Buyers are asked to consider the following when buying for the group: A. Taste Of Entire Group
Our co-op must serve the needs and tastes of the entire group. While everyone gets their own turn to pick what is purchased, in order to keep families as members, everyone must be considerate of the entire group. The purpose of this co-op is not to expose everyone to a new culinary experience. With busy lifestyles as they are, unfortunately, not everyone has time to figure out a way to prepare or incorporate a new fruit or vegetable into their menus.
Exotic fruits and vegetables often go uneaten or are given away. At a maximum, try keeping exotic purchases to one item per buying trip. Note if its your turn and you want some specialty items, you are welcome to bring some extra cash and shop the stalls to your heart's desire. What determines what is to considered exotic?
Here are some examples: 1) If people ask, "What is this?", then it's probably exotic 2) If people ask, "How do I prepare this?", then it's exotic 3) If you can't find it in your "Betty Crocker Cook Book" then it's probably exotic. 4) I its not served at a n "All U can Eat American Food Bar" then its probably exotic.
B. Seasonality
To ensure the best quality, try to purchase fruits and vegetables "in season". If you don't know when something is "in season", it is usually the items that are lower in price. You may refer back to the receipts for a comparison of price previously paid for the same item at a different time of year to see if the price was considerably lower or higher.
C. Price
One of the key purposes of this group is to save everyone money, so please keep away from buying a lot of extravagantly prices produce. Of course, there will be times of the year when prices are higher than other times. This to be expected, but other members will notice when they don't get as much produce for their money as they should have. Please make sure you are as conservative as possible with other peoples money.
D. Fruit/ Vegetable Ratio
For balance we ask members to try to buy half fruits and half vegetables.
E. Quality
To ensure quality, please check items as they are being loaded into your vehicle. If anything is questionable you may make and exchange before leaving for home with it. If you do happen to discover a bad purchase while sorting, don't worry! The produce company will give us credit for it on our next visit, They must, however be told in person on the next trip, so be sure to make notes and pass along the information to the next buyers.
