Behind Every Box

Rootstock looks like a weekly online store. Behind every order is a small, committed team building something bigger — connecting exceptional local farms with the people who value what they grow. Leading the weekly effort are Rootstock's two full-time team members: founder Julia Sunderland and Director of Operations Leslie Jin.

Shrinking Nectarines

Last week, an offshore monsoon system pushed heat, humidity, and rain across the Bay Area right as Twin Peaks Orchards' yellow and white nectarines were coming in. Nothing wrong with the trees, nothing wrong with the fruit — nectarines just don't size up properly when weather swings that hard right before harvest. But it meant there wasn't quite enough weight on the trees to cover every order that had been placed.

"Weather is fickle, crops are fickle, transport is fickle," says Leslie Jin, Rootstock's Director of Operations. "When you're harvesting ripe and to order, there's no buffer. What the tree gives you that week is what you have."

So the calls started. Julia and Leslie worked with Twin Peaks to understand what was available, checking both varieties and seeing whether another pass through the rows could fill the gap. By afternoon, they knew what the trees could provide.

That's when the team turned to customers. Rather than let someone open their box and wonder why the nectarines looked small, or find one missing altogether, Rootstock sent a heads-up to everyone who'd ordered. Some customers received a credit; others received a swap. Nobody was left guessing.

That's the point behind moments like this. A ripe nectarine is worth waiting for, and worth being honest about when the season doesn't cooperate. Rootstock exists to connect people to that kind of food, grown by people who are at the mercy of weather the same as the rest of us, and to be straightforward when things don't go according to plan.

We don't always get everything right. Growing a young food business is full of surprises, imperfect decisions, and systems we're still improving. What we can promise is that we'll pay attention, communicate openly, and try to make things right when a bump inevitably occurs.

Behind every Rootstock box is a very small team navigating those bumps, often before customers ever see them.

Julia: Why She Started Rootstock

Rootstock started with a memory of wild strawberries. "As a kid, my family spent a lot of time hiking in the mountains of Switzerland," says founder Julia Sunderland. "A favorite memory is finding wild strawberries along the trail — carefully scrambling up steep climbs to reach the tiny, intensely flavorful gems."

That instinct — that nature's extraordinary food is worth seeking out, and that tasting it can make you feel more alive — never left her. Julia came to believe that food could be more than nourishment or commerce. A great strawberry can restore a little childlike wonder. A table overflowing with berries can bring people together. Meeting the person who grew them can remind us how deeply interconnected we are — with one another and with the land.

After years working in technology and launching mission-driven ventures at Google, Julia felt called to devote her energy to a deeply personal conviction: that we must learn to live in greater harmony with the earth. Climate change gave that work particular urgency, but her motivation was broader: a desire to restore our connection with the natural world that sustains us, grounded in the belief that humanity is part of nature — not above it.

Food emerged as a powerful place to begin. Looking more closely at how food is grown and moves from a field to a table, Julia saw a system that too often degrades soil and biodiversity, contributes heavily to climate change, and distances people from the sources of their nourishment. Its economics are also upside down: in a conventional supply chain, a farmer often keeps just 16 cents of every dollar a customer spends — not nearly enough to farm in ways that care for people and planet.

She became convinced there was a better way to connect growers and eaters — one that felt fairer and more human on both sides. Rootstock doesn't pretend to have the whole answer. It is a practical attempt to learn what a better system might look like, beginning with making exceptional, regeneratively grown food easier to access for people who have the means but not the time to seek it out. Over time, the ambition is to make that food accessible to many more people, including those for whom cost remains a barrier.

Rootstock puts that idea into practice: paying farmers fairly, taking on marketing and logistics, and getting peak-season produce to local communities while it still tastes like the field it came from.

"What we choose to eat shapes how we choose to live," Julia says. "It can bring joy, nourish us, and support the people caring for the land — all at the same time."

Leslie: Bringing Rootstock to Life Every Week

Julia founded Rootstock around a mission. Leslie Jin helps turn that mission into a dependable weekly experience.

