What We’re Doing Next…

The world has changed dramatically over the past month, and in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, I’m so grateful to see all the ways that people are coming together. Whether it is my colleagues putting up Christmas décor to cheer up their neighborhoods or seeing friends commandeer 3D printers at empty schools to print and construct face shields—we as a world community are pitching in to help.

While we have already found some ways to help in our local communities, we’ve been thinking about bigger ways that we can use Balsam Hill’s resources to help. Our answer is Balsam Provisions.

Each year, we deliver tens of thousands of our Christmas trees and décor items to customers around the country. Since the holiday season is our busiest time of year, right now we have extra capacity. So, we’re temporarily repurposing some of our existing warehouses and delivery infrastructure to ship household essentials to customer’s doorsteps across the United States. Our warehouse partner, Inland Star, is mobilizing warehouses in Fresno and Harrisburg to help move products across the country.

In order to take pressure off the strained grocery store supply chain, we’re partnering with commercial restaurant suppliers such as US Foods to make retail-ready and shelf-stable items available to you in bulk or warehouse sizes.

By delivering these products from commercial business and restaurant suppliers to those in need, we can move idle goods into the marketplace and also help you avoid going out to stores. This is especially important for at-risk individuals, to help minimize their exposure to infection.

You may notice that our prices are most likely higher than what you see at local stores, even after adjusting for the size difference—this is because they reflect our product costs plus FedEx shipping and handling charges to deliver to your home.

Our goal in this effort is to be consistent with our company values, which include “doing the right thing.” As such, we are not trying to profit from this service. In the interest of supporting our communities during this time, any profits from Balsam Provisions sales will be donated to food banks, including our partners at the Idaho Foodbank, Second Harvest, and Central Pennsylvania Food Bank.

Please spread the word about this service to anyone who it will help, we will do our best to source and ship as much food as we can to meet demand.

Best wishes for good health,

Mac Harman

UPDATE: We temporarily repurposed our existing warehouse and delivery infrastructures to ship out goods to customers’ doorsteps across the United States.