Pine Valley Market is ready to ease the stress of those busy back-to-school days and make meal prep even easier. The restaurant now offers a meal delivery service, which started in August, for people who don’t like to cook, families who are too busy to cook and generous friends taking meals to someone sick.

“The idea was to bring healthier food to people who wanted quick and easy meals,” says Christyanna Durand. In 2022, Durand and her husband, Matt, became co-owners of the restaurant along with Christi Ferretti and Kathy Webb. The Durands have previous experience working in restaurants from Blacksburg to San Francisco to San Diego and now Wilmington.

“We wanted to help our community but stay within our mission of keeping everything local,” Durand says. “We offer local ingredients, made by local people, and retail items from small batch companies from our Southeastern area.”

The meal delivery service works through an online portal. Customers can select from full meals, deli salads, specialty meats (frozen and refrigerated), desserts and snacks. Most of the family meal packages serve 4-6, and there is an “Around the Table” lasagna or chicken and rice meal that serves 8-10.

For those summer nights, “Back Porch Premium” includes a savory cheesecake, Ashe County garlic and parsley cheese and Mamacita’s chips. There are options for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as gluten-free and vegan choices such as black bean burgers and curried wild rice.

“We request a 48-hour window between order and delivery so we can make sure to have all ingredients and retail items in stock,” says Durand. (Cafe lunches made-to-order are not included in the delivery option at this time.) “We have our own employees doing the deliveries to ensure that the utmost care is taken from beginning to end.” 
 
Initially, the business started delivering to three nearby neighborhoods. However, increased demand would soon see the restaurant having to expand its delivery availability further afield. “As soon as we announced the service, we had at least 10 more neighborhoods request to be on the list,” says Durand.

Now, she and her crew have found themselves servicing not only neighborhoods but city-wide. “We had office groups call to request a large number of meals that are then split between multiple people in the office,” she says. “We had to change the way we were looking at our delivery times in order to accommodate all the interest across Wilmington.”

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