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We’ve compiled some of the most common questions that we get from the media to help make your job a little bit easier. Please feel free to email us with any additional questions that you may have at: trailfood@packitgourmet.com
All of the questions below have been answered from the perspective of Sarah, the daughter of our mother/daughter founding team.
How did you come up with the concept of Packit Gourmet?
Our family has been canoeing, hiking and camping together literally all of my life and my mother has always prepped our meals in the style of what is now Packit Gourmet - with the meal and all of the needs to cook it in one "grab it out of the pack" bag.
My parents celebrated their 30th anniversary with a 10-day fly-in canoe trip to Quetico a few years ago and while my mom was running all over town looking for the various food needs she commented that if there was an online source where she could just log on and pick up hard to find items she would definitely do it. So the seed for the grocery store was planted.
I did not inherit my mom’s talent for cooking and inventing great recipes, so when I started camping on my own, the meals that I brought along were decidedly lackluster. I probably would have been satisfied with them except that I had grown up eating really great food in the outdoors.
While my mom dreamed of a grocery store where she could easily find everything that she needed to create camp-friendly meals, I dreamed of a place where I could just buy delicious meals, ready-to-go. We figured that there were probably a lot of people out there like each of us, so we put the two ideas together and came up with Packit Gourmet.
What kind of items do you carry?
We have three main sections of Packit Gourmet – Trail Meals, Grocery Store and Gear & Supplies.
Our Trail Meals feature a selection of ready to cook meal packs or "kits" that make two plentiful servings and contain all of the ingredients needed to prepare the meal. We're constantly coming up with new recipes based on the types of ingredients that are available, the seasons and just generally what sounds good to us. We're originally from Florida but have lived in Austin for close to 20 years now; you will find heavy Southern and Tex-Mex influences in our meal selections, but other regional and global dishes also make an appearance.
Our Grocery Store offers a wide range of ingredients needed to prepare your own recipes in the wilderness. Freeze-dried and dehydrated meat, vegetables, fruit, cheese and condiment powders like vinegar, soy sauce and maple syrup are all available in the grocery store. The Grocery also stocks single serve packets of peanut butter, olive oil, lemon juice, honey; and a variety of shelf stable meats and cheeses that include several Texas brand smoked sausages and jerky.
Our Gear & Supplies area features a small amount of gear and camp cooking accessories that we have used and found helpful on the trail.
What, if anything, do you plan to add in the future?
We are very interested in carrying regional specialties that work well
on trail and are constantly looking for new items that we think the
camping community could use. As a result, you will see new items added
on a regular basis. We taste test EVERYTHING before including it in our
store and are always open to suggestions from our customers.
We’re constantly developing new recipe ideas and on the lookout for interesting items to add to the grocery store. In order to make it easy for customers to keep track of the new items that have been added to the store, we've created a new sidebar category called “New & Sale Items” where customers can view all of our recently added and sale items at a glance.
What are some of your favorite meals?
Hmmm that's a hard one. I think everyone in our family would choose a different favorite - since many of the meals are camp versions of meals that we make and eat at home. A few of our favorite meals include the Chicken Salad, Tortilla Soup, Bangers & Mash, Polenta Scrapple Cakes and Migas del Sol. Which isn’t to say that we don’t like the others – if we don’t LOVE a meal, it doesn’t make it onto the website.
Every time a new meal recipe is created and cooked - - we all taste it and rate it. If it doesn't score high enough with our "tasters" it won't make the cut. The same goes for the individual grocery items. I think the hardest thing about the meal creation has been calculating just the right serving size. Appetites differ - - so we base our serving size on an average-sized male with a trail-hungry appetite.
How are your meals packaged?
We package about a dozen meals at a time so that what we pull from our shelves to fill an order is always freshly packed. There have been occasions when the meals were packaged as the orders came in. Everything is hand-measured and hand-packed. Meals reflect the "market" availability of ingredients, so if a preferred ingredient is not available at a reasonable price we will take that meal off of the website until we can find a suitable replacement. This helps to keep our prices low and the quality of our ingredients high.
Do you provide nutritional info for the packaged meals? Can you accommodate special needs (i.e. gluten free or low sugar) in the packaged meals?
We are in process of adding nutritional info to the meal labels - - it's been a little slow in coming due to the unusual ingredients that our meals contain (powders, dehydrated foods etc) but we're getting there.
As far as special dietary needs go . . . we are happy to try to do what we can to accommodate special needs when requested but some things would be pretty tough to work around considering the nature of our ingredients. For instance, we would not be able to accommodate someone with sensitive a nut allergy that required the prep of meals in a totally nut-free environment; however, we would be happy to suggest meals that did not contain nuts as an ingredient. One of our first customers requested artificial color-free ingredients and we were able to do that pretty easily. We also worked with someone recently who was allergic to eggs. Potential customers should feel welcome to ask - - we'll look into it and let them know what we can or can't do.
Do you have any special training or background that prepared you for this type of business? i.e. college, trail experience, nutrition background, etc.?
Our family is pretty diverse and extended - - all college educated with a wide range of skills and experience that has contributed to the start-up of Packit Gourmet. I have a degree in Advertising and an MBA; others in the family hold degrees in art, literature, environmental science and nutrition. We’re all environmentally conscious with an appreciation for good food.
The camping, canoeing, hiking, skiing, traveling experience is inherited from my parents who have been avid outdoor enthusiasts for thirty some odd years. I celebrated my third birthday on a five-day backcountry canoe trip in northern Canada, so my sister and I have grown up with a close connection and appreciation for woods and trails.
What is the Packit Gourmet bus?
The PackitBus is a 1977 VW Camper Bus that we restored. A couple members of the Packit Gourmet family spent the summer camping and hiking in National Parks throughout the Western US and promoting Packit Gourmet. The Bus returned to Austin last month to retire for the winter. We plan to have it hit the road again next summer. We'll be posting some "blog notes" and photos soon about the maiden voyage of the PackitBus.
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