12/27/15: Standing Up for Healthier Workers, CTPost
11/26/15: Field Goods says BeetCamp Produce Service Promotes Healthier Eating, Times Union
09/25/15: Fall Harvest & Wellness, WAMC Food Friday
Spring 2015: A Freshness to Feel Goods About, Columbia-Greene Business Quarterly
Spring 2015: CSA 2.0, Edible Hudson Valley
03/03/15: Field Goods Moving to Larger Warehouse, Albany Business Review
01/02/15: Winter Produce & Wellness, WAMC Food Friday
10/23/14: Schumer Announces $50k for Business, Columbia-Greene Media
09/17/14: Interview with Susan Arbetter featuring Donna Williams, Founder of Field Goods, WNYC Capital Pressroom
08/26/14: Big Demand Feeds Food Subscription Service's Hunger for Second Warehouse, Albany Business Review
Donna Williams, owner and founder of a subscription-based delivery company for local food, has seen the number of customers and revenue at Field Goods double annually since she began deliveries out of an old station wagon in 2011.
Now, Williams is planning to build or buy a second warehouse to increase distribution at Field Goods, located in Athens, New York. Williams says she'll make the decision about the second warehouse within the next month.
Field Goods received an $80,000 investment from Hudson River Ventures, a small business investment fund in the Hudson Valley, as well as a micro-loan from Greene County. The Field Goods expansion project has been named a priority project for the Capital Region Economic Development Council, which is competing for state funding for economic development projects. The council requested for $111,000 for the expansion. Awards are expected to be announced in the fall.
6/05/14: From Farms to Suburbia: Field Goods Delivers the Veggies", Westchester County Business Journal
"A former investment banker and business development consultant in New York City, Donna Williams has seen the growth of what she calls the “local food movement” since moving to Greene County in the Hudson Valley more than a decade ago.
“I don’t want to say ‘trend,’” Williams said recently at her company office in Athens, where boxes of produce sat on a table near the entrance. The growth of small farms supplying residents and commercial customers in the region with fresh food is not a dubious passing fad, that is. “It’s for sure and for real,” Williams said. And Field Goods, her innovative produce delivery service, is a part of it."
6/04/14: "Field Goods Adds Public Pick-Up Site in White Plains", LoHud, The Journal News Westchester Blog
Field Goods now delivers weekly to the White Plains branch of the YMCA. The site is open to the public for produce pick-up.
June 2014: "It Happened Organically", Hudson Valley Mercantile
"How Donna Williams moved from the world of finance into the farm fields of the Hudson Valley."
5/14/14: "Field Goods Expands to Westchester County", LoHud, The Journal News Westchester Blog
"Field Goods announced Wednesday that it has expanded into Westchester and Dutchess counties. The Athens, N.Y.-based company currently delivers produce from more than 60 small farms to more than 2,000 customers in the Hudson Valley. Field Goods' Westchester County delivery sites for employees or members now include Curtis Instruments in Mount Kisco, the JCC of Mid-Westchester in Scarsdale and Mindspark in Yonkers; the delivery site at Apogee Fitness in Bedford Hills is open to the public."
1/08/14: "Ulster County Community College presentation will focus on food industry", The Daily Freeman
"Donna Williams, founder of Field Goods, a company that delivers local, sustainable and healthy food directly to consumers throughout the Hudson Valley, will give a presentation on entrepreneurial opportunities in the food industry as part of Ulster County Community College’s Continuing and Professional Education Open House from 5 to 5:30 p.m. Jan. 16 at the Business Resource Center, 1 Development Court, town of Ulster, according to a news release."
12/25/13: Capitol Pressroom, WCNY
Donna Williams and Susan Poisson-Dollar of Field Goods discuss their local foods business model.
12/23/13: Schenectady Access Cable Council
Donna Williams discusses Field Goods on the Wellness Today TV show with LisaMarie Tersigni of Inspiring Wellness Solutions.
12/1/13: Eat Local, Act Global, Chronogram Magazine
"Unlike a typical CSA," says Williams, "we work with over 30 different farms, instead of only one. Our products include Certified Organic, organically grown, IPM (Integrated Pest Management) and conventional small farm methods. There is no upfront payment, as opposed to one or two large payments with a CSA. Customers can start and stop deliveries anytime. They can also change the size of the bags they receive. We may offer a larger variety and smaller amounts than the average CSA." Emphasizing the key role of CSAs, Williams acknowledges that " what we don't offer is a personal relationship with the farmer, which is very important to people who participate in CSAs. Another important component is sharing risk and reward with the farmer. If the harvest is great the customer receives more and less if it is not. If I meet a likely CSA customer, I suggest they go that route."
