What exactly is a buying club?
Let’s first talk about what we are NOT. We are not a shop. We are not distributors for our partners. We do not get paid by the producers to sell their food. We are not a retailer. We are not a “budget” buying club. Our aim is not to find the cheapest version of whatever we’re looking for. Our prices may sometimes be higher than your local supermarket, although for the most part we find that they are lower. Cost cutting is not our aim.
So what are we then? We are a group of households who buy good, wholesome food together on a monthly basis. We are passionate about sustainability. We care about the earth and we care about what we put into our bodies. We’re a community. We’re here to support each other in this journey of discovering what it means to “live simply so others can simply live”. We do this by making conscious decisions about who we buy our food from, supporting those that strive to care for the earth, animals and people.
How does it work?
We are a monthly buying club. So we encourage members to plan ahead and buy what they will need for the upcoming month. We suggest reworking your budget if you’re usually a weekly shopper. We purposefully do not source produce that needs to be purchased on a weekly basis.
Collection day, or “Market Day” as it’s now affectionately known, happens on the second Friday of the month (more or less). This is the day that all members must come and collect their food. If you cannot collect on this day for whatever reason then we advise that you don’t order for that month. Unfortunately, the volume of food is too large for the co-ordinators to store the food beyond Market Day.
The online ordering platform opens approximately 2 weeks prior to Market Day, and members have roughly 7 days to place their order.
Market Days are crazy, busy, fun days. We advise members to come relaxed and with time to spare. We encourage friendship and community on these days. We ask people to bear with us as we check, double check and triple check your order. We encourage members to make and sell goodies on the day. This adds a wonderful sense of community to the day.
A small markup is added to all the produce and food we co-ordinate. This is kept as low as possible and is there to cover the time, energy and resources required by the facilitators to co-ordinate the ordering and distribution. However, running a club takes lots of physical work and having volunteers that assist the facilitators on Market Day is a necessity. So please consider volunteering once a quarter for a Market Day.