Harvie
web design
I joined Harvie in June of 2020 through the recommendation of a friend who worked in their Pittsburgh location warehouse. I wasn't sure what to expect, especially since it was a big jump for me in terms of industry (robotics to food delivery/distribution) and location (in-office to fully remote). I come from a family of farmers and fruit growers in central Pennsylvania, so regardless, I was excited to work in a field that I knew helped local farmers and producers.
Harvie is a platform that connects consumers with these local farms, producers, and makers. From a member's perspective, it's like a grocery delivery where all of the food has come from small businesses. When I joined, the pandemic was ramping up and people were hungry (metaphorically and literally) for food delivery services. Restaurants shuttered their windows, farmers' markets closed, and many people turned to Harvie as their main source of food. This had a hugely positive effect on the business and it began to evolve from a small CSA (community supported agriculture) platform into a large-scale full grocery delivery service. My role in this evolution was to build out the member-facing site. When I joined the company, they were already moving from Symfony twig templates to React and so that's where I picked up. I spent the next few months converting the existing pages into a single-page application using React, Redux, React Router, and the other typical React ecosystem tooling.
Two years later, the majority of our member site (and a good portion of the admin) is now using React and the user experience improvements that came with it. We still have a good bit to do but we're steadily moving in the right direction. In the next few weeks, we'll be releasing a revamped grocery buying service to reflect the astronomical changes Harvie has undergone since the beginning of the pandemic.
What's Next
We don't plan on slowing down anytime soon! We're building out a components library and design system to help all Harvie branded apps maintain a consistent front. We've identified several performance concerns around using the SPA like we are, so we've been assessing frameworks such as Next.js and Remix. We're making tons of upgrading and continuing to work toward our goal of making Harvie a performant, top-notch local grocery delivery platform! I'm excited to see what's next.
We're mostly in the Pittsburgh region right now, but if you want to see if there's a farm near you, check out this link.