The Peach Truck Is Spreading Fresh Southern Peaches

As the days lengthen between spring and summer, a familiar scent fills the air, drawing people to orchards and farm stands to get baskets of peaches for pies, scones, and more peach recipes because in the South, peach season is as sacred as a holiday. I remember my first peach, the intense sweetness and slightly floral notes, juice running down my chin — it tasted like summer.

Stephen Rose grew up eating fresh Georgia peaches straight from the orchard each summer, but when he and his wife Jessica moved to Nashville, they couldn’t find those perfectly ripe, ready to bite into, right-off-the-tree peaches anywhere. In 2012, they decided to change that.

They drove to Stephen’s hometown farm in Peach County, Georgia, loaded their 1964 Jeep Gladiator with hand-picked peaches, and brought them to Nashville. The Peach Truck, akin to a neighborhood ice cream truck without the jingle playing, was born.

“The first truckload sold out immediately and the rest is history,” Jessica says. While the business has grown since that first summer delivery, according to Jessica, they still “hand-pick the best peaches, grown by premium, trusted farmers in Peach County, and deliver them to you within days of being on the tree for the best tasting peach you’ve ever had.”

The Roses harvest 40 peach varieties to fill their truck each season and then deliver the best fruit in each haul, each type with its own unique flavor and texture. The selection varies throughout the season, and they’ve expanded to working with trusted farmers beyond Georgia, but their standard of only delivering the best quality remains constant. “We carefully hand-pick and inspect all our peaches and via our top-notch team, make sure they reach you within days of being picked. After all, the best kind of peach is the freshest one you can get,” Jessica says.

From mid-May to early September, The Peach Truck offers home delivery and local pickup of hand-picked peaches, and the Roses take the show on the road. They load up their vehicle — slightly larger than the original truck — and roll out to 15 states across the U.S., including my home state of Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.. You can find out if The Peach Truck is coming your way by visiting the website and entering your zip code.

If The Peach Truck has a local pickup in your area, you can place an order for however many 12-pound boxes you want and rendezvous with the truck at any of the more than 900 scheduled stops. If there’s not a stop near you, the company ships smaller boxes of 13 fresh peaches directly, picked and packed the day of shipping.

Once you secure peak peaches, it’s time to start planning how you will enjoy them. Pies, crisps, and cobblers are classic. Galettes, ice cream, and pickled preparations offer something a little different. You can grill them, toss them in a salad, and make countless sauces and marinades for your summertime barbecues and get-togethers. But, nothing beats the flavor of a fresh, hand-picked peach, eaten at the peak of summer with the sun shining, the scent of fresh-cut grass in the air, and longer days to catch fireflies and cotton candy beach sunsets.

If you are looking for inspiration for what to do with your peaches beyond gobbling them up, the Roses penned a cookbook inspired by their love of the summer stone fruit, The Peach Truck Cookbook that details peach varieties, best harvesting practices, and how to set up a peach-stocked pantry. It is chock full of orchard-to-table recipes from some of Nashville’s most celebrated chefs like Sean Brock and Tandy Wilson. Flipping through the pages you’ll find classics like Peach Pecan Sticky Buns, Peach Jalapeño Cornbread, and Classic Peach Pie.

“What we love most about this business is the opportunity to deliver joy and connect with our customers through something as simple and delightful as a peach,” Jessica says. “Within each peach is a small piece of summer and we cherish getting to share that with our customers and their families year after year.”