It Begins… the Portland Food Co-op

Today marks the beginning of a new venture. And what may be the most exciting venture in my work-life in my career. Writing a new kind of software, and partnering with a friend to do it. Sometimes work and friends don’t mix, but in this case, we rock the dorky-computer-thing. And the beer thing. And the philosophy thing.

After joining up with the Portland Food Co-op to begin organizing a co-op in Portland, Maine, I started buying food with a group of many of the same people who buy food directly from farms and local producers. With no other options in Portland besides ones that are usually too expensive, this was the best way to get my food the way I wanted it at a reasonable price. How does that happen? Buying in bulk and wholesale price, and working with the group to organize an order, delivery, pickup and checkout. This is what a buying club is.

After ordering with these guys for a few months, it became clear that this was begging for an e-commerce solution. A shopping cart. One you have seen a thousand times, but not really. It looked like your basic shopping site, and was as easy for the average person, but this one dealt with “splits”. Like I mentioned above, splits are part of buying a 50# bag of flour, but splitting it between multiple people. So during shopping, we needed to see that I bought 10#, and that 40# was still available.

And so after tons of thinking this out myself and with others in the buying club, and after recently meeting Matt who has the same passion for the idea as I do, we are off and running to build buying club software.

Wish us luck!

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