Zingerman’s Mail Order

My boyfriend and I purchased some gift baskets and products for our friends and family and for ourselves too for the holidays. Even after spending all of that money (everything is extremely overpriced, but I wanted to get something pricey this year for people since usually I can’t). The woman I talked to was extremely rude and had no idea about any of the products that I asked her about. She had to keep putting me on hold after every question I had. Then the products that I did receive were definitely not worth the money (the ones I got for myself). Most are low in quality and everything is overpriced. They are basically ripping people off. Majority of the products are not Zingerman’s made. I would definitely suggest going to Whole Foods (expensive too, but not as expensive as this place) and getting products to make your own gift boxes or baskets. Whole Food’s employees are also nicer and not as stuck up.

Top notch products. Unconditional guarantees. Sales throughout the year. What’s not to love?

Early this month, I had ordered a birthday cake to be delivered to a friend in San Francisco. I appreciated that both my friend and I received emails with the order number to keep track of throughout the process. The cake arrived on time and although it spent the day in the mail room, my friend informed me that it was ready to be defrosted for her after-​dinner celebration. It was the perfect way to help her enjoy her birthday, from a distance. Thank you, Zingerman’s!

Okay, I still love Zingerman’s, but my last mail order experience was a little lacking. Were I a new customer, they might not have gotten 4 stars.
Two things:
(1) Y’all gots to buy a better server. The website was agonizingly slow to load. I’m sure that they have unusually high traffic just before Christmas when I was shopping, but that’s what servers (or clouds, or whatever technology actually solves this) are for.
(2) After spending an inordinate amount of time (see: slow servers) putting my order together, the shipping turned out to be a scam. I was all set with my «2 business day» order on the morning of the 18^th of December. Now, the 19^th was a business day. And the 20^th was a business day. As was the 23^rd, 24^th, 26^th, 27^th, 30^th, 31^st… oh, and the 2^nd and 3^rd of January. That’s 10 right there.
But apparently, my order won’t ship until January 6^th for delivery on January 8^th.
If you had posted some sort of note on your website about giving your employees time at the holidays to be with their families, I would have found it charming. If you had left a message on the home page about how Wednesday holidays mess up your shipping schedules, I would have understood. Heck, if you had called your shipping package something other than «2 business day,» I’d shrug it off.
But taking 2.5 weeks to process an order just makes it seem like you don’t know how calendars work.

twenty two dollars plus shipping for pimento cheese? you’re kidding me, right???

People complain about the prices: yes, they are high, but that is a moot point. Heck, one person even complained about a gift! Sheesh! What a way to thank the gift-​giver!
The service is impeccable. The products are interesting at worst, wonderful at best. And THAT is what mail-​order is about.
The one thing that I would ask of Zingerman’s is to clearly identify the producer in each blurb about a product.
Kaile Sniderman is the paragon of what a representative of any organization should be. If all people in Michigan are like her, I will retire there.

I waited until the last minute to order a coffee cake for Christmas Day morning, and it was past the deadline to send the order to the warehouse. But Yma heard how disappointed I was, so she put me on hold and went directly to her boss, who made an exception, and now our family will have a sour cream coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas Day.
I’ve never ordered from Zingerman’s before, so it’s not like I’m an old and valued customer, but you can be assured that I will be from now on!
And as a business consultant whose area of expertise is the Customer Experience, this is one of the best I’ve ever had. Yma was a pleasure to speak with even before I found out it was too late to get a Dec. 24^th delivery, and for her to go out of her way like she did for someone who had never done business with them before, was the best Experience anyone could possibly have.
Thank you Yma and «the Boss» who just made my day!

BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER: I ordered a nice dinner from Zingermans Deli (Detroit, MI). They overnighted it, but forgot the Challah. To fix the mistake– they actually called bakeries in my area and found one that made the traditional New Year’s Challah in Los Gatos (20 miles away). The bakery is delivering the Challah as we speak. Wow!

I do love my bacon. But to pay $ 33 a month for 3 months for 3 packages of bacon is a rip off. The bacon is good and doesn’t shrink much, but you could go to your butcher and get much cheaper slabs of bacon that also doesn’t shrink.
I didn’t even pay the $ 99 for the 3 month supply, it was a gift. I wouldn’t recommend anybody waste their money on this. Even if you’re a lover of bacon.

In the past year I moved away from the Ann Arbor area and dearly miss Zingermans. I ordered some goodies for my husband for our anniverary, and they arrived exactly when I was told. I did have a small problem with one item because of the summer heat, I called up the 1 – 800 number and everything was taken care of instantly. Everybody at customer service here are so helpful, knowledgable and seem to really love their job and helping people find exactly what they are looking for. I am quite sad that I no longer live close enough to go into the Zingerman’s locations, but Mail Order is the next best thing for sure! Thanks Zingerman’s for impressing me yet again!

The customer service folks for mail orders are fantastic. They responded to my email request to swap out some items in place of others, very quickly and were so nice about it. Both people I interacted with were wonderful and of course, all the Zingerman products received were incredible.

