Thank you all for a successful first Fill Your Pantry order! With the purchase period open for just under a week, we had 13 orders and sold over 200 pounds of food.
We learned a lot from this initial pilot, and we will keep gathering feedback so that we can continue to improve. If you haven’t already, you can request new items, share ideas, or provide other feedback on this form or by emailing us at info@montavilla.coop.
Based on the feedback we received, the biggest barrier to entry for this initial pilot was that the bulk items were too big. We recognized as we started that this would be one of the larger (pun intended) issues. Unfortunately, wholesalers will always be selling in extra large quantities, which is of course where the value comes from. In the future, we hope to make smaller quantities available either as individually packaged products direct from the wholesaler, or by manually breaking down bulk items into something more accessible.
We also heard that some of you weren’t finding the products you wanted. Please be assured that we are working very hard to thoughtfully expand our list of available products and participating vendors. We’re excited to announce that our next order form will include 3 additional vendors and approximately 2.5 times the number of products! If you have a “wish list” or ideas for good partners please let us know.
As we move forward, we’re working to set up an order cadence that is both active and sustainable. We’d like to move to a bi-weekly order process, assuming we can sustain that schedule and that we receive enough orders to meet the minimum purchase requirements set by the vendors. That gives us enough time to get everything together as well as ensure that we’re not overloading all of you with too much good food!
We’re so excited about the chatter this pilot has generated, how much feedback we received, and how much good food we were able to move. Keep an eye out for more products, more vendors, and a more consistent order schedule. We’ll keep everyone updated with all the details!
If you have any questions, concerns, or comments please always feel free to email us at info@montavilla.coop and join our Monthly Board Meetings on the first Tuesday of each month. We’re looking forward to this next chapter in the MFC story and hope you are too!