Who We Are
Our blended family started Daily Harvest Express with a passion for local farming and bringing fresh, deliciously natural food to the people in our community. We created our online farmers market as an efficient way to bring super fresh, natural food from farms in our own area to busy people who work all week and don’t have time to get to their farmer’s market. We saw the need to provide another outlet for local farms and artisans to sell their goods AND enhance wellness in the workplace by replacing traditional processed food with fresh, organic fruits and veggies.
We’re a family of re-purposed people that have some pretty great experience in building businesses, marketing and sales. Isn’t it always interesting to look back and see how previous experiences led us to where we are today?
Papa Rafael started at 14 in farm labor working from San Diego to the San Joaquin Valley and eventually becoming a Certified Nurseryman, executive for a Fortune 500 company, successful entrepreneur and real estate investor. He’s most proud of his farm labor and work as a water boy though, crediting that experience to establishing the positive values he’s carried through his whole life till now. He’s our operations genius, mentor and handsome delivery driver!
Ivonne uses her boundless energy and a driving passion for all things organic to spread the word and encourage all our customers that “Yes, they CAN eat fresh food every day!” After a successful career in sales, she doesn’t do this for money – she does it for love. We’re glad because the pay certainly isn’t the same as she was used to!
Janis’ work as a marketing manager in healthcare wound its’ way to helping a local, hydroponic farm bring their produce to market which opened her eyes to the hardships and challenges local, community farms face and “planted the seed” for Daily Harvest Market…which has evolved from a farm stand inside Sunshine Gardens of Encinitas to Daily Harvest Express…which is our new Farm Stand On The Go…delivering fresh produce harvested from San Diego to businesses and homes throughout San Diego County.
We’re grateful to be making a difference in people’s health while supporting our farming community. It all makes sense now!
Ever wondered how all those fruits and veggies find their way into your farm box?
It’s quite the process, filled with hard work, challenges and surprises every week. But first, let me tell you why we do it at all…because we LOVE farmers and want to help keep them growing.
Often people think we’re a farm. We’re not. We exist to support hard working farmers by providing an extra stream of revenue and to bring local, organically grown produce to hard working people that can’t get to a physical farmers market.
Is it Local? Is it Organic?
Yes. Yes, mostly. Here’s exactly what we do. We buy directly from farms right here in San Diego like JR Organics, Stehly Farms Organics, Go Green Agriculture and San Gabriel Farms. We also buy direct from farms within a 250 mile radius of our warehouse. Some of our small family farms in our county are not certified organic, such as Dassi Farm, but do not use chemical pesticides and practice sustainable farming methods.
Why do we source outside of San Diego? We want to give you the widest variety of produce available within a few hours drive. While San Diego is great for citrus and avocados, areas like the Central Valley do better with apples and pears because of the climate. Unfortunately, we are losing food producing farms at an alarming rate in our county. We thank you so much for helping us support them and their families.