Why are we starting a buying club?

I’m our family’s cook. When we learned that my wife’s symptoms were from Celiac, I had a steep learning curve to navigate gluten safe foods at the grocery store, to adjust our pantry and processes for dinners, and to keep our kids happy while keeping nutrition (more or less) balanced. While eating GF at home has gotten easier, it’s not easy to find the time to bake bread every weekend. Packaged buns and breads can be soggy, crumbly, small, stale, and disappointing. Eating out remains a challenge. In addition to uninspired product, it’s not reasonable to expect line cooks to be vigilant about cross contamination. North of greater Portland, where restaurants seem to have a bit more experience with their customers needs, eating out at a new restaurant often brings more anxiety than excitement.

I figure others must be in the same boat. And I figure that we are likely capable enough to figure out what to do about it. I’ve got a lot of ideas, but we’ll likely start by making and distributing some regular group purchases Raegamuffin’s or Bam Bam. Maybe that grows into a satellite bakery, or a distribution deal. Maybe we run some classes on baking bread or meal planning. Maybe we share restaurants we’ve found consistently safe, and help places that are making efforts to have GF safe food get greater visibility - blogs with a look inside their kitchens, etc. If we meet some people, do some mutual aid, and don’t lose too much money doing it, great. If we end up forming an employee owned coop, great. If I lose interest or find out our family is the only one with these issues? Well, I gave it a shot and am only out $40 or so for the domain and hosting.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be adding some survey forms to get a sense of the size of our community and its priorities. If you drop your email below, I’ll be sure to keep you posted!

We’re just getting started! Don’t you love novelty?