FLAX Food Co-op Brings Bulk Food-Buying To Falmouth
A group of young people has set out to change the face of food in Falmouth through a new food co-op aimed at increasing access to affordable, organic and locally sourced bulk food products.
FLAX Food Co-op is run in partnership by cofounders Jennifer L. Christian, Noa Randall and Tyler Barron, a group of foodie friends who found themselves perplexed early in the pandemic when it came to choosing where to get their food.
Its name, FLAX, is an acronym for Falmouth Local Agricultural Exchange, and the founders’ goal is to make organic and locally sourced bulk dry goods more accessible for the average consumer.
The group had fallen into a serious potluck habit, often bringing a small group of those they were quarantined with together over a meal of shared food. But when the COVID panic set in, and products started flying off the shelves, the group found themselves at a loss. Looking around, they realized that the food landscape had changed. Everything was in plastic now; even things like oranges that were once without packaging now came in plastic wrap.
“The plastic thing was really, really bothering us because we’re young, and this is our planet,” Ms. Christian said. “After the people [who] started all this throwaway culture are gone, we’re going to be stuck with all this plastic.”
Before the pandemic, Ms. Randall, a 25-year-old who works for the US Geological Survey, said that she would often have to travel 20 miles or more to Hyannis and other towns where buying bulk food was an option. Bulk food eliminates a lot of the plastic used in grocery store portions. So instead, the trio decided to create the exact kind of bulk food-buying platform that they were looking for.
“I think [we were] filling a space for our desire for community and our interest in doing stuff around food,” said Mr. Barron, a 27-year-old carpenter. “I feel like for me, it felt like a way to still come together, still be engaging with food and also respond to what we saw as the community’s need for another option in which people could be buying food.”
Much of that first year following the onset of the pandemic was spent doing vision work and community outreach to figure out the best plan for creating the food co-op the group wanted, Ms. Randall said. They had to vet distributors, figure out logistics and costs and then prioritize their values. The values attached to FLAX, however, are the sticking point when it comes to affordable food.
“We do all organic, a lot of it is local, and every time it can be fair trade, it is,” she said. “If you’re looking at the equivalent product somewhere else, we are cheaper. But if you’re comparing us to conventional brown and sprayed rice, your typical brown rice that’s been sitting on the shelf for forever and is not necessarily organic, yes, that’s going to be less expensive but that’s a lesser quality product. So for the equivalent quality, the exact same product, we’re less expensive.”
Streamlining the process for buying bulk goods was one of the main goals, as bulk food distributors often give consumers access to entire catalogs of products. In creating their online store, FLAX simplified the process by offering customers simple, organic products that are often the same as what they can find in the grocery store. At one point, FLAX was even using the same distributor as Whole Foods.
“It’s probably the same product, only ours is probably way fresher because it’s not sitting in a plastic package in the back waiting for the other plastic packages to move off the shelf,” Ms. Christian said. “Ours ends up being fresher and coming from almost the exact same distributors.”
FLAX orders its products from benefit corporations, or B Corps, which are socially and environmentally responsible businesses that meet the highest standards of performance, public transparency and accountability.
“There are a lot of good B Corps out there, and we source from several of them, because we don’t want our decisions to make negative effects,” Ms. Christian said. “We’re trying to just do positives. It may be not a good business decision in somebody’s mind, but when you talk to our customers, they’re really thankful that we are doing this sort of filtering for them… It’s overwhelming, but we’re making sure it’s all sourced responsibly, so you can just order and not think about all that stuff that’s negative. And that peace of mind, I think, is what some people really like about this.”
FLAX’s process is simple: every other week, they organize a food pickup at The Fisherman’s Pantry on Palmer Avenue, where customers who placed orders can pick up their packaged items. Items are measured by the quarter-pound, and customers can choose paper bags or glass jars for containers.
“For packaging, the theory is that if you’re just starting out with bulk and you don’t really do this and you’re not used to it, you might want to buy jars from us because you might not have a big jar for your flour or something,” Ms. Christian said.
Customers can then refill their jars and recycle the paper packaging. The vision, Mr. Barron said, is to integrate a bulk-buying approach into more households in Falmouth.
“It’s also just a thing that I think should exist in most places,” he said. “Whether or not it’s the most popular, there should be an ability to sustain an entity or business that can provide bulk products and give people the option to know their food is being thought about and being intentionally prioritized and valued, but it’s hard to feel that way in a grocery store. They’re thinking about the ease of the consumer experience, not necessarily the values that are attached to it. Environmental sustainability is part of it.”
It has now been two years since the idea for FLAX Food Co-op was born, and just over one year since the group placed its first bulk food order. In the 18 or so order cycles since then, they have signed up 133 customers, sold over 1,100 pounds of organic food, and have calculated 11 pounds of plastic eliminated from the landfill.
