The Soup Peddler: Slow Food's 21st Century Bike Messenger

There are many elements of the contemporary Slow Food movement, some intentional but most unavoidable, that feel like a throwback to another era. Proponents seek to return to a time when a drive-through might refer to the act of connecting railroad ties and family-style was a matter of course, not something that came in a red and white cardboard bucket. And while we might believe nothing can beat family heirloom recipes, it’s also useless to try avoiding the fact that we live in a digital, interconnected society. This Texas soup cook is taking advantage of the latter to bring the former right to his neighbors’ door step.

David Ansel had worked a lot of jobs in his life. Nine years ago, he had left 'soulless' software development job and was work as a yoga instructor in Austin, TX—but had a nagging conscience that said yoga was not going to be a long-term fulfilling career for him, either financially or spiritually. He started making a list of what he was good at, and thought of the potluck dinners he and friends would throw at his house for all the inspiring, talented, progressive folks that he had met in Austin and so badly wanted to be engaging with. Focusing on on his skill set, it came down to soup. He can make soup. So he emailed his friends and said, more or less, ‘I'm making a big batch of soup this week. Let me know if you want some, and I'll bring it by on my bike at the end of the week. Just leave me $10 on your door to cover the costs.’ And seventeen people said yes. So the next week he had a bit more cash to put upfront on the soup ingredients, and cast his email net a bit wider. Weeks later, he was delivering gallons of soup, pulled behind his bike on a trailer, to dozens of friends and acquaintances. He's never stopped peddling.

“It’s kind of a big legend in a small package,” David is proud to say. “It’s one of the bigger food stories out of Austin, because it has this great creation myth—which is the bike delivery, and that I started this business in such a bootstrappy way. I often say, and it’s true, I started this business with $90, and just a lot of passion. And now it’s here, several years later, a big—well, little, mature business.”

Today, the Soup Peddler creates gallons of seasonal soups and entrees from local, fresh ingredients in a small commercial kitchen, and employs some fellow soup chefs and a driver with a small van who makes most of the deliveries. “This is Soup Peddler World Headquarters...” David proclaims as he gestures around his store-front office and the cubicle he shares with interns and a receptionist, effectively giving the grand tour without either of us moving our feet. “Which is kind of a funny way of saying that our world revolves around this, but it’s not really a ‘world headquarters’ kind of place.”

The original bike is still parked out front as a reminder of how little it takes to do something that people find meaningful.

Customers manage their online subscriptions or one-time orders of freshly made, just-frozen small batches of soup, which are hand delivered throughout Austin. Respecting to his own humble roots and the community that continues to support his unique work, David and his crew are involved with a number of fundraising rides, and created a SoupShare program which contributes a percentage of profits to local schools and non-profit partners. Waste materials are donated to the composting program at The Green Classroom, “a sweet little place tucked in the neighborhood where kids come to learn about plants and lots of interesting ecological things.”

The Soup Peddler is truly reminiscent to the milkman of decades past, while remaining firmly planted in the very real and very busy schedules and urban lifestyles of contemporary Austin. His 'grassroots soup service' is a viable alternative to fast food or mass-produced frozen dinners, and as such are not meant to be made quickly or easily. Part memoir, part cookbook, part manifesto on the virtue of freshly cooked local ingredients, David published "The Soup Peddler's Slow & Difficult Soups" in 2005, and opened The Juicebox, with soup to go with no preorder, in 2010. It has not been a road without bumps and detours–after all, David has no formal culinary or business experience–but a sense of humor, a sense of purpose, and a sense of how to get an Italian grandmother to share the secret to a perfect minestrone keeps him moving in the right direction.

image: www.austin360.com