By Andrea Palmer
Gordon Sacks, owner of 9 Miles East, a diversified farm and food business, is passionate about what he does. And now he’s expanding services and adding a restaurant, located at 64 Excelsior Ave. in Saratoga Springs.
“Our mission is to make it easy for busy people to eat healthy, local food,” said Sacks.
The company has been around for more than a decade, and has a 29-acre vegetable farm in Schuylerville.
“We make healthy meals that we deliver to the employees of big companies in Upstate New York and in Boston. We have a subscription meal delivery service, where we bring those healthy meals to people’s homes,” said Sacks.
Five years ago, Sacks added a pizza delivery operation.
“Our mission there is to make really high-quality pizza with local and organic ingredients. We want to take the ultimate convenience food and trick people into eating a really healthy version of it, by making it really tasty,” he said.
“That’s been our whole goal, is to make it easy for people to enjoy healthy, local food,” said Sacks.
The company has grown consistently and is now expanding services to include an eat-in restaurant in Saratoga Springs.
“You would laugh if you saw how small our current catering kitchen is, for the number of people we’re feeding,” he said.
“We’ve got a great team already. We’re very pleased with the quality of the people that we already have. But we are adding to the team to support the new operation,” said Sacks.
The new space will be where all meals are produced. It will have a 40-seat dining room, with a 20-seat seasonal patio. Operating hours will be 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.
“We’ll be serving healthy breakfast and lunch options, and expanding on the current menus to serve high-quality, affordable meals for households in the Saratoga Springs area,” said Sacks.
“This model of commissary kitchen with pizza delivery and cafe attached, is something that we want to prove and refine in the Saratoga Springs area. Then we plan to replicate the model. The next one would be in Boston, and then in New York City,” said Sacks.
“People want to eat healthy, but you have to make it easy for them. Our purchase process is as easy as it could possibly be,” said Sacks.
“We are the path of least resistance. People are going to do what’s easy, that’s just how it is. We need to make the healthy choice, the easy choice.”
People interested in ordering can visit www.9mileseast.com or www.pizzadelivery.farm.