Why Organic?
Sometimes, when a customer at our counter asks, we get to tell our personal story of why we opened Organic Krush; I thought I’d share it here.
In the summer of 2014 Fran and I spent a lot of time road tripping with our teenage daughters. (They were enjoying Taylor Swift and One Direction that summer 🙂 As we journeyed up and down the East Coast , we were so dissatisfied with the food choices for ourselves and our daughters. We kept saying out loud, how could this be that there are no quick and easy places to eat that have hormone – free chicken and organic broccoli? 4 days into that first road trip we knew what we had to do: open a restaurant that served quick and easy food which had no hormones and no pesticides;
8 months later Organic Krush opened its doors;
We laugh about that road trip now, but it wasn’t funny when we were going through it. For most of their lives, we had cooked our daughters’ food (we’re Italian) thus controlling what went into their bodies. Now because they were young teens with sports and activities, we were out on the road more and more and we didn’t have the time to cook the food that had nourished them until this point. It was frustrating that we couldn’t feed them at local restaurants. We knew at a gut level that our hormone raging girls did not need hormone laden food!!!!
During those 8 months of chaotic planning (did I mention we had never started a business prior??) , we were sure of one thing: our entire menu had to be Organic.
Why? Because it was the only way to control the quality of products that entered our back door and that we served to our community and family; The USDA seal of organic is a label that indicates that the food or product has been produced by approved methods of growing and harvesting.
“These methods integrate cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering may not be used.” What Is Organic
In order to protect the integrity of this certification there are 30,000 field inspections each year to monitor and test for pesticides or lack thereof. In order for a product and farm to be certified by the USDA as organic, they must pass stringent testing and monitoring.
Is organic labeling perfect? Probably not. But what has Fran and I concerned most of all is that our children and our friends and family are getting sicker than is acceptable; auto immune diseases are on the rise, childhood and adult cancers are heartbreakingly present, and food confusion is now an actual psychiatric disorder. Most people don’t know anymore what to eat to be healthy.
Here’s where we knew Organic Krush could make a difference: We believe that If you eat food free of contaminants, pesticides, GMO’s and hormones, you are much more likely to lead a healthy long life. We believe that if you eat food as nature intended, you will have more energy and be more fit. We believe organic food is grown by incredible farmers who respect and care for the earth and their own well-being.
So here we are 4 years after that hangry concert road trip: our community and families embraced our quick and easy place to eat, the conversations in our stores center around health and well-being, and Fran and I get to feed our teenagers (and hopefully yours) every day with food that is free of hormones, pesticides and GMO’s.
Be in touch if there are ways we can educate and share more of what we know about organics and a healthy lifestyle;