A recap of my trip to Rochester, NY with Love Beets!

Rochester, NY with Love Beets

What an amazing week I had last week! Besides hanging with my family on the east coast for a week, I had the honor of being invited to Love Beets‘ Beet Bonanza in Rochester, NY for a couple days. I had so much hanging out with a brand I can stand behind, I wanted to share my experience with you all.

If you are unfamiliar with Love Beets, they make eating beets easy. They produce a variety of beet related products – from packaged, cooked, and peeled beets, flavored cooked beets, shredded beets, and even beet salsa. They also have beet powder and beet juice for beet lovers. I’ll admit making beets can be a pain, but Love Beets does all the work for you by providing consumers with an easy and convenient way to add them to your diet.

I’ve been a fan of their product for years and if you have followed along for awhile, they were actually one of the first companies I worked with! You could imagine my excitement when they asked me to be apart of their first ever Beet Bonanza! I love getting to know the people behind the brands I stand behind and just how their company works. They put together an absolutely amazing event and I’m going to share some of my favorite parts of the trip and what I learned with you!

Love Beets Production Facility & Organic Farm Tour

The first day we got to see behind the scenes of Love Beets operations. We started the day by heading to their production facility where we met the whole team and toured the facility. The production facility is located outside Rochester, NY in an old Kodiak warehouse. They completely redid the warehouse and turned it into a state of the art facility.

The tour showed us everything from the raw beets coming in from different farms and how they are divided up by size, to the cooking process, the inspection process, and the packaging process. You could easily see that the whole team is committed to producing the best product they can for consumers. The part I loved most is learning about how they are committed to as little waste as possible – the oddly shaped beets are made into their beet powder or beet juice. They also use the greens and peels and send it back to the local beet farms to be composted back into the soil.

The team is also working on finding an alternative for the plastic cases they use. As of right now, their is no options available, but they hoping in 10 years or so they will have hopefully of found a way.

After we toured the production facility, we headed to one of their organic beet farms about 45 minutes outside Rochester. This was my favorite part of the trip! We got to meet one of the farmers they work with who has been growing beets for over 40 years. We learned a lot about organic farming and how it is so much harder than regular farming. You can’t just spray pesticides on organic farms, you need to hand pick the weeds. For large farms, you can see how this add quite a lot of work.

Dining Out with Love Beets

Y’all probably aren’t surprised that there would be some epic food on the trip. I mean you can’t take a bunch of health and wellness food bloggers and not feed them well. The first day ended with a lovely dinner at The Owl House especially curated for Love Beets. We started off with some beet infused cocktails and apps – buffalo cauliflower (my fav!), crostini with beet spread, and an endive leaf with beets. We then headed outside to a gorgeous setting for 4 more courses.

There were a lot of plant based eaters on the trip, so we had both a meat and veg option we could choose from. I loved the veggie centric dishes! I got king oyster mushrooms instead of scallops and they blew me away. It legit looked like and the texture was like you were eating scallops. My absolute favorite part was the dessert – a sweet beet + ginger (vegan) ice cream bar. It was phenomenal. The beet and ginger combo was amazing and the chocolate added a little bit of sweetness, without overpowering it. I could probably eat that dessert regularly and not get tired of it.

Food Photography with Chickpea Magazine

The second day we got to spend the day with Cara Livermore, the founder of Chickpea Magazine, at Rochester Brainery, which was a beautiful space. She does all the food photography for the magazine and talked about lighting, composition, styling, and more. Food photography and styling is one of the hardest parts for me running this blog. I can create recipes all day, but no one wants to eat an ugly dish. I learned some great tips and tricks that I am going to start implementing in my shoots.

After the workshop, we headed back to the hotel and said goodbye to everyone. It was so fun meeting the Love Beets team, seeing all the work that goes into producing an amazing product, and meeting other bloggers in real life. It’s safe to say my heart was so full after the trip, along with my belly. If you have never tried beets, I hope this posts encourages you to – there are so many things you can do with them and they are a nutrient powerhouse! If you are looking to try some beet recipes, here are a few of my favorites:

Chocolate Beet Smoothie
Beet & Smoked Salmon Frittata
Meal Prep Beet Quinoa Breakfast Bowl
Roasted Sweet Potato & Beet Stacks

Again, a huge thank you to Love Beets for proving an amazing trip from start to finish. And for keeping us well fed the whole time (I mean look at those snacks)!!

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