Saturdays are as good as Christmas morning to me! That sounds crazy, but every Saturday morning I go pick up my produce for the week at a Bountiful Baskets pick-up location. This really is my one big "grocery" trip for the week. And I love it! And, of course, it's SUPER CHEAP!!! (Come on, it's ME! Of course it's cheap or I wouldn't do it!)
This entire assortment of fruits and veggies cost me $15! Yes, $15!!! There's a pineapple, two small cases of organic blueberries, a large container of strawberries, pears, apples, bananas, cucumbers, zucchini, asparagus, romain, cabbage, and two big bunches of spinach! And it's all great quality, it will last all week...or longer!
So how does it work? Bountiful Baskets is a Co-op, run solely by volunteers. They use collective buying power to buy produce at incredible prices! To place your order, you need to go to bountifulbaskets.org on Monday or Tuesday (depending on state). There is a first time fee of $3.00, and you do pay about $1.50 per order in handling, but seriously, this is an amazing deal! On Saturday morning you go to your specified pick-up location where volunteers will be there waiting with baskets of produce for you. You need to bring your own laundry basket, or box, or anything you can use to haul it home in, since you'll be transferring your produce from their baskets to yours. This morning a lady was really smart and brought a cooler on wheels, good thinking! She was picking up two orders today.
You need to buy the "basket" for $15 to participate, but there are other add on items you can purchase besides the original basket, if you want. My husband and I were so excited about the add-ons for this week!
This is the Mexican basket. My husband loves Mexican food. He wanted me to buy two. I didn't, only because we knew we'd already have the first basket and didn't need that much produce! But for $6.50 we were able to get avacodos, garlic, onion, jalepanios, limes (aren't those limes so adorable!), cilantro, green onions, a bunch of dried peppers, and another kind of squash I'm not sure what it is. It looks like the zucchini I grow in my garden, but they don't look like the zucchini in my other basket, so I'm not sure.
This is the delicious 9 grain whole wheat sandwich bread that my family loves! My two-year-old eats two peices of this for breakfast, and then two peices on a sandwich for lunch! She loves it! And it's so healthy! Each slice is just 50 calories! It cost me $10 for 5 loaves.
This is the first time I've seen them offer tortillas. My husband loves to make burritos, so he was so excited to get these! They are delicious! And they are suppossed to freeze really well, good thing because there are a ton of them! It cost me $10 for all of these.
So my grand total for this week for my main basket, the Mexican basket, 5 loaves of bread, and tons of tortillas was $43.00 including the $1.50 handling fee. Like I said, this is my one big shopping trip of the week, and it has totally cut down on my grocery spending! Plus I feel so good knowing I'm feeding my family healthy food. My kids now reach for an apple, banana, or orange instead of crackers that they used to love.
I personally love Bountiful Baskets but I've heard really great things about another Co-op, Green Bee Produce Co-op. I just haven't tried it yet.
Do you know of any other Co-ops? Have you tried either of these?
I do Green Bee. I have been super impressed with their product. They use grade A produce, where BB uses a company that purchases old discounted product from stores that have rejected it due to quality. GB offers 100% guarenteed on there produce.Just make sure you check your stuff before you leave the site, so that way if you have soemthing not up to your standard you can tell your site host and they can report it to GB. The next delivery your box will contain LOTS of extra produce to make up for it. But you have to do it at the site in order to get the guarentee. They also offer bread and a salsa pack. It's 18.50 for a box, runs weekly, and the cool part is that part of the box sells go back to the site host to donate to their orginzation. So not only are you getting good stuff for yourself you also are giving back to the community. The people there are really nice and fun to deal with. They really bend over backwards to make sure you are happy. they are just starting out so they are still working the kinks out of the delivery process, but it's worth it. The only problem I had was one week I purchased white bread but got a whole wheat....it was fine i liked wheat too, but they insisted on replacing it. they drove the 30 miles back to their place got the white bread and drove 30 miles back to my house with it, and i got to keep the wheat bread too. I don't know any other company that would do that.
ReplyDeleteWow! Thanks Holly, for sharing all you know about Green Bee! I will have to try it! I have heard only great things about them. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI think you would be totally happy with them. I really like the fact that part of my money goes back to the site host for their orginization, plus I don't have go wait in line to pay for dinner every night. It's a win win situation. Let me know what you think of them!
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