My dog started barking like crazy, heralding the arrival of the UPS truck. A gift had arrived. I hadn’t been expecting anything, and the writing on the box said I should open it immediately.
It was a package from Zingerman’s.
Being from California, I had never heard of Zingerman’s. When I opened the box, I saw a variety pack of cookies and brownies. What a nice surprise on a rainy day! And won’t my trainer be pissed with me if I eat any of these!
The package contained:
* Bueunos Aires Brownie — a very decadent dulce de leche brownie (my sinful favorite)
* Funky Chunky Chocolate Cookie — chunks of bittersweet Belgian chocolate and toasted walnuts (my 4-​year-​old son’s favorite — shhhh! don’t tell him he ate nuts!)
* Ginger Jump Up Molasses Cookie — gingery and chewy (Mr. L’s favorite)
* Magic Brownie — chocolaty with toasted walnuts
* Oatmeal Raisin Cookie — made with brown sugar, maple syrup, organic rolled oats, and very chewy
* Pecan Blondie — I have no idea how it tastes, though the ingredients are good (butter, flour, sugar, toated pecans, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, salt), it lacks my favorite one: CHOCOLATE. I don’t understand the point of a blondie.
From Zingerman’s website, I see you can create custom pastry gift boxes online or by calling them. They have a variety of baked goods from which to choose.
The brownies and cookies are all made with real ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, vanilla), and no weird stuff that you can’t pronounce. No transfats from what I could see. For the taste and the real ingredients, I’m a fan. For the extra work out I’ll have to do to burn off the calories, all I can do is hope we don’t get such care packages often.

I love bacon. I would eat cardboard if it were bacon wrapped. Forget graduating college and moving out of my parents’ house– my goal in life is to sample every bacon product on the market. This mission led me to Zingerman’s and Mo’s Dark Chocolate Bacon Bar. After much soul searching, I decided that I would indeed spend $ 18 on a candy bar ($ 10 for the bacon bar + $ 8 shipping) cause I’m a baller like that.
I nearly burst into tears last Thursday when my bacon bar arrived melted! I put it in the fridge but it stayed stuck to the wrapper and I lost a good chunk of it. I e-​mailed Zingerman’s customer service to find out if they would be willing to replace it, even though it wasn’t their fault we had an unseasonable heat wave in Maryland. Within hours, I received a reply from Joan, who apologized for my melted bar and said she’d already arranged for a replacement to be shipped the next day. Pretty awesome!
I came home today to find not one, but two Zingerman’s boxes waiting. Each box contained a Mo’s Bacon Bar wrapped in a plastic bag, inside a bubble envelope with two gel ice packs. That level of customer service is beyond amazing! I will definitely order from Zingerman’s again. You can put a price on bacon but great service is priceless!
Oh, and @ Erin Y., I assure you I DO NOT work for Zingerman’s :)

If you’ d like to receive gifts of Zing in the mail, find a someone in A2 who will send them. The mark up at mail order is around 300%. Not just of the items made by Z, either.
They order delightful creations from all over the world, then pass the mark up on to you, the consumer keeping them alive.
I’d recommend doing a tad of research first. If you want the dried corn, you will save a ton ordering directly from the company it is produced at. Same goes for everything else they garner and then raise the roof on price.
I’ve noticed some Z employees giving every other establishment rave reviews. These are noticeably absent from the mail order.
Business practices here leave much to be desired. That’s all I can say on that subject.

This year, I sent Zingerman’s to my loved ones.
I understand that some of them cried.
Do I need to say more than that? Only this: I pray to God that I continue to make enough money to send gifts of Zingerman’s to the people in my life who live so far away that I can’t hug them, who must be content instead with the world’s best breads, pork products, cheeses and sweets.
From this day forward, I will no longer work for the money, but for the Zingerman’s.

I cannot say better things about the Zingerman’s family of businesses. First of all, the people who work there are amazng. They are dedicated, passionate people who really love food and really love people. They do a lot of charity work and offer a lot of education. Just based on principle, if my dollar is some sort of voting implement, all of my money would go here.
Anyway, on to the more important part: the food. I have yet to find anything that compares to Zingerman’s bread. The crisp, flavorful crusts, the varying textures from the pockety, sauce-​soaking paesano to the dense, grainy volkornbrot have about a hundred applications each and taste great with any of their premium condiments. Seriously, folks, you want honey? Preserves? Come order at Zingerman’s. Everything a foodie could ever want short of produce can be found here. You can even order a giant sandwich kit with their famous sandwich ingredients!
Don’t even get me started on the cheeses. The liptauer is great for dipping pretzels (hard or soft) into and savoring with a nice beer. Their selection comes from the lovliest caves in Europe to the best American creameries (including their own in-​house creamery).
Customer service is also absolutely impeccable. Phone operators are cheery, love food, and are willing to adapt to you. You want them to chat with you about food and give you recommendations and recipes? They can do that. You want them to shut up and give you your bacon now now now? They can do that too. Need to send a fancy gift of food to a client? Professional presents can help with that too. Tracking numbers, order receipts and such are handled promptly and clearly. Something went wrong with your order? Call ‘em back! Zingerman’s is dedicated to making it right, even if it isn’t their fault. They just want you to try and enjoy their delicious products.
Seriously worth a try. The price-​point is a little high, but I feel that for the quality of product, the impeccable service, and the promptness with which you receive your order, it is a small price to pay. Dang, I feel like ordering some now.

How well do my friends know me? Well, one of them gave me bacon for Christmas. That’s right suckers — read it and weep.
Not just any bacon, but specialty bacon from this mail order house in Ann Arbor. To wit, one pound of hickory smoked bacon from Kentucky, one pound of Arkansas peppered bacon, and a half pound of Irish back bacon. I’ve only busted into the hickory smoked so far, but let me tell you, Zingerman’s knows what they’re doing. I’d suggest you get some bacon of your own, but right now, all but the peppered bacon is sold out. Muwahahahaha.
As I understand it, the Zingerman’s empire consists of a deli, a bakehouse, a creamery, a coffee roaster, and a roadhouse in various locations around Ann Arbor. The mail order shop sells goods from these businesses, as well as specialty items (oils and vinegars, meats and fishes, and more) from across the US and around the world. They even have food «clubs,» offering monthly mailings of bread, cheese, coffee (and coffee cake), as well as the aforementioned bacon. They’ve done well enough that the New York Times has picked up their story:
As for me, well I’m doing just fine with the bacon, thank you very much.