CINCINNATI, Ohio — With the idea of getting fresh fruits and vegetables to consumers, and supporting farmers who grow them, Beth Blessing and Matt Ewer of Indianapolis, Ind., came up with a Web-based grocery delivery service whose customers shop from anywhere for healthful groceries.

With the help of an online order form and the click of a mouse, fresh produce is delivered to a customer within just a few days. These goodies are sent to the consumer’s door once or twice each week.

A partner in the business, John Freeland, knew Ewer and Blessing at Indiana University. He manages the Cincinnati branch, which is located in the suburb of Arlington Heights. Green BEAN Delivery is 100 employees strong.

“The key to this business is being convenient, affordable and accessible,” Freeland said.

They operate from their Feel Good Farm in Sheridan, Ind. The BEAN in their company name stands for “biodynamic, education, agriculture, nutrition.” A similar Feel Good Farm just opened in Mason, Ohio, last month.

“We want to produce the raw agriculture ourselves to strengthen our own network as well as bridge the gap from local foods to end retailers,” said Freeland.

Like any other startup business, nothing came easy. “The first day of operation, it took us about seven hours to make 48 deliveries,” he said. “To this day we deliver 2,025 bins in 11 vans.”

Their expanding business began in Indianapolis in 2007. In 2009, Green BEAN opened a 10,000 square-foot warehouse in Cincinnati. Food warehouses are located in Indianapolis, Columbus, Cincinnati and Louisville.

“Warehouses are vital so we can get markets open and build the volume and support we need to justify putting in an infrastructure within a given community,” Freeland said.

From each location, bins are filled with fresh produce from local farms and local producers. Working with farms of various sizes, Green BEAN supports small-scale producers who can supply just one of those cities, or it can offer a larger regional market to a farmer. And Cincinnatians are the newest customers to this Web-based venture.

“We’ve had tremendous support from the community in Cincinnati,” Freeland said. “It takes some time to catch on. We did a lot of grassroots marketing and have worked hard the past three years to saturate our name and put our best foot forward to let the community know we’re there. We consider ourselves an outlet to healthful foods.”

Key to this venture is a wholesale distribution business, which includes a Break Room Bin workplace delivery program. Customers can obtain a standard bin of vegetables or they can opt to customize one with anything else on the list.

At times, Blessing said, customers like to be surprised at what they receive. They have to adapt to the given season anyway, as sometimes there’s a lot of certain vegetables and none of others.

“Into the growing season, we spend a lot of time with farmers, strategizing to make sure we’re not too strong in one commodity or another. We need the right flow coming in and out,” Freeland said.

Green BEAN’s website includes an assortment of recipes with each delivery. Blessing uses her two degrees in nutrition obtained from Indiana University and Bastyr University in Seattle to enhance each recipe.

“Most people sign up for the service and convenience of our service, but they get hooked on the healthy aspect,” Blessing said. “People don’t know what to do with something like broccolini, or they only know one way to prepare things and don’t know how to veer from a recipe.”

Benefiting just as much as the consumer are the many growers. “Our main effort is to provide an avenue to support the success of small- to mid-sized family farms and give the farmers another outlet to reach consumers that is affordable and efficient for all parties involved,” Freeland said.

“We’re spending our days and nights trying to face food challenges that are in front of us head on, and come up with viable solutions to these challenges to the systems that have somewhat broken down over the last 50 years here in our country.”

For more information about this Web-based delivery service, visit www.green beandelivery.com or call 317-377-0470.