chores have been helping to collect, wash, pack, and label eggs and bottle-feeding calves.  As they have gotten older, they help with a variety of responsibilities every morning and evening such as feeding, watering, and bedding animals; helping sort and load animals; and helping milk the cows.

The children each have their favorite things to do on the farm. Charlotte (9) said that she enjoys learning new responsibilities and earning privileges for a job well done. Stella (7) enjoys animal care most. Griffin (5) currently enjoys taking care of the barn cats. Wyatt (3) is very eager to help build or demo things.  The children also like to join their parents at the local farmers market. 

Kyle says that Bloomingfoods is a great partner for their Thanksgiving turkeys because they need to have like-minded distributors to help them sell their products. Being a small farm, he says they do not have the resources to market and distribute at a level of scale that would allow them to be profitable. 

“We thoroughly enjoy raising our turkeys and being a part of so many wonderful family dinners. Our birds are out foraging fall clover and I truly believe that they are living the best life we can give them. They have shelters in case of bad weather, woods, and trees to go explore, and free choice feed when they are hungry. We also have developed a very easy low-stress method for transporting them to the processing plant and our processor is trained in humane animal handling.” -Kyle Becker 

CLICK HERE to place your Thanksgiving pre-order.

To learn more about Becker Farms, visit their website at beckerfarmsin.com.

Where Did All The Groceries Go?

DEAR BLOOMINGFOODS OWNER-MEMBERS & SHOPPERS,

Although concerns about the overall health of the US food supply chain have mostly subsided, we are still experiencing longer-term out-of-stocks with some of your favorite brands. In an effort to keep you updated with the latest information, we’d like to share some of the primary factors that are creating these out-of-stocks. Additionally, we’d like to share a few of the brands and types of items with which we’re experiencing longer-term stocking challenges. 

The primary factors that have affected the availability of some of your favorite grocery items are:

• The initial stockpiling and panic buying led to “pipeline” shortages

• Transportation & distribution disruptions and delays

• Production and facility capacity is greatly reduced (production hours have changed, physical reconfiguration of some facilities for safer work experiences has slowed production and employee health concerns have altered shift work)

• At home cooking and eating while restaurants operate at reduced capacity results in increased consumer demand for in-store groceries

• Travel restrictions and agricultural distribution disruptions have curtailed the supplies of imported products (i.e. canned tomatoes)

• Shortage of raw materials (i.e. rice is harvested once annually and with the spike in demand, some reserves have been depleted until the next harvest in the fall.)

• Weather: the regional apple crop that we expected later this summer has been destroyed by late spring frosts

• The surplus of produce (fruits and vegetables) that would normally be sold to shuttered schools and restaurants is causing quality issues in warehouses across the country

• The whole agricultural sector is being affected by a shortage of seasonal workers

• State regulations regarding Hot Bar/Salad Bar/Buffet style services have dictated what we can and cannot offer (our Kitchen and Deli staff have implemented some creative solutions!)

These are a few of your favorite brands that are experiencing availability challenges:

• Amy’s Frozen foods

• Amy’s Canned soups

• Field Day (all categories)

• Seventh Generation cleaning supplies and paper goods

• Many varieties of tofu 

• Bob’s Red Mill

• Lundberg Family Farms rice

• Bubbies pickles (some varieties) and horseradish

• Applegate Farms frozen sausages

• Follow Your Heart Vegenaise

We are frequently communicating with representatives from our distributor, United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) and will continue to monitor product availability and do our best to provide reasonable alternatives for long-term out-of-stocks. In spite of the difficulties of this pandemic, our mission still remains the same. We will continue to do everything we can to provide healthy, high quality, sustainable, and environmentally-sound products at a fair price to our community.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. 

Sincerely,

The Bloomingfoods Team