Passanante's Home Food Services (Bristol: buying, calculated, organic)

[Nancy in Nokomis]

I guess people around here can afford to pay a lot. Typical.

[stpickrell]

Originally Posted by Fairfax Mom

I guess people around here can afford to pay a lot. Typical.

I've found $20 bills make the best cigar lighters.

[Ann stanwood]

The quality was not nearly as good as the local butcher, and the meat was expensive. I also did not like that they refused to tell you the cost of each individual item. I would not use them again.

[fisharmor]

Originally Posted by boyd888

Are there any other company shills that would like to register today to make their first post about the greatness of Passante's? Pitiful Passante's, pitiful.

Ok, so I signed up with them last night because the deal was pretty good and the samples were excellent. I'm not here to defend them, I have nothing to do with them other than the fact that I just signed a contract - and while this is my first post, I'm only here to tell everyone what happened.

To give you an actual review, I have had some orders of delivery meat before (different brand though).

So I'll start by saying that the service I signed up with is the one we're talking about. I'm not just shooting my mouth off about some other brand, I'm talking about Passanante's.

We signed on because of the following.

1) They've been around since 1916. The invisible hand of the free market is a thing that exists whether you want it to or not. This is not a political speech: it's a fact. The market closes down companies that people don't patronize. Passanante's has been around for 97 years. Logically there is no way you can be around for 97 years by pissing off your customer base - unless there's a law forcing people to buy your stuff. If there isn't, you have to offer a better price, a better value, or both, and we responded to their offer.

2) I've had my share of greasy salesmen in my house. The sales rep we spoke with last night was not one of them. He reinforced the idea of Passanante's being a family run business by chatting us up about our family and his. I was pleased to find out that Bryson is the same rep we'll be talking to in future orders - so there is no incentive for him to get a sale and screw us afterward. He's in it with us for the long haul.

3) We had an initial sticker shock on the price. (Nowhere near the sticker shock we had looking at Schwann's, though.) However he pointed out that with the package we were buying we are getting other groceries as well - things like peanut butter, canned tuna, paper towels, toilet paper, etc. There's quite a lot of it with the package. We are not sure whether we'll like some of it (in fact I wish we could swap the Skippy peanut butter) but it does lessen the blow, a lot. In addition, we're really not looking at paying that much more - and I'm convinced that we'll have some of this stuff left over at the end of 6 months and will end up ordering less next time.

4) Even if we stick with the amount we ordered, the prices we got last night are locked in for life. If you've been paying attention then you've noticed that everything in the grocery store is twice as expensive today as it was 10 years ago. If you're taking a long view of this then it's not really possible for this to be a bad idea, especially considering that you're getting....

5) ...organic, locally raised meat. Ultimately I decided to go with Passanante's as I was cooking up some sweet Italian sausage during our pitch. Bryson said that if I put the frozen sausages in some water it'd be ready to cook by the time we were done talking about the meat. I didn't believe him, but it happened. Just thawed in water.
I didn't add any oil or water or anything to the pan, but within 2 minutes I had to cover the pan because it was spitting juice all over everything. I've never seen that happen with a store bought sausage... usually it sticks unless I oil the pan. When I was turning it I accidentally just brushed up against the sausage and the fork effortlessly stabbed through the casing and just sunk into it. And it wasn't even done yet.
Normally I try to get the casing a little crispy. It occurred to me last night that I probably did that to add some extra flavor. But the crispy casing detracted from the taste of the sausage. It simply doesn't compare.
Also, I'll say that we've never been into organic food for cost reasons. But when you take the deal in total, it isn't that much more expensive to eat organic. I'm not in this for the health reasons, I'm in it for the taste, and so far, organic is delivering.

6) The freezer is part of the deal. It's financed over 36 months, and it's an expensive freezer, but it also is guaranteed for life. If anything goes wrong with it, it's covered. If there's a power outage and the freezer doesn't keep things frozen, it's covered. It's an expensive freezer, but I'm expecting it to perform like one. We can also pay off the financing early if we choose without penalty.


So that's why we signed on. We assessed the deal and found that it was a pretty good deal - and then we tasted the meat and didn't care whether it was a good deal or not... I just want that meat.

I'll make a point of coming back here after we get our delivery.

[barnyardabc]

They were at the home show recently, and we put in get a sample of their meats. We listened to their sales pitch, and but we found we can do better price wise. The salesman was nice, but told us the sample had defrosted and he would bring by another one. Of course, we never got the sample so that was 2 hours of my time I'll never get back. I don't know that it was purposely deceptive, but it does make me wonder.
At one point we did use a food service, very similar to this one. We had the freezer, etc, and overall we were happy, but I like to go local for meat now.

[Ed Kloska]

We found it to be very expensive and when I tried to discuss this with the owner, I was told " not to tell him how to run his business". Basically what you get is a good quality of meat at about $15/ lb. And that is for cheaper cuts of meat.