12/13: Veggie Virtuoso, Hudson Valley Magazine
“You can’t sell a funky-looking pepper or a dirty carrot in the supermarket,” declares Donna Williams. “They will just sit there untouched.” By contrast, when customers of her three-year-old company, Field Goods, open their delivery bags to find peculiar-looking vegetables like conehead cabbage and Big Mama squash covered with dirt, it’s a fun surprise."
11/28/13: From the farm to your table, and tasty to boot, RegisterStar
"Looking for something interesting for dinner tonight? Maybe something outside your wheelhouse? But, health conscious individual that you are, you also want it to be nutritious and wholesome, while at the same time altogether yummy? Now imagine having that every night of the week, week after week? That’s what customers of Athens-based Field Goods get, and on top of that, it’s food straight from small local farms, so it’s good for the community as well as your health."
9/22/13: "Field Goods collects vegetables and brings them to you" by Paul Smart, The Woodstock Times
"Setting up her business with a high school intern and her dad’s station wagon, emblazoned with the nifty logos she had hired a professional to design, she used her new company to engage and meet every challenge she could think of. Chief among these was the large amounts of waste that occur in the veggie market…which Field Goods knocked away by taking away customer choice. Their replacement? Fun bags, great products, and an education element involving use of the Internet and printed recipes and info sheets on what was included in each week’s bags."
9/19/13:"Field Goods is Source of Pride for Owner", The Record News
"When Donna Williams talks about Field Goods, a buisiness she started in 2011 to connect local producers of food with consumers, there's something more that pride in her voice: "It's like having a baby: You don't get out of midnight feelings. There's incredible joy and incredible exhaustion."
5/22/2013: Earth Day: Donna Williams' Letter to Editor Published in the Albany Times
The April 2nd Albany Times story, "Wide take on locally grown", questions the definition of "local," a critical issue for the rebirth of our region's agriculture industry.
Donna Williams: "Local should be synonymous with the concept of terroir, a French term most commonly associated with viticulture. Terroir is the sum of the characteristics that geography, climate and geology bestow on the quality and taste of a particular variety of crop. In this sense, the definition of “local” used by retailers such as Whole Foods, whose rule is that "food can not be labeled as local unless it travels to the store in seven hours or fewer," is irrelevant. "Industrial" carrots grown in southern Canada have no more in common with an organic Purple Haze variety of carrot grown in the Hudson Valley than a gallon of Gallo wine has with a fine Haut-Medoc from the Bordeaux region of France.
This focus on distance traveled stems from the belief that food miles are significant contributors to greenhouse gases. The true cause of the majority of food-related emissions is the waste that occurs in the distribution chain from farmer, to processer, to distributor, to retail shelf. Large food retailers cannot deliver true "local" food simply because their business models do not allow for it. Most varieties of supermarket produce are chosen for yield, growth rate and ability to withstand long-distance transport. These traits, which benefit national and international produce distribution, often come at a cost: taste and nutritional value."
04/2013: Field Goods announced 2013 Edible Hudson Valley "Local Hero Winner"
Pulled from the Edible Hudson Valley Digital Edition...
"If you don't have the time, means or energy to seek out locally grown produce. . . that's too bad. However, this should not relegate you to a life of inferior supermarket goods. Field Goods links farmer to consumer with a CSA-type service that provides customizable weekly deliveries to hungry customers. Mushrooms, plums, tomatoes, green garlic and purple Cherokee potatoes are just a few of the seasonal items that make up a weekly delivery, direct from local farms like Little Seed, Greig, and Fog and Thistle. While they don't deliver directly to your doorstep (this is not Manhattan!), they do drop off at a number of businesses, office buildings, college campuses and community centers from Albany down into the Hudson Valley."
Check out the rest of the article here.
03/2013: Donna Williams, founder, featured in Women @ Work Magazine
10/19/2012: Field Goods Featured on WNYT.
Elaine Houston, host of WNYT Today's Woman segment, featured Field Goods Founder Donna Williams. The segment highlights the company's beginnings, operations and includes an interview with Sherri Donnelly, VP of Human Resources at Albany Law School. Ms. Donnelly discusses why she brought Field Goods in as part of Albany Law School' wellness initiatives.
Check out the interview here.