About Abel and Cole

Abel & Cole has been delivering organic fruit and vegetables in Britain since the late 1980s, and it is one of the two names that built the veg-box habit here. Everything it sells is certified organic, and it buys from named growers rather than anonymously through a wholesale market.

The service is a recurring delivery rather than a shop you visit: you pick a day, a box and a frequency, then edit the contents week by week.

What arrives

Fruit and vegetable boxes in several sizes, with a full grocery range around them — dairy, meat, fish, bread, store-cupboard staples, household and beauty products. Recipe boxes with pre-portioned ingredients sit alongside the loose produce.

Seasonal boxes are chosen by the company from whatever is good that week. That is the entire point of them, and also the adjustment: a British February means root vegetables, not strawberries.

How the subscription behaves

There is no contract and you can pause or skip freely, but there is a cut-off a few days before each delivery, after which the box is fixed and charged. Holidays need pausing before that cut-off, not on the day.

Deliveries arrive in reusable boxes with ice packs where they are needed, left in a stated safe place, and the packaging is collected on the following round. Putting last week's box out is part of the arrangement.

Getting value from it

Cook from the box rather than around it. The usual failure is doing a normal supermarket shop as well and letting the vegetables age, because a box works as a substitution and not as an addition.

Organic produce is not washed and treated the way supermarket produce is, so it keeps differently. Leaves last less well, roots last longer, and nothing should go into the fridge wet.

Using an Abel and Cole discount code

Enter the code when you set up the first delivery, since an introductory offer generally cannot be attached to a running account. Check how many deliveries it covers — some cover only the first — and note the date full pricing starts.