As Director of Operations, Leslie runs the parts of Rootstock that turn a plan into the box on your doorstep Thursday evening. She places and confirms farm orders every week, picks up inventory from farmers markets, keeps the online store loaded and stocked, and manages produce, pantry items, and packing supplies. She's often the one who answers when a customer writes in with a question, a substitution, or a delivery hiccup, and the one leading community outreach and coordinating drivers, pickup hosts, and the occasional pop-up.

For Leslie, the pull toward this work has always been personal. "I love good food, cooking with and for people, and learning the stories behind what ends up on the table," she says. "Getting to help build the connection between farms and my community every week, alongside a network of neighbors and friends, feels like a dream."

Her connection to food started early. Her family treated the farmers market like a weekly ritual, an early education in seeking out food that was actually grown well and knowing where it came from.

She began Stanford in 2020, studying engineering remotely from her childhood bedroom during COVID — alternating between screens and long hours cutting foam core for design projects, often with little guidance. After two years, she was, as she puts it, "starved for human connection and for the feel of earth under her hands, literally."

She found both at the O'Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm, where she took every class she could, worked as a farmhand, led volunteer sessions, TA'd the agroecology course, and started writing The Stanford Farm Cookbook, highlighting Bay Area farm-to-table cooking.

Along the way, she discovered a passion for outdoor education, teaching kids at Coastal Roots Farm about where vegetables come from and continuing to volunteer at community farms. That interest led her to a Master's in Earth Systems focused on sustainable agriculture and soil management, deepening her commitment to helping people understand where their food comes from.

That combination — an understanding of the living systems beneath our food and the operational discipline required to deliver it — is central to Rootstock. The mission only matters if it works in practice: if farms can rely on us, customers can trust us, and beautiful food arrives in a condition that allows it to be fully enjoyed.

 

What "We Care About Quality" Actually Means

It's easy to say you care about quality. Here's what it looks like at Rootstock, in practice.

It means visiting farms and talking directly with the people growing the food — not buying from a catalog. It means tasting and checking produce when it arrives, and learning which varieties and which harvest windows are genuinely exceptional. It means making adjustments when something doesn't meet the standard, even when that's inconvenient. And it means the people building Rootstock — from those working hands-on with the food each week to those strengthening our systems, storytelling, finances, and customer experience — care deeply about getting it right.

Behind that care is a real business, being built with intention. At least 60 cents of every dollar you spend goes directly to the farm — more than three times the industry norm. Farmers are paid within 14 days instead of the usual 30-plus. We take responsibility for unsold inventory so growers aren't left covering the waste. Everything is sourced from farms within 300 miles and is fully traceable back to the field it came from, harvested to order rather than sitting in a warehouse.

And there's a kind of quality that never shows up in the produce itself: the quality of the relationships and community around it. When something isn't right, you hear about it from us — an honest note, a fair refund or credit, and an open invitation to reply. That transparency builds trust, but it also builds awareness.

Through farm stories, conversations, and articles like this one, we hope to make it easier — and more joyful — to understand where your food comes from, how it was grown, and whom your choices support. Because greater understanding gives each of us more agency to make choices that reflect what we care about.

Customers across the Peninsula may eat in separate homes, but each week we're all sharing food from the same fields, grown by the same hands, in the same fleeting moment of the season. That's the community we're building around food — farm to eater, us to you, and neighbor to neighbor.

Rootstock's two full-time team members are supported by a wider circle of thoughtful collaborators working across our systems, storytelling, finances, operations, and customer experience. Some work alongside us every week; others contribute at key moments. Their work may be less visible than the boxes arriving on your doorstep, but it is vital to what Rootstock is today and what it can become.

Build It With Us

Rootstock is still early. We have a clear sense of why we're building it, but we don't have everything figured out — and we don't want to build it in isolation. We want to learn alongside the people and farms Rootstock serves.

So tell us: What would help you feel more connected to the people who grow your food — or make Rootstock more valuable in your week? Email us at hello@rootstock.earth. One of us — probably both — will read it, and your perspective will help shape what we build next.