The first year was like a trial run, the group said, and the community was extremely accepting of their process as they learned the ropes of running a business on the fly.
“People have been respectful of our process of being a part of a trial, of helping us deal with the kinks that we’re working on,” Mr. Barron said. “I think that the community has felt very supportive in that regard and has been very willing to work with us through the process because unless we had millions of dollars, it’s hard to come out of the gate completely, fully formed.”
While most of the first year of FLAX was dedicated to vision work and planning, the group is now beginning to roll out a membership option, intended to offset the startup costs of maintaining the business. The first month of membership, which is two order cycles, is free, with a $10 monthly cost after that.
“Somebody gave us a $5,000 donation and that was the start of everything,” Ms. Christian said. “That brought all of the talks into a space of reality, which basically made us able to order the food and the bins and pay the rent and get the website and get all the Google stuff we needed to stay organized. So that was huge.”
Without much cash flow, FLAX uses membership fees to continue business operations and ensure that product is in stock for each biweekly pickup.
“Even with a really low overhead, the margin on food is very small,” Mr. Barron said. “All the prices that we have, we have compared them to what exists in Falmouth through Stop & Shop or other online retailers you could buy food from. They cost as much or less than what you could buy in a store and even then it’s necessary that we have to have a membership.”
Despite being up and running for over a year, Mr. Barron, Ms. Christian and Ms. Randall have yet to pay themselves for the work of planning and running a business. It is volunteer work, they said, and they have other jobs that pay the bills. But even with that, they still all consider themselves low-income. Ms. Christian—who is a mother, farmer by trade and also works for Cotuit Solar — said she has always been immersed in the food industry and knew this was something the group seriously wanted to do.
“This is part-time side hustle material right now because as the snowball builds, it can grow and sustain one employee probably working more,” Ms. Christian said. “We really want it to end up as a co-op, with a board of directors and voting members and where the people buying get to make decisions in the business, but co-ops usually don’t start like that. They usually start with a group of people who build the thing.”
Being low-income themselves, it was important to the trio that the food be affordable.
“We really want people to be able to afford it,” Ms. Christian said. “People like us. We didn’t want ourselves to not be able to afford the food.”
Buying in bulk is both cost-effective and saves on packaging, but may not feel like an option for everyone, due to the $10 monthly cost. That’s why FLAX introduced an equity membership, a process in which those who can afford to can purchase extra monthly memberships that can then be donated to others interested in bulk food buying but who do not have the financial means.
“Immediately, somebody bought two years’ worth of membership for us to give to other people,” Ms. Christian said. “We don’t want financial ability to be a barrier to access to these products because we think everybody should be eating organic, everybody should be eating B Corp and fair trade, and it just should be that way.”
Currently, FLAX Food Co-op operates online-only, with a storage area for its products in the basement of Devour restaurant on Main Street. The partnership with Devour has been pivotal, the group said. Without it, they may not have been able to get FLAX off the ground.
Expansion is on the horizon for FLAX, and it is getting there slowly but surely. Now having secured its wholesale license, the co-op is hoping to put sustainably packaged food onto shelves of stores like The Fisherman’s Pantry.
“In the future, we’re hoping that will be our growth point: to do more wholesale locations where you can grab a paper bag full of FLAX stuff and you’re just avoiding that plastic and you know it came from us and you know we care about where it came from,” Ms. Christian said.
Ms. Christian is also a manager of the Falmouth Farmers Market, and the group hopes to soon open a vendor booth there to reach more customers that are interested in the bulk food-buying lifestyle. Their biggest limitation to expansion—aside from a lack of cash flow—is that they are only three individuals, all with heavy schedules and little time. Volunteers are always needed and welcome. One volunteer recently stepped up to run the group’s Instagram page.
“We’re not all inclined in certain ways,” Ms. Christian said. “[Instagram is] just not my strong suit, but I know we need it. It’s the business sense. We know what we need to do; it’s just capacity, time and money. One big fat donation could launch this thing, you know what I mean? But until one of us can get paid to do this thing, to grow it, to build it… it’s going to happen slowly. But we’re fine with slow.”
The farmers market will be open on Thursdays, beginning May 26, from noon to 5 PM. Ideally, FLAX said it is hoping to secure a booth but until then, online orders will remain its bread and butter.
To place an order, visit www.flax-food-coop.myshopify.com. Its entire inventory is listed on the site, and orders must be placed by 5 PM on the Sunday prior to the Tuesday biweekly pickup at The Fisherman’s Pantry.
Anyone interested in volunteering with FLAX is encouraged to email info@flaxfoodcoop.com for more information.