Photo by Sarah Cook.
Emily Forsythe, who lives in Homewood with her husband and two sons and owns a Hoover business, began making her own baby food when she saw a lack of fresh, organic options in the grocery store.
When Emily Forsythe feeds her son “hulk applesauce,” he has no idea he’s eating a nutritious blend of broccoli and spinach. The sauce, Forsythe said, is also organic and made with fresh, local ingredients. The same goes for everything else the young mother puts on her kids’ plates.
Forsythe, a Homewood resident and Hoover business owner, said after having her second son, she saw a need in the baby food market that wasn’t being met. So, she decided to take matters into her own hands (and kitchen) and began building Dixie Fresh, Birmingham’s first and only fresh baby food delivery service..
“I was looking for something fresh and local, and I couldn’t find anything,” Forsythe said. “So I decided I would make it myself.”
After her Hoover business, Louise’s Cakes N Things, closed each night, Forsythe switched gears and made fresh purees from the commercial kitchen. Soon after that, Forsythe said friends started requesting her recipes.
One thing led to another and Forsythe said she started realizing she could start selling the baby food — filling a large gap in the market for parents who want to feed their children organic, locally sourced foods, but didn’t have the time to make it.
“I think it’s a common goal to feed our kids real food, but most of us don’t have time to make it all from scratch,” she said. “So I just wanted to fill that void.”
After a year of working through regulations and navigating the details of the business, Forsythe officially opened Dixie Fresh in mid-February. The orders for her food so far, she said, have been strong.
Dixie Fresh offers nine core flavors, all made with fresh ingredients sourced from nearby farms. If a certain flavor can’t be found in Alabama, Forsythe said she’ll look at other regional producers.
“Our main goal was to get everything organic and everything as local as possible,” she said.
Each bag of baby food comes with 16 one-ounce frozen cubes of baby food that can be thawed out in the refrigerator for 24 hours or microwaved for immediate serving. Dixie Fresh’s nine flavors are broken into three groups: first tastes, playful pairing and tot applesauce.
“I wanted it to be appealing to babies and toddlers,” Forsythe said. “Obviously, a part of that was to fill my own demand. I wanted something that I could give to my 5-year-old, and he wouldn’t turn his nose up at it.”
Some of the flavors include “Butter Me Up,” an organic butternut squash puree; “Rainbow Roots,” a nutritional carrot blend; and “Super Baby,” a blend of avocado, banana and oats.
All of Dixie Fresh food is delivered directly to customers’ homes at no extra cost, Forsythe said.
“I know being a parent is a juggling act, so we thought if we were able to take it to their door then that’s one less thing to worry about,” she said. “I think that most people want to feed their kids good, real food without all the added stuff that you see in the grocery store purees, and our goal is to just make that really easy to do.”
For more information, go to dixiefreshbhm.com.
