Why Eating Seasonally and Locally Is Better for You (and Your Wallet)

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Health experts and chefs both often say you should eat "seasonally," or include foods in your diet that are grown at the same time of the year you eat them. For example, that means squash in the summer and fall, and artichokes in the spring. Eating seasonally is important, and carries benefits to your health, the planet, and your wallet. Here are some of them.

At first glance, eating seasonally may seem simple—you eat foods that are "in season," or being grown and harvested at the time of the year when you buy and cook them. That's true, but there's more to it than just being a trendy food movement. There are real benefits to eating foods that are available at their peak right now.

You Can Save a Ton of Money and Eat Better, Healthier Food

Perhaps the biggest tangible benefit of eating seasonally is that you'll save money on food. When you buy what's in season, you buy food that's at the peak of its supply, and costs less to farmers and distribution companies to harvest and get to your grocery store. It may seem like common sense, but it's one of those things many of us ignore when we're shopping.

However, the best consequence of eating seasonally is that you get the best tasting, healthiest food available. The same reasons that keep the cost of seasonal food down also drive its quality up: The food is grown closer to you so it doesn't spoil on its trip, it's harvested at the peak of its season (although there's no real guarantee that it's picked at the peak of freshness), and sold during its season, before it spoils. Ideally, this means you're getting fruits and vegetables that haven't had time to lose their flavor or their health benefits by sitting in a shipping container for a trip across the ocean.

The inverse is true for foods that are out of season. They have to be shipped from around the world to get to you, usually picked before the peak of their flavor in order to survive the long trip (or be allowed to mature while they travel) to your local grocery store. As a result, they're much more expensive because of the time, the distance, and the sheer number of people involved with getting those food items to you that need to be paid.

You End Up Supporting Local, More Sustainable Farmers

Some of these factors can be compounded if you also buy local as well as seasonal. Just because you buy seasonal doesn't mean that a huge food distribution company won't harvest early and keep your food in a warehouse for awhile. You'll definitely get better food for less money, but there's no guarantee you'll get food at the peak of freshness, flavor, or nutrition.

If you buy locally, you'll have a better chance at getting foods that are seasonal, fresh, and support local farmers and businesses in your community. Shop at a nearby farmer's market or food co-op, or support a local farm by signing up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project (or other fresh food delivery service.) Many of those farms and businesses also likely offer organic or sustainable options if you're looking for them. You may wind up spending more to put your money where your taste buds (or personal ethics) are, but it may be a tradeoff that's worthwhile to you in the long run.

You Get a Wider Variety of Foods in Your Diet

A pleasant side-effect of eating what's in season is that you get a broader variety of foods in your diet. Those foods can broaden your palate, for one, but they may also expose you to dishes and ingredients you may not have otherwise explored, and while it doesn't go for every location, it can also help you eat a more well-rounded and balanced diet as well.

Many of us do this by default to a certain degree—in the spring and summer we eat berries and stonefruit, then as summer turns to fall we turn our attention to apples, pumpkins, and squash. Part of that is because they're ingrained in our culture, but also because they're seasonal and plentiful. Expanding your horizons a little more can open the door to way more delicious food that you can get and prepare cheaply.

How to Tell What's "In Season" Near You

If you're not familiar with what's "seasonal" where you live, it's not too difficult to find out. Take a quick glance around the produce section of your grocery store. Pay attention to the way prices are trending. Have you noticed that berries, peaches, nectarines, and other stonefruit get really expensive at the end of fall? Or that the ones that are available just don't look as good as the ones during the spring? That's a good indicator. Also, if you notice there's an abundance of something specific, and they're on sale (like potatoes in fall, for example,) that's another good indicator.

Still, your eyes—and stock levels at grocery stores—can deceive you. The Cleveland Clinic has a guide to seasonal eating here that's worth a read for more information, and if you live in the United States or Canada, this map from Eat Well Guide lets you click on your location to see what's in season at what times of the year. This chart is a good visual guide, as is The Leon Chart, both of which we've shared before. Finally, previously mentioned Eat the Seasons is another good reference for all-things seasonal, no matter where you live.

Don't Go Overboard

Eating seasonally isn't a new idea, even though it sounds trendy. Michael Pollan discussed the idea in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma several years ago. Before global transportation was as speedy and commonplace as it is today, eating seasonally and locally were just things everyone did. No one assumed you could get peaches in the winter, or chestnuts in the summer. Those things were part of enjoying that season.

Still, like any food movement, don't go overboard with it. There are great benefits, but as soon as your food movement becomes a banner you march under, you lose sight of the benefits. If you can get apples year round and you love apples, enjoy them. If you doctor suggests you get more leafy greens in your diet and kale or collards are out of season but in stock at the store, don't turn them down just to say you're "eating seasonally." That's silly. Just be mindful that you'll spend more in the process and there may be a seasonal or local alternative that's just as good, and good for you.

Title photo by doug88888, milolovitch69, and Stockproject1. Photos by andrea_44, Natalie Maynor, Curt Gibbs, Anthony Albright, and Ian Ransley.

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A May-December Media Strategy Could Help Locally Focused Startups

Editor’s note: Jonathan Sills is an executive in residence at Battery Ventures, where he helps advise portfolio companies on marketing strategy. Battery is an investor in Relay Foods and HotelTonight.