[fisharmor]

So, here I am six months later, and I did not renew the contract with Passanante's.

The first sign of trouble was that the extra groceries that came with our order were about 25% stuff we didn't really care about as far as brands go, 50% stuff we'd rather have another brand of, and 25% stuff that we would rather have not gotten at all. Also, the portions were unrealistic. The paper towels and toilet paper ran out in a month, and we still have extra giant containers of ketchup and grape jelly. How much ketchup do they think four people can eat in six months? And I appreciate that all the pasta is Barrilla. But if you're really on the organic bandwagon, how come you're not on the anti-carb and anti-gluten curves, too?

The next sign of trouble was when we cooked some ground beef and I picked a bone chip out of my teeth. Does organic meat have to have bone chips in it? This happened so many times I lost count. For $15 a pound I expect ground beef not to have bones in it.

Now don't get me wrong, certain things they sell are simply heavenly. I particularly loved their fried cod and the sausages. We had planned to find out whether we could get a small reorder of just the things we liked.

The sales rep that showed up was not the same sales rep we signed with. So they were simply not factual with us during the initial presentation six months ago. We were assured back then we'd be talking to the same guy.

Then I noticed he was writing down prices next to these things we were ordering and noticed that fried cod is $50 per pound.

Then came the unbearable part.
In the initial pitch 6 months ago we were told that if we buy a freezer from them, we'd get a discount on all future food orders forever, and it would all be guaranteed from spoilage. So we bought the freezer and got a 15% discount.
And I knew back then the total cost of the freezer was going to be over $3000. I did it with the long view - because I had tried specific foods and loved them, and assumed the rest of the food would be similar, and purchasing the freezer meant that we would pay less for it.

So flash forward six months, and the new guy tells us after running our total that if we buy another appliance then we get another discount. And it all fit together at that point.

Their business model is to offer some great food and a lot of mediocre food for prices that they are too embarrassed to disclose.
They also resell appliances for prices that they are also too embarrassed to disclose directly (they present it as a monthly payment, and glossed over the total when we were signing paperwork) and offer their customers a discount on their food - and the price comes down to a level that would still be an embarrassing amount of profit.

Take the cod example. If I had gotten further rooked and bought another appliance I don't need, the price would come down 25%. That means the per-pound price of fried cod (and remember, it's more than likely not even cod these days) comes down to a measly $37.50.
For fried freaking fish? I could get a complete lobster dinner out for that and someone else would have to wash up afterward.

So I remembered this city-data post primarily because today we are going out to Catlett, VA to a place called Wilson's butcher shop. The only downside to Wilson's is that it's cash-only.

But I need to offer a public thank-you to Passanante's for one important thing I got from them. A lesson.

What I learned is that from now until the end of my days, I will NEVER respond to a sales pitch of any kind.
I won't even allow them to happen in my house.
You may offer me literature. You may state "I have item X for price Y".
I will decide based on the initial price and a 30-second quality assessment whether I want to know more.

But you people simply aren't getting to my dining room table, ever again. None of you.

[stpickrell]

The freezer isn't terrible.

But the other stuff -- yeah, I dealt with a similar service and learned the same lessons.

You're better off spending the $$$ on farmer's markets, stocking up when in season, etc.

[Elvirap]

Love love love the food. I placed my first order last year and just re-ordered yesterday. I appreciate the quality more than anything else. You have to try different things they offer to find the items you like best. I didn't really like the seasoned meats very much because I cook using different seasonings. I changed the weight of some items and eliminated others.

The only thing I don't like is the 'salesy' approach. There is no price list so you can compare the price difference when your order changes. For example you got thinner pork chops last time and want thicker this time. So you increase the thickness but DECREASE the quantity but you can't see if you are paying more or less for that item. I have a motto, "If you can't TRACK it, you can't TRUST it." I don't like someone 'telling' me why something cost more. Show me. Don't tell me the last guy 'underpriced' your order. Show me. Don't tell me, show me. So I would wish there were more transparency in the pricing. I also don't like financing made to look like discounts.

That being said, I like the quality. I like that this company has NO food recalls. I like to support small businesses. For those reasons I will order again but will watch very closely the 'sales pitch'. Were it not for that aspect of the process I would be a customer for life. Because of that tho I have to be watchful every time and I don't like that feeling. I am very careful of how I spend, save and invest our hard-earned money.

[kmack22]

I feel the food is quality but expensive and very rude. I called to cancel my order because I wasn't sure about the pricing and wanted to test things out before committing myself to this company. The person who I spoke with was very condescending, and basically yelled at me for wanting to cancel my order. I felt very threatened and appalled at his behavior, and will NEVER go to this company again. I simply wanted to weigh my options and he called me an "idiot" and I was making the worst decision. HE IS AN A**!