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Delivery run 02 · Wednesdays
Ballard and Fremont, every Wednesday.
The long run. Sixty-two miles down I-5 with the truck loaded the night before, and the only route where we ask you to split a drop with the shop next door if you are small.
Who buys flour down there
Almost all of it is bread. Two naturally-leavened bakeries in Ballard take Edison and Yecora in roughly equal weight, one of them running a hundred percent whole grain loaf that goes through more of our rye than anyone else on any route. A bakery in Fremont takes sifted Edison for laminated dough and a small amount of emmer for one seasonal thing.
There is a pasta maker in the stretch between Fremont and Ballard who buys emmer whole, mills nothing, and extrudes it coarse. They were the first account to ask us for a lot number on the tag, which is now on every sack we sell to anybody.
Two pizzerias round it out, both on long ferments, both running Yecora because it holds up over forty-eight hours and browns fast in a deck oven. Neither of them started there. Both spent a couple of months adjusting hydration first, and we would tell any new pizza account to expect the same.
How the run works
The truck loads Tuesday night and pulls out at 5:00 on Wednesday, because being south of Everett by six is the difference between a two-hour drive and a four-hour one. Drops run 7:00 to 11:00. We do not go south of the ship canal, and we do not go east of Aurora. That is not snobbery about neighbourhoods, it is that the run has to be back in Mount Vernon by early afternoon.
Cutoff is Monday at 4pm, earlier in the week than the other routes, because everything for Wednesday has to be milled and palletised on Tuesday.
Minimum is two hundred pounds a stop. If you are smaller than that, find a neighbour: two shops on the same block can split a two hundred pound drop and we will bring it to whichever door has the better access. We have four pairs doing that now and it works fine. Under four hundred pounds we bring it in on a hand truck, so no liftgate or dock is needed.
Worth knowing
Ballard Avenue is closed to trucks for the Sunday market only, so it has never affected us, but the construction on Leary has moved our access twice this year. Tell us which door to use and we will write it on the route sheet rather than guessing.
| Day | Wednesdays |
|---|---|
| Drop window | 7:00am – 11:00am |
| Order cutoff | Monday, 4pm |
| Minimum | 200 lb per stop, or 200 lb split between neighbours |
| Distance | 62 miles south on I-5 |
| Area | Ballard, Fremont, Phinney Ridge only |
The other two runs
Wholesale · store · custom milling
Call the mill and ask what is in the bin.
Nell or Wes picks up between 7:30 and 3:30 on weekdays. If we are on the floor and the stones are loud, leave a message with the variety and the poundage and you will hear back the same day.