This is my ninth fruit box review! My first was on Aussie Farmers Direct, and I was really disappointed. My second was on Organic Angels, which had great produce but was pretty expensive. My third was on Ceres Fair Food, which had great variety in its produce. Fourth was from the earth fruitnveg, who had great variety and great customer service. Fifth was The Organic Empire, which was completely boring. #6 Greenline Organic was equal to all of the other options, with great variety and good produce. #7 The Organic Butler was not that great, with much of the fruit inedible when it arrived. Review number 8 turned out to be a repeat of from the earth fruitnveg, and I wasn’t going to complain – tasty once again.
Next up was Mornington Peninsula Cheap Fruit & Veg. I had ordered from them back when I actually lived on the Mornington Peninsula, and was unhappy with the quality of produce. As part of this great quest of mine to test all the delivery services in my area, I tried them out again. Since ordering this box, they have changed names to Real Food Grocer, so you can consider this a review of Real Food Grocer as well.
What I did like this time was the ability to easily swap fruit in and out if I didn’t like a kind (for example, I swapped 3 regular grapefruit for 1 ruby grapefruit). I didn’t like that I had to sign up for a delivery service – and would therefore need to remember to cancel it after one week.
Small Fruit Box – $27.50 + no delivery charge for orders over $25.
- 16x apples
- 5x pears
- 8x mandarines
- 3x kiwi fruit
- 9x bananas
- 5x oranges
- 5x passion fruit
- 1x pomegranate
- 1x fejoa
- 1x ruby grapefruit
- 1x punnet strawberries
It was deliverable only on a Saturday, which doesn’t really suit me every week, so I’m not sure this one will be the box for me in the future. In fact, I was away for the weekend, so to prevent my box from being rained on, I got my neighbour to collect it for me.
The good: Look at that fantastic variety! I worry a little that other people wouldn’t cope with the weird variety of fruit, but me? Mm, yes bring it my way. I wouldn’t normally think of buying a pomegranate.
The bad: The kiwifruit were fermenting and very soft when they arrived. The bananas were very green. I know for a fact that bananas are cheap at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I’ll appreciate the ones that aren’t very tasty yet. Some of the mandarines were bruised and soft, and thus heading towards mould, and yet they weren’t very juicy.
The ugly: How hard can it be to get apples right? These ones were hit or miss with dents and bruises. The strawberries were already touched with mould – I saved 5 out of a small punnet.
The final verdict: This box is a fail for me. I don’t like needing to pick through all my produce to make sure that none of it is about to go off when I first get it. Even if it is ‘cheap’ fruit, I expect a certain level of quality about it! I want to choose when to eat my fruit, to an extent, rather than having to eat them in order of what might go off first.
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