How to Start an Organic Products Buying Club

As food recalls, overseas product scares, and the switch to corn-based products ramp up consumer concerns about food, more and more Americans are starting to look at "going organic." As someone who is considering starting an organic foods "club" or co-op, you can bank on these and other concerns to get families transition to healthier buying through collective purchasing power.

Instructions

1. Plan. Look at all of the logistics. Find suppliers of organic products, and conduct bargaining sessions to get bottom-line bulk prices. Work EVERYTHING out on paper before you start evangelizing, and the results will be much more organized.

2. When you have figured out how products will be bought and shipped, and what line of organic foods you want to include in the club, start spreading the word. Yyou can use community bulletin boards, public events or good ol' word of mouth.

3. Compile a mailing list to inform your potential members. Now remember, this is BEFORE you go online with a co-op: the research phase is critically important, and people should know that membership will happen collectively according to public support. Use the mailing list to keep everyone updated on potential start dates, but don't promise anything until the research phase has been done to your satisfaction.

4. Promote your organic foods club with facts. Now, you can use a number of tacks to get people interested in organics; from a positive, emotion-based marketing angle, organic foods can be drummed up as fresh, juicy, crisp, or otherwise appealing. But for many, the rationale for organic foods hinges much more on what organic food buyers are avoiding, and that list seems to be getting longer every day. Genetically modified plants, high fructose corn syrup, meat tainted with salmonella and e. coli, and massive food recalls by big companies are just some of the items you can educate your potential members on. Try to be conservative with scare tactics, but be realistic; your initiative really is a service and a resource to the community.

5. Get started. Plan a day when you will add all existing applicants to a member list and begin distribution. By this time, the logistics should be as easy as plugging in shipping routes and home addresses of members. Some clubs require members to pick up their foods from a central location, others deliver. Some require dues and some don't. In any case, you should be set up to begin the actual timetable for club members, and while that's going on, you'll probably keep adding new members to the list, and begin really using collective purchasing to save people bundles and get good food into their homes.

Resources

• Information on co-ops and buying clubs.
• Health food information from Green People.