Good, clean food
Deserves to be celebrated!
We’re growing a thriving network that helps food makers, small farmers, homesteaders and regenerative growers become wildly successful.
We do this by actively collaborating, learning, sharing ideas and opportunities – through Harvest Club events, communities and online content.
AND, if you’re a farmer or food producer looking to sell your goods, we can provide you access to the people who love to support and buy clean food products through our food buying club.
Benefits of supplying a food club
A supportive marketplace. We will share your story with those conscious consumers who care about the quality of their food and how it was produced.
Fair prices. You decide the price of your products and the minimum order you have for delivery. We’ll add a small markup, but far less than conventional retail and with full