Ok so, ive been asked by so many people what is the deal is with food co-ops. How do they work, where do i find them, and how to i start one? Hopefully all the answers to your questions are here!

Dry Goods

There are two main suppliers of dry goods, that we use through our co-op, one is Chantals Organics and one is Ceres Organics. Before going straight to these places it probably pays to see if there is already an existing co-op in your area taking on new members – there are heaps out there, hopefully someone can direct you to one already set up. I do believe Ceres may have a list of existing co-ops from around the country that they can direct you to also.

There usually are some rules, when you are filling orders as a co-op. With Chantals – You can order individual items, if you order the outer/carton you get it at a slightly reduced price. so an ‘outer’ or carton might be 6 or 12 items of that product, depending on what it is. In Chantals there is no minimum spend per month, so its a good one to start with if you don’t have many people on board. There you will find many of your favorite products that are usually sold in health food stores, for cheaper prices.

If you order through Ceres there are a few more rules– You need to purchase by the ‘outer’ eg, peanut butter 6 in an outer, so you will need to buy 6. So if someone wanted 3 they that in their column. So this is where the group comes in handy as others can help, and hopefully someone else also wants peanut butter that month and you can fill the outer of 6. If not then you cannot go through with that product order.  There is an $800 minimum spend per month, usually it is helpful to set a minimum spend of x amount per family, per month to ensure the minimum spend it met. (its surprisingly easy to fill really, i usually spend around $100 a month (only $25 per week) – so you only need 8 families to do that!)

Every group runs their co-op slightly differently, but this is how ours works:

Everybody places their order in a google doc spreadsheet. Everyone places there order by 7pm on the 15^th of each month, Lu, who oversees all of our ordering and places our final order (among other amazing general day to day running of the co-op stuff) checks it and on the on the 15^th night or 16^{th .}  She comes back to the group via our Facebook group with incomplete ‘outers’ and then people advise if they want to up their quantity to fill the outer or remove their order. This works really well as people will often ‘help’ others out, they may not necessarily need this month but they will get it. Or i often see stuff that i had forgotten about but all of a sudden ‘need’ so jump in to fill some of the product outer.  Then she places the order the following morning, Ceres can be done online and Chantals via email. With Ceres she cross reference prices, and makes sure the shopping cart and excel spreadsheet match up. Our speadsheet is friken huge – thousands of columns down, and forty odd across – each person / family in the co-op has a column they place their order into.

Prices are subject to changes so once she has cross referenced prices she comes back to the group and lets us know of any dramatic price increases – or decreases, last month coconut oil was reduced to a steal! In our first order some things were out of stock, so people had over paid and they were in credit so to make it clean we pay after the order is placed. The expectation is that people will pay within a day or 2 once she has send out the exact costs. It’s also a great way of earning airpoints! If you were worried about people not paying you could just get them to pay you before you place the order. Lu says “I guess I trust that if they are buying organic they will be invested in their families health and therefore will pay and I find it easier if they pay after as sometimes we have had an item missing or a packet has burst, this way it saves me having to refund people”.

Everyone pays freight for both Chantals and Ceres around $5 (was $8ish with 8 families) total regardless of whether they purchase from one or the other or both. Freight will obviously vary depending on where you live. Ceres comes from Auckland and Chantals comes from Napier. When we first started we had a minimum spend of $75 with Ceres this is so we reached the minimum spend, since we are bigger now its $75 across either Ceres or Chantals.

Everyone in our group is very open to helping, although so far it’s been pretty straightforward. With some co-ops someone might do orders/payment and the goods get delivered to someone else’s place where they sort to share the load. Everything gets delivered to Lucindas house each time. We get 6 people to come and help sort and we knock it out in two hours. 2 sort produce, 2 weigh, 2 put items in peoples boxes and tick off printed spreadsheet. There has never been any problems getting help. Everyone has been recently told to help out every 3 months or so, and a roster has been set up, which means each person does a sort about twice a year.

Ours has been going for two years now and we have added a few more suppliers in which we order from every second month these include Lifefoods, Bostocks, Franks Sausages and Goddbuzz Kombucha.  For the last 12 months we have been ordering produce from Chantals. Lu said “initially I wasn’t as driven as I have a large veggie garden however I am pleased we have as the quality and the prices are excellent in a number of instances cheaper than the supermarket last month bananas $2.60kg, apples $1.60, limes far cheaper than the supermarket”. With the produce it’s quite busy that day as she gets it sorted and people collect the same day and “if it’s not a Kindergarten day I have a little helper muddling up my orders and eating all the apples”.

Our co-op grew very easily, personally Lucinda said she doesn’t mind as “I figure the more families that are involved reduces the freight costs and gives you more people to share outers/cartons with and from a personal point of view gets people supporting smaller and ethical growers and I figure it’s my way of helping spread the real food message and my contribution for others”.  We have over 30 families now and the facebook group is always a hive of activity, including recipe sharing and some general day to day thoughts and questions between like minded people.

Produce

On a Friday, every second week, Chantals organic produce sends an email with a list of available produce, Lucinda copies it across to our spreadsheet and shares it on google docs with the group. Orders usually close on sunday night, so poeple have over the weekened to put in their order.
Monday morning she places the order and it generally arrives on the Wednesday.

Once it arrives we have the boxes labelled with each persons name and literally just weigh everything out.  When its not a dry goods week, lucinda sorts it herself, it takes about two hours to weigh the produce out and put it into peoples boxes and this is for a large number of families so anything less would only take an hour or so, then about 30 mins to reconcile the spreadsheet versus the invoice afterwards. (so thats entering the exact amounts that were weighed out because depending on whats turned up, say i ordered 2kg of bananas – not all bunches or bananas come in lots that will weigh out to exactly 2kg so adding in exactly the weight of the bananas given to me in the order.

There are some good perks to hosting the produce and doing the sort – like when they can’t count Avocados and you end up with more, or picking the biggest broccoli heads etc!

Rather excitingly, for those who are keen on affordable organic produce but for whatever reason are not keen to play an active role in a co-op Food Together runs a service where you can buy organic produce for a pretty good price too, they just started up in our area and lots of people i know have signed up, and have said nothing but good things. You could also check them out to see if they bring produce near you. There are probably heaps of other places that do something similar, its just a case of asking around!

So basically…

Ask around and join an existing co-op in your area if there is one available.

To set up a co-op you need to contact the right suppliers;

Gather up a small group of like minded people who are keen to be involved.

Make sure someone is willing to take on the main role of over seeing the co-op, the emails, communication with suppliers and / or decide what role each person in the co-op will play – where will the goods be delivered, who is going to send out the spreadsheets, do the payments, ensure there are enough people for sorting.

Send out the spreadsheet, make sure all outers are filled and minimum spend is met.

Email it back to the suppliers

Have the goods delivered

Sort the food and have everyone collect it

Send out payment info then make payment to the co-op

Enjoy your fresh organic produce and cheap organic dry goods!