Ordering Veggies

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doing the veggie order 'split list'

See Split List

Ordering vegies form Back To Eden

Welcome to the possibly most fun and rewarding role in the everyday workings of the food co-op. Ah the joys getting to choose seasonal delights, force strange and exotic vegetables into people’s lives, and caress so many beautiful happy organic presents from the earth. We currently get most of our veggies from a supplier called Back to Eden (BTE), who source organic produce from around Australia, and deliver it to us for free (if our order is over $500). They are lovely people and very good to us.


Check email

Log into Veggies email address

This is where the list of available produce from BTE gets sent (normally by midday on a Wednesday). If people have particular queries about veggies, or changes to their order, then they will hopefully have emailed this address too.


Check split list

Locate the split list, which is the list of people getting fruit and veggies for the week. This should be emailed to veggies as well as in the drop box. The split list shows you how much money there is too spend as well as giving a rough value on how much to spend on fruit and how much on veg (1/3 fruit, 2/3 veg). Depending on seasonality and prices, you may need to alter how much you spend between these. The split list also has a ‘magic numbers’ section. This tells you how many ‘units’ of fruit and veg there are for the week, from all boxes. The following table tells you how many units in each box.

format as table Box Size No. of veg units No. of fruit units $10 veg 1 0 $20 veg 2 0 $10 fruit 0 1 $20 fruit 0 2 $20 mixed fruit and veg 1 1 $40 mixed fruit and veg 2 2 $60 mixed fruit and veg 3 3

The split list also shows you how much money is in the rainy day fund (max $80). If this is quite low, you should underspend over a few weeks to get it back up but not just in one week so it doesn’t dramatically affect the boxes.


Using the Back To Eden spreadsheet

Open the spreadsheet of available veggies and prices from BTE for the week. Type ‘Thoughtful Foods’, the delivery time on Thursday and your name and phone number up the top. Column A is where you type in the quantity (number of boxes/ kgs) of produce you want to order and column L tells you how much that item will cost for the quantity you put in. You can see some items will be priced by box, and some by kilo (in the unit column – column i).


Ordering Away

Place the quantity you want in column A and press enter to see the total in column L. The total you are spending can be seen at the bottom of the spreadsheet. There are not really any hard and fast rules, and you will learn quantities with experience. See below for some general guidelines. Keep going till you’ve spent the total amount shown on the split list.

Some random ordering guidelines

  • Order fruit first as it is generally more expensive and harder to change around as there is less variety.
  • Avoid ordering things that don’t tell you how much the box weighs. Steer clear of trays as they’re generally more expensive things.
  • Keep an eye out for specials- 2nds or juicing quality fruit or veg are often really good; just have marks or blemishes that means they won’t sell as premium quality. Plus BTE looks after us really well and gives us good quality stuff. E.g. Juicing apples and carrots are almost always lovely, great good value reliable thing to order
  • Specials are often shown on the order sheet by yellow or blue highlighting; sometimes there is a cheaper price if you are getting several boxes of an item.
  • Have a think about what’s in season. If you’re not very experienced with this maybe chat to someone who is or do some googling… [any good web resources for this anyone??]If something is new on the list, don’t get over-excited, it may just be coming into season and so should go down in price and up in quality
  • Try to balance out different types of veggies. E.g. something starchy/root veg like potato, kumera, pumpkin, turnip, parsnip, or beetroot; and then lots of greens, and something oniony like onions, shallots or leeks, something exciting that’s in season like eggplant or kohlrabi. Leafy greens really bulk up the boxes, make them lovely and big, so generally go for at least 2 types e.g. spinach and an Asian green, or lettuce and kale. Asian greens seem to be really popular.
  • When ordering bunches of things (kale, spinach etc.) a good guide is half a bunch equals 1 veg unit. E.g. if there was a total of 50 veg units you would order 25 bunches of kale.
  • Balance buying expensive exciting things with cheap standard things – carrots are great and cheap but people don’t want 20 of them a week!
  • Aim for at least one big thing in the boxes e.g. broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage (with cabbage, either half or a quarter is a good size for I unit of veg).
  • It’s nice to order treats sometimes, e.g. Passionfruit, garlic, ginger, limes… Even if they only go in the biggest boxes. This can be a good way of spending the last $50 or so if you don’t know what else to get.
  • Don’t be afraid to be adventurous- if there’s something interesting at a reasonable price that you’d like to try- go for it! People are generally fairly receptive, especially if you put up signs telling people what things are, and even send out recipes.
  • Finally, when you are ordering you need to picture what the box will look like in your head – is there a variety of colour? Will it be overflowing? (leafy greens are good for that) and is there enough to sustain somebodies meals for a week?


Processing bulk orders (if applicable)

Any member of the co-op may place bulk orders. We don't really advertise this because of concerns of it getting out of hand, but we currently have not got restrictions on it. In the future, we may restrict bulk orders to volunteering members only if it becomes too popular and not manageable. On a Wednesday when you receive the price list for the week from BTE you can send this to the veggie bulk order list (a contact list on the veggie email). If anyone emails you and interested in bulk orders you can add them to this list. Set a time you want people to get back to you by – if you want to send the order to BTE by 9pm for example, tell them they must let you know by 8.30pm.

  1. Send the price list to the veggie bulk order list with a set time for people to get to you by.
  2. Check the veggies@thoughtfulfoods.org.au for any bulk orders, after this set time. It’s fine to change this time each week if you need to.
  3. Go through people’s orders and add their items to the BTE order sheet. For example, if we are buying one bag of carrots for the co-op and someone wants to bulk order an extra bag type 2 instead of 1 in the quantity cell.
  4. Add these bulk items to the back of the split list including, the quantity, name of item, code, price and name of person ordering. The total spent on bulk orders will be on a cell under the list of bulk orders; type this into the front in the cell labelled bulk orders.
  5. For each person, add up the price of their bulk orders and put this next to their name at the bottom of the bulk order page. These will be ticked off once they have picked up and paid for their items. Working members have a mark up of 1.05 and normal members have a mark up of 1.3.
  6. After each person has their order added to the total, double check that the totals for each person (and Thoughtful Foods) adds up to the total on the BTE spreadsheet. It's better to find a mistake now than to realise the order is wrong later on.
  7. Once the bulk orders have been added, and the totals triple checked, the order is ready to be sent off to Back To Eden!


Submit the order

Send it off to BTE by replying to the email they sent you and attaching your completed form. It’s nice to type a quick ‘hello, here is the order from thoughtful foods for this week, thanks’, but not compulsory. Should be emailed by midnight at the latest, but if it’s earlier we’re more guaranteed to get what we order. NOTE: don’t forget to attach the file or you may be woken by a phone call from BTE at an ungodly hour of the night!


Check the order

Drag yourself out of bed by 6am the next morning and call up BTE to check that they got everything we ordered. Ask to speak to Daniel, the man who deals with our order. If they didn’t manage to get some things, you’ll have to make a quick decision about what to get instead. They’re pretty helpful with this and can recommend what’s good. Make sure not to blow the budget when replacing things!


Print off the split list

Once you have opened the shop on Thursday as you would normally, you can then print off the split list. On one side print the sheet that has everyone’s order on it and on the other print off the sheet with the bulk orders.