SAN ANTONIO – When Julina Stewart hit the drive-thru Monday for food, she picked up 120 pounds of chicken.
"It's really easy. It's really inexpensive. It's fresh," she said.
There were no fries with that, but she did pick up three 40-pound boxes of fresh, raw chicken breasts from the back of a truck in a parking lot.
It was a scheduled delivery by Zaycon Fresh, which provides a sort of mobile meat market.
Zaycon Fresh is a Spokane, Washington, company that buys from ranchers and packers and sells chicken, salmon, bacon, ground beef patties and more direct to customers.
"It cuts out the store, cuts out the middle man, no warehousing," said Everal Roberts, who drives across Texas making deliveries. "The product is three to four times fresher than you get in the grocery store."
The meat is not organic, but rather "natural" with no additives, according to the company.
This is how it works. Consumers register online at zayconfresh.com. When the company has enough interest in an area, it will set up a delivery event and notify customers who can then place their orders. They then pick them up in a make-shift drive through typically set up in church parking lots.
"It is the easiest thing," said Nora Lisa Chapa, who was among the line of cars Monday morning snaking through the Village Parkway Baptist Church parking lot. "You pull in, pick up your order, you leave. You can come dressed like this," she said.
The products are sold in bulk only. For example, one box of chicken breasts is 40 pounds. The bulk-buying power is what Zaycon says allows them to sell at prices that are typically 30 to 40 percent cheaper than grocery stores.
It's a real money-saver for Candace Sabo.
"At $1.69 a pound (for chicken breasts), you can't beat that price. So it works well for our large family," said Sabo, who has 11 children. "We eat a lot of chicken."