Erin Bradley of Freshlist holds a delivery. Photo courtesy.

Freshlist, a local company that sells produce curated from local farmers to better supply restaurant needs, is expanding to Asheville and home delivery. Freshlist is currently providing around 250 chefs, breweries, caterers, and other food professionals with locally sourced foods, and owner Jesse Leadbetter says they’ve been looking for new farms to add to their portfolio and broaden what they can offer.

Last year, Freshlist began working with a Greenville, S.C.-based food hub called Swamp Rabbit, which broadens their product availability to the Charleston area. The partnership added items such as kumquats and citrus.

The Asheville expansion launched last week.

“We felt like we accomplished three things by expanding into Asheville: for our Charlotte chefs, we can give them more of a selection throughout the year — some of that specialty stuff you can only get from that area, like celery root and things that just grow better in that microclimate,” Leadbetter says. “We can open up the Asheville market to our farms here, and sell more of their product, which is our biggest goal here, to make sure that our farms are selling everything that they have. The third thing was to help the Asheville chefs access things from Asheville and Charlotte farmers throughout the year.”

Another new offering coming soon from Freshlist is a delivery service to homes, which should kick off in the next couple of weeks. Individuals will be able to log on to the Freshlist website and shop from the same list chefs get each week. Delivery will be free over a certain spending minimum. The home delivery will launch in the 28205 zip code.

“I’ve done CSAs, I’ve experimented with Produce Box and some of those other companies, but nothing really aligned with how I actually shop and consume food,” Leadbetter says. “So having it work in a way where we do all this other online shopping with Amazon and what not, having it to where it kind of matches that is our goal.”

It will be nice to have a local alternative to ordering from Prime Now. Also down the road, you’ll be able to add ready-to-eat meals made with local ingredients from Freshlist’s chef Matt Martin to your delivery order. —Kristen Wile