A long time ago, in a parking lot not far away, I picked up my first co-op basket early one Saturday morning. Several of my girl friends and I pooled our money so that we could save money by buying fresh food in bulk from State Farmers Market. I was astounded at much food we got for so little money. I was hooked!
As time went on, we each took a turn "buying" for the co-op. I quickly realized that some people "buy" better than others. Some people's buying will fill your basket and other people's buying will not. When my turn came, I found I was pretty good at it. The baskets were always full with good quality produce. Buying was hard to figure out. Notebook paper just took too long, so I eventually turned to spreadsheets. That made the process so much faster with better results.
Eventually, I started buying every week for the co-op for a small fee per basket. The members were more than happy to not have to take a turn. Soon I had over a hundred people picking up their co-op baskets from my garage. After a year or two, I decided to open it up to everyone and leased a warehouse with retail space. Farmers Market Baskets was born.
After a decade or so of that, I closed Farmers Market Baskets and hung up my entreprenurial hat. Produce is a tough business and my family needed a lifestyle change. But the principles I learned through that experience stay with me. I always wanted to build an online version of my order form and this is my first attempt.
Now you can benefit from what I learned by using my order form to purchase for your co-op!
Registration is free. When you login, you'll be prompted to create a co-op and set the budget for you baskets, or "bushels". This budget will be used to calculate the budget for your order, based on the number of bushels your co-op members want.
A "bushel" is a portion. of the overall purchase. Full bushels are what most people want. However, that's too much for some people who want to participate, so we also offer a Small Bushel. If you don't want to offer a small bushel, simply enter $0 for the small bushel budget.
The order page is where you'll enter how many people want a full bushel and how many people want a small one for this order. This will automatically calculate your budget.
Select how many of the item goes into the bushel. For example, I usually put 6-8 apples in a full bushel and 3-4 in a small one. Your co-op may want 20 apples, who know. You can do whatever works for your group.
Enter the count of how many items are in a box. For example this could be 88 count apples or 40 lbs of sweet potatoes.
Lastly, enter the price per box. The number of boxes you should order will be automatically calculated. You'll see your budget tracked at The bottom of the form so you can keep track of whether you are staying within budget or not.