Original Entry Date: September 3, 2016
Written by: Jonathan Stufft
We were only in our second month of produce distributions, and we had quickly learned that home delivery would be our niche...
However, we had to convince the people in the community that we were trustworthy and would be here to stay. Across the board, we were initially greeted with great caution. More accurately, suspicion.
Each approach would be the same. The first response was always, “No, we don’t want any.”
Our immediate reply became, “Are you sure? It’s free!” Most times, this would at least give the person time to pause and decide if they believed what we were saying.
The most recent example was no different. Two men were out working on the front of a house. They were replacing rotten boards with sections of new boards. We pulled up and got out. “Hi! Working hard? Would you guys like some fresh produce?”
With almost no head movement from the task at hand, the man said, “No. Not interested.”
“Are you sure?”
"Nope. We don’t even eat that stuff. No one here likes it."
“Oh. Are you sure? It’s FREE.”
There was a pause that seemed longer than it actually was, and then he stopped what he was doing. “Free?”
“Yep. Free produce. No strings attached.”
The mood shifted, his body language changed from shunning to interest, and he said, “Well, yeah. We could use some produce.”
We went to the truck to grab our goods.
“Apples? Wow. We eat a lot of those.”
And at that point we had another friend on our route. Seems they did eat that stuff after all.