Membership

The Agora Food Club is a private membership association. As such, we are not open to the public but anyone is welcome to come and join. We aim to provide the majority of our members’ grocery needs each week and have them available in a convenient, local, physical location. There are options for standing orders that will be set aside every week, pre-orders for the coming week, and self selection for more of a traditional farmer’s market / store experience. The Agora Food Club is a ministry of The Agora. It is a separate auxiliary with separate membership so you do not need to be a church member to join the food club or vice versa.

For those that wish to become members, the process is fairly simple:

• Sign a membership agreement contract.
• Pay the membership fee.
• Fund your account.

General Structure

All members have a membership account that is created when they sign up. We ask for a minimum of $100 but the idea is that you always have enough in your account to cover the cost of your next pick-up.

You then have the option to have standing orders and/or place an order just for the coming week. You can also just come in and pick-up whatever you’d like without a pre-order but availability may be limited on some items without a pre-order. We take a portion of the money that members have funded and use that to go out to local farms and suppliers as well as to place some bulk orders. These things are then brought in house fresh each week and members may come in during open hours to pick up what they would like. Since the items were already paid for from member account funds, there is no sale occurring when you come in. This is why we call it a “pick-up” because you are truly just picking up items that are already paid for.

The total value of your pick-up is then added up and officially deducted from your account and typically you would then fund your account back up to the amount you would like it to be.

Again, The Food Club is not a business or store, it is simply an association of like minded individuals with a physical location and representatives who manage the activities as a ministry of The Agora. Think of it like ordering from a meal delivery service. You get a meal from a specific place and the delivery business performs the service of picking it up for you and delivering it to you. At the food club, you get fresh, healthy food and products from like minded suppliers, ready for you to pick up each week and we perform the service of lining it all up for you, representing your interests, vetting suppliers, and managing the club.

As our model is very different than most, feel free to reach out or come in to talk about it and ask questions.

We have two membership plans available:

• the Full plan which is focused on grocery oriented members and provides large discounts
• the Lite plan for members with lower participation which has a cheaper entry but does not offer the same discount opportunities

Full Membership–

• Pricing- Get all items at the food club’s wholesale cost
• Access- Order through our wholesale suppliers at our wholesale pricing- Frontier Co-op, Equal Exchange, Azure Standard, Faire, and more!
• Priority- First priority on limited supply items goes to Full members
• Cost- $20 per week or $15/week for single members
• In general, this plan is best for folks who will be spending around $300 per month or more through the club (or $250 for single folks). At that volume, you would be saving around $20 per week compared to buying organic at Food City, Publix, Aldi, etc. which is already well below most farmer’s markets and premium options (Whole Foods, Market Wagon, etc.). Since the membership is $20 per week, that keeps pricing in line with these generally lower quality options. If you get more than $300 per month through the food club, your savings scales with how much you get. After you’ve saved enough to cover the $20 membership fee, you’ll be getting high quality local food and products that will range from 20%-50% off comparable options.

Lite Membership-

• Access to all items at the food club and most of our wholesale suppliers
• Cost- $5 per week and 30% of your pickup total
• In general, this plan is best for those who don’t expect to come regularly or who don’t expect to get very much through the club. Pricing breaks even compared to store bought organic options much sooner with the lower weekly cost but there isn’t the scaling discount option here like there is with the Full membership. Between the item price and membership fees, total pricing can range between the cost of organic items at local grocery stores and what comparable items go for at local farmer’s markets and Whole Foods.

Consider:

• Who do you want to support with your money?
• What practices do you pay to support?
• Who benefits from your purchases?
• How is your health effected by your food choices?
• How can you do better?

We would love for you to support our efforts here and the local farmers and producers we partner with. Consider using our Full membership option to support good things in our local community as well as in your own health and life.

Here is a partial list of some items we carry with their associated prices. Hopefully this can give you a rough idea of what to expect the potential savings you could get is. Most of these can be pre-ordered each week and/or placed on a standing order that we can have for you every week. Most is organic and most is local. We can go over details and answer questions when you come in or feel free to email us any time!

Keep in mind that this is the price for Full members and doesn’t include the additional Lite membership cost for Lite members. Also, prices can change so while it’s relatively rare and all priced are up to date as of this posting, there may be some discrepancies in time. Also, some items are specialty items for various reasons so if a price looks out of place, there’s probably something about that item that makes it a specialty offering: