Food Buying Group

From AshWiki

ASH does housing very well, a roof over your head being a nice thing in life. Another essential is food and food buying groups / co-ops are the future, here's why...

• Cheaper food (cut out the middle men)
• Better food (see where your food comes from, build relationships with the growers)
• Less work (write a shopping list, pick up shopping)
• Better for the environment (less movement of food, less shops, less packaging)
• Building for the future (our system of argriculture and feeding ourselves is heavily dependent on oil, when oil prices rocket, food prices will follow)

Contents 1 Food Buying Group (FBG) (Roma model!) 1.1 The Organiser has to do the following in their week: 1.2 When it's not their week to be the Organiser, the other FBG members only have to do the following: 1.3 Some things that really need to happen for this to work: 1.4 Variations 1.5 Potential local food sources 2 Other Food Co-op Models

Food Buying Group (FBG) (Roma model!)

This model is popular in Rome and other places in Italy. Basically 20 - 25 people get together and through and bit of work and some clever organisation they get cheap local organic lovelyness on your doorstep every week.

You need a Base (The Hut?) and everyone in the group must live a short walking distance from the Base (ASH members and our neighbours?). When the FBG first forms you have to source local Growers of lovely food. One of the main ideas of the FBG is that everyone should have a direct connection to their food, the closer the better. So if you don't grow your own, you should at least have a strong relationship with the people growing it for you. So the FBG should visit the farms and meet the Growers, and choose two or three to work with which will supply the best variation of food at a good price.

Once the Growers have been sourced, the FBG can start for real. First, draw up a timetable, each week a member should be choosen to be the Organiser. They take responsibility for the small amount of work needed each week. This is why group sizes of 20-25 are optimal, this means you'll only have to do some work twice a year, but the work you have to do isn't too much (as there's not 100 people in the group).

The Organiser has to do the following in their week:

• Collect and post the available food list - What's availiable to purchase will of course change seasonaly. So the Organiser will have to check that the latest lists are correct, a phone call to each Grower, which is why it's not a good idea to deal with more than two or three... At least until the group gets going.

• Collect all shopping lists, phone order through - All members will have completed their shoping lists. The Organiser totals them all up and puts in the orders with the Growers.

• Collect and sort food - It would be good if the Growers could deliver the food, that way we don't rely on the Organisers being able to drive / having access to a vechile. The Organiser sorts the bulk deliveries into each Members shopping bag, weighing out the spuds and the like. Stapel shopping list and total cost onto their bag. Individual bags ready in the Base by a certain time for collection by members.

When it's not their week to be the Organiser, the other FBG members only have to do the following:

• Check the available food list and submit their shopping list - Basically check a chart and write down how much you want of what. There should be a strict deadline for this each week, as it makes the work for the Organiser much easier.

• Collect their food - Again, quite a tight timescale for this. Otherwise we'll end up storing food somewhere / taking up space, which we haven't really got at the moment.

• Pay some money - Pretty simple, would just have to work out the best time for this? Probably on collection, but that would mean we'd need a float, perhaps?

Some things that really need to happen for this to work:

• Money... Members could put in a bit at the start to build a 'float', then payment could be on collection of food? Could get the money back as and when they leave the group?
  • Or if enough people were interested in it, maybe we could get the co-op to stump some up?
• Members of the FBG must really commit to buying through the group, as the food is cheap due to the volumes being purchased.
• If a member doesn't take their role as Organiser seriously, the whole thing falls apart.
• Some good scales
  • I'm sure we can ask around for those... :-)
• Some strong paper bags that can be reused
• Strong box for float / cash

Variations

• Depending on the energy for taking it in turns to be the Organiser, you could build into the system some 'pay back' for taking on the work? You could add a small premium on the food costs, then this in turn could pay towards the Organisers food for that week. So, with 25 people in the group... If each paid 50p a week premium (don't forget the food is going to be cheaper than normal anyway) that would mean the Organiser would have £12.50 knocked off their bill, which would more than likely be more than their food for that week. Essentially this means that if not everyone wanted to be the Organiser, it could help to avoid issues with some people doing more work than others, perhaps?

Potential local food sources

• COFCO is an organic box scheme sourcing stuff from local organic suppliers, their site links to quite a few local farms: [1] .
• The dudes who do the Sunday farmers market (veg only)
• Ask Cotto who they source from?
• Any local cheese?
• Honey?
• The fruit guy on the sunday market (fruit)

Other Food Co-op Models

The other obvious thing to do is to buy bulk goods that don't rot and then sell them on cheap to the members of the group (those who stumped up the cash for the kitty in the first place). But as we haven't got any real storage space at ASH (at the moment!) then I'm not sure if this is much use. Would make a lot of sense though if a store could be built.

Tom 4 Arg: If it's difficult to get suppliers to deliver, then we could probably do some kind of deal with COFCO as they are already in the business of collecting organic veg from various farms and passing it on (probably slightly more eco-friendly that way too!). I think that their deliveries get cheaper with size, so we could ask for a bargainous mega-load of veg every week, and split it between several participants. They also take specific orders weekly, so if we wanted to be really organised we could probably order according to people's whims like in the Roma model above. Or we could work out a few preferences over time and let the rest be a bit of a lucky dip. I get a small box from them now and it's not bad value, although I can imagine that there could be some good economy of scale savings. If we become a huge buying power with an idea of what we want on a weekly basis then we can also ask e.g. Cotto and Arjuna how much they'd charge.