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.

Basic membership – $5 per month paid annually = $60 up front

Each member has their own account at the Food Club. We recommend keeping $200 in your account but some do more and some less. The amount you have in your account is the amount you will have to work with when you come in to pick up your food and other items. We ask for a minimum of $100 at all times.

The way our structure works is that 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. As members come in each week, they simply pick out what they wish, we add up the value of their pick up, and it gets officially deducted from their account. Since they have already paid for the items, there are no sales occurring, which is why we refer to it as a “pick up”. There is a small service fee attached to each item to pay for the costs of the service of picking them up and managing the club.

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, 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.