Schuylerville to Saratoga, NYC, Boston and Back
9 Miles East Farm Tests its Healthy Mission
by Ruth Fein Revell
Make it easy for busy people to eat healthy at an affordable cost. That’s the heart and soul of 9 Miles East.
Since Gordon and Mary Sacks bought their 29-acre vegetable farm in Schuylerville nearly 20 years ago, reality has exceeded their dreams of creating a healthy, farm-raised, professionally prepared meal delivery service. And now, their casual farm-to-table restaurant in Saratoga Springs rounds out their business model, as their meal subscription service grows beyond the Capital Region, to Boston and the New York City Metro area.
“You don’t see our products on the grocery shelves,” says Gordon, “You see it showing up on your porch.”
He and Mary see 9 Miles East as a service company. Their mission: to make it as easy as possible for busy individuals and households to eat healthy. That goes beyond delivering fresh food.
“We didn’t invent the salad,” Gordon smirks. “But we do have a better buying process and a better product.” That’s what they counted on from day one, delivering their promises (pun intended).
Complete with a commercial catering kitchen, 9 Mile East chefs offer daily and weekly specials, from unique pizzas and sandwiches on homemade sourdough bread, to creative bowls, entree choices to suit vegan, vegetarian and gluten free diets, others featuring local chicken, salmon or strip steak, and obviously, fresh salads.
Their growth into larger markets is anything but accidental. As a good marketer would advise, their mission, vision and actions are simple and consistent.
“Basically healthy has to be easy or people won’t make that choice,” Gordon believes. So they expanded their local model, adding deliveries to corporate conference rooms and multi-building high-rise communities.
Large office complexes, for example in Westchester County and Boston, contract with 9 Miles East to offer menu options to the employees who go through their doors every Monday. They know that on Tuesday, their lunch and/or dinner orders, along with some fresh produce if they choose, will arrive right in their office. The same is true for residential communities they partner with for regular deliveries. The large customer base in one place approach is what makes it viable.
According to Gordon, human resource officers and building managers are leveraging the service to help attract and retain employees and tenants.
The story doesn’t end here for these two entrepreneurs. First, there’s the history lesson.
“One-hundred years ago, this area was a net exporter of food,” Gordon reminds us. “We may have that opportunity again . . .”
Second, there’s the health of the average American.
“What we’ve found is that people with health conditions, i.e., heart conditions or diabetes, have been using our meals as part of their treatment, and it’s been working,” says Gordon.
Quite a bold statement. So where is the evidence?
Above: Lemon Rosemary Chicken
The company started a program to test their hypothesis − that delivering healthy, tasty, affordable prepared meals right to a person’s door could actually have a measurable health effect.
“Our meals simply make it easy to follow nutritional guidance for managing pre-diabetes and diabetes,” says Gordon. The pilot program enrolled 50 people who each completed 12 weeks of eating 9 Mile East ready-to-eat meals, five meals per week. The individuals submitted before and after blood sugar reports. Each had an A1C of 7.5 or higher and lived in Saratoga, Albany, Warren or Schenectady county.
“We saw a 10-20 percent reduction in A1C blood sugar,” according to Gordon.
Maybe not a scientific clinical trial, but one regional managed care company is impressed enough to take a closer look.
“I can put our fully prepared, extremely healthy meals in anyone’s hands for nine dollars,” says Gordon.
If the wallet allows, it doesn’t seem like a huge risk for a potentially life-altering win, and a delicious one at that.