Archive for General

Food Buying Clubs of the Past

It’s always fun to read about the model from where you came, and that this buying club thing that we do hasn’t changed much, with software or without software. You order in bulk, you go as direct to the source as possible, and you move money from grocery stores filled with crap to a direct connection to the kind folks who grow your food.

But, as people aged, the whole buying club idea faded away.  Life, kids, losing desire to live communally, these pioneers moved on to other things or opened stores that continued this type of food activism today.  Perhaps there was a touch more capitalism involved, but the food was in good hands.

We like to think that BuyingClubSoftware.com makes it easier to run a food buying club, and this will help the movement have more staying power this time around.  I guess we’ll see… 🙂

Read the article from SFGate here.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Welcome to StartABuyingClub.com. We’ve started this site in hopes of becoming a point of reference for those who want to start or grow a buying club. A lot of our focus will be on food buying clubs, but we’ll try our best to keep the information product neutral.

There are various factors leading to the decision to start a buying club; saving money, getting the best product, buying closer to the source, etc. Regardless of your reasons, we aim to initially address four points on this site:

  • create a simple document outlining how to start a buying club
  • manage a directory of existing buying clubs
  • manage a directory of distributors that work with buying clubs
  • maintain a list of buying club tools and resources

In the future, we would like to expand the side to include:

  • facilitating communication between established buying clubs and newly formed/forming clubs
  • publishing weekly/monthly interviews with buying clubs in varying levels of experience
  • closely following the experience of a buying club from its inception to, hopefully, it success

If you’re looking to start a buying club, what sort of questions do you have right now? Please submit them here and we’ll be sure to consider them while we formulate this site’s content moving forward.

Thanks, and check back soon for new updates!