In Silicon Valley, it’s sometimes easy to focus solely on social and other types of cutting-edge, digital advertising when advising startups on their marketing strategies. But these businesses, particularly those serving specific geographic markets, can also amp up customer acquisition by combining their Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest strategies with old-school, traditional media marketing campaigns.

Radio spots. Local newspaper ads. Billboards. Cable airtime. These are all time-tested tactics for companies trying to acquire new customers, but they’re often looked down upon as liver-spotted has-beens in the thumping nightclub of today’s digital and data-driven marketing environment.

Detractors say these old-codger strategies lack the flexibility, adaptability and low-entry cost of a self-service cost-per-click (CPC) campaign. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Based on recent testing, I’m convinced that a certain kind of retro/digital mashup — a May/December marketing romance, if you will — can pay real dividends for startups willing to experiment and look past their first impression.

Retro meets digital

Consider Candy Crush Saga, King.com’s megahit game for mobile and tablet devices. Launched in November 2012, it quickly attracted a massive following fueled not only by organic and viral distribution online, but also relevant mobile advertising. Data collected by iSpot.tv and other third-party sources shows that Candy Crush then took its marketing retro: In March of last year, King began layering national cable advertising onto its marketing strategy, and significantly ramped up those TV buys in the subsequent quarter.

These commercials showed up on old-school networks like Game Show, TV Land, and the Hallmark Channel (Little House on the Prairie, anyone?). iSpot estimates Candy Crush aired 4,515 national cable spots in all (a lot!). The program that featured the most Candy Crush ads? Re-runs of the late ‘80s hit “The Golden Girls.”

Another innovative May/December strategy is the one recently pursued by Relay Foods, an online grocery retailer for natural and sustainable foods based in Charlottesville, Va. Right now, the company operates in only a handful of metro areas throughout the mid-Atlantic region. So it has to think locally when it comes to advertising to its target customers: educated, affluent women who love attending the farmers’ market but rarely have time.

Until recently, Relay acquired new customers mainly through branded delivery trucks that drove around its target markets, as well as word of mouth and targeted “street teams” that canvassed public spaces and offered Relay gift cards. But the company wanted to find new ways to amp up customer acquisition without breaking the bank.

The company tested almost a dozen different tactics, but finally hit upon an old-school/digital hybrid strategy that worked. On the digital side, the team ran CPC campaigns on Facebook with page-post ads that linked back to the Relay site. These spots targeted women 25 and older in the geographies Relay serviced and were purchased at around a one-dollar cost per click.

On the retro side, the team tested running “remnant” ads on local radio stations. These were inexpensive time slots that were discounted because they “remained” after other advertisers bought specific inventory but still hit the target audience. In Richmond, Relay paid about $25 on average for a traditional, 60-second radio ad, which meant the company could run 200 spots a week for $5,000. This gave Relay a pretty heavy mass-media presence in that market. It also cost far less on a CPM basis than what the company was quoted by digital-music service Pandora for ads targeting the same region.

Finally, Relay topped off the campaign with retargeting, working to re-engage and convert potential customers who didn’t sign up immediately, through both Facebook’s exchange and the broader web.

The results? The company started averaging about 1,000 new customer acquisitions a week, up from fewer than 100. Sales, gross margin and contribution margin shot up, and Relay was able to mine this radio audience for months before shifting back to a mostly digital strategy.

Print style

Even out-of-home advertising — the good old billboard in all its current forms — can help complement cutting-edge, drive-to-app and mobile web advertising campaigns.

HotelTonight, the last-minute hotel-booking app that services over 250 destinations around the world, recently was able to secure billboard placements in select airports at a fraction of the normal price. This was really an endemic placement for them, since business travelers represent a core user base.

Similarly, VistaPrint, the e-commerce leader selling business cards, stationery and marketing collateral, among other items, has for many years maintained a dual presence on digital and traditional media. One of the company’s arguably octogenarian tactics that I’ve admired from afar is the use of package inserts, which are printed offers placed inside the shipping box of an online, catalog or TV order.

Carrying an implied endorsement, they cost much less to get into people’s homes than individually addressed direct mail and can scale significantly. It seems like a great fit for VistaPrint, and Relay Foods also has used remnant alternative print channels successfully (with a regional distribution focus of course).

I could also see companies combining content syndication campaigns on Outbrain or Taboola with remnant print-newspaper ads, or Twitter with local cable. These types of mash-ups may become more common as we see other online/mobile companies build businesses serving particular cities or geographic areas, at least early in their life cycles — provided those target customers reside in the same markets. So this strategy would work better for local-meal delivery, for instance, than it would for car rental.

Old-school strategy pay-off

Yet many companies don’t consider old-school, local marketing because 1) it seems too outdated, and 2) it can actually be more expensive compared to national advertising, at least in audience-adjusted terms. Car dealers, restaurants and furniture stores traditionally have inflated the costs of such advertising, since they’re essentially held hostage to local media and may not apply a strict ROI lens to their media buys as they try to achieve strong reach in certain metro areas.

But by strategically marrying inexpensive, remnant local advertising with a well-thought out digital campaign — then spreading retargeting on top, like the icing on a wedding cake — online businesses can dramatically boost customer acquisition. And that’s a love story both young and old marketing professionals can embrace.

Image by ischte/Shutterstock