"Made From Scratch" Makes The Difference

You've heard it everywhere. It's on signs, on menus, on packaging: "Made from scratch." It's one of those phrases that's supposed to make you stop and feel good about what you're buying.

But the problem is, “from scratch” can mean a lot of things. To some it means a handwritten recipe, no matter where the ingredients come from. To some it means nothing came out of the freezer. To some it means everything was cooked in-house, even if it started from a mix. “Made from scratch" means so many things to so many people that it’s almost become meaningless.

Did you know? The phrase "made from scratch" didn’t actually start in the kitchen. It comes from 18th-century sports. Before there were modern tracks or boxing rings, organizers would literally scratch a line into the dirt to mark the starting point. A runner who "started from scratch" was given no head start, no handicaps, and no shortcuts—they began with nothing but the bare ground.

Two centuries later, that dirt line perfectly sums up our philosophy. For Simply Fresh, "made from scratch" means starting at the absolute beginning: with real flour and sugar and butter, not pre-packaged, pre-portioned dough. It means grass-fed beef burger patties shaped by hand, seasoned and formed right here, not thawed from a case. It means seed-oil-free salad dressings built from their actual components, whisked together that morning, instead of poured from a bottle and called our own. It means putting pasture-raised chicken bones, organic vegetables, and spices into a pot and letting it simmer for hours until it becomes our very own chicken broth. 

From left to right: Chicken Soup, Rustic Apple Pie, and our Signature Burger.

When we start at the beginning, we start with sourcing: finding the best possible ingredients for our original recipes. Then, we move to testing and tweaking those recipes until they're just right. Ultimately, this means avoiding the shortcuts and putting in the extra work so you get the extraordinary instead of the ordinary. 

Any store can stock a shelf with “made from scratch” products. Fewer can tell you that a real person built the recipe from raw materials that same day, handmade with care. That's the difference between a product that was manufactured and food that was made. And honestly? That's the whole point of what we do, and why we love doing it.

At Simply Fresh, we're not interested in borrowing a phrase because it sells. We'd rather earn it, one batch at a time, the slow way, so that when we say something was made from scratch you can trust the words behind it.

You've heard it all. Now taste the difference. Shop now.