Collective Purchasing (Sam B)

Collective purchasing is when a group of citizens, neighbors, consumers come together and order something in bulk quantity to get better pricing — typically from a producer, rather than a store.  This can save 50%+ off costs at the store — and get goods/food shipped directly to areas that have lower access.

For example, a farm in Virginia sells healthy pasture eggs at $3.50/dozen on a $500 order.  Similar eggs are typically $9+ in the store.  If we organized a group order, people could get 3 dozen eggs for the price of 1 at the store.  We can do this for laundry detergent, produce, school supplies, and anything we need.
 
Why should people be excited?
More affordability by doing things together! (a.k.a. Mutual aid!)
We could also incorporate a "pay what you can" sliding scale — so people who can afford to pay more or less can do so, while everyone still saves and benefits from participating in the group order.

What this needs to move forward (or what NOVASEN could do):
I think it could be really interesting to use VASEN's $500 meal stipend for a group order like this — get the eggs at $3.50/dozen, and ask people to pay what they can.  It might even work out that the $500 gets returned, in which case we could do it on a recurring basis!

Depending on what people want, we can also do this for anything else.  We have a great fermenter in NoVA that will sell  kimchi, sauerkrauts, and probiotic foods to us for 60% less than the grocery store (in bulk).  Also have price lists for detergents, farm produce, sustainable toilet paper and paper towels, etc.