BuyingClubSoftware.com

On November 19, 2010 Slow Money Maine hosted a day-long event where several investors and agricultural participants gathered to share what they are doing and talk openly about investing in local agriculture. The morning program was several presentations to a room of about 100 people, and I was lucky enough to be one of those presenters.

Thank you to Slow Money Maine and Bonnie Rukin for doing all the work that they do to create process for investing locally, and for having me.

Click play to listen to my presentation on BuyingClubSoftware.com and how through ordering food together we find community.

Slow Money Maine Presentation [ 8:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After re-starting our orders at the Portland Food Co-op in February, we have now had 6 successful order cycles with approximately 200 people and $10,000 in purchasing of local food. Through this success, we are very proud to announce that we are open for business.

That said, we welcome any and all buying clubs. How do you get started?

1. Check out our tour, FAQ and features to get a general sense of what you need vs. what we are offering.
2. Check our our pricing and fill out our form to receive a detailed one-on-one demonstration, which will help inform us  of what you are up to in your buying club as well as figure a time to get back to you.
3. If the demo convinces you 100%, then we figure out how to get you setup and running.

It’s that simple!  Join us, and we can’t wait to hear from you.

After a ton of collaboration and planning with the Portland Food Co-op, our own food buying club that is organized as a co-op, we were able to get a working version out.  We knew there would be many questions to answer, but thanks to these kind folks we were able to doing things as few software builders get to do with their users.

Entering the test, the more senior organizers of the group worked with us to review the software and see where the holes are and clarify what this test was about.  We realized that a great deal of functions were needed that we hadn’t completed yet, and that the shopping with splits was really the focus of the test.

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!