Why Regional?

Depending on where you live or how you buy your food, "local" can mean your backyard, or your bioregion. In places with long growing seasons and diversified crops, local could mean a county or a state. In an area like the Northeast (New England, PA, NY, NJ), with a lot of small states and microclimates, it makes sense to think of the entire region as part of our local food source. 

At Red Tomato, we depend on the bounty of the Northeast to ensure that we are able to offer products grown nearby throughout the growing season. This way, when it is too hot to grow lettuce in our southern tier (NY, NJ, PA) we may still be able to source it from growers in New England. Likewise, our southern growers enable us to kick off the season a few weeks earlier in the season (and go a little later in the fall) - bringing you the best quality produce, grown as close to home as possible, for as many months as the region allows.

When you buy food close to home, there are many benefits:

• Regional Economies: Your hard-earned money stays in your region, which in turn helps farms and businesses survive over the long haul.
• Preserving Farms: Thriving farms keep land in agricultural use and fertile soil from being covered over with buildings and cement.
• Environment and Health: Reduced storage and travel time help local and regional products retain higher nutrient value, and use less energy, than their distant cousins shipped from across the country or across the globe.
• It tastes great! The most important part of this equation: local and regional food is fresh and fresh is delicious.

Whatever local means to you, we're confident that once you try the top quality produce that is grown by our network of Northeast growers, you will agree that a regional tomato really is a better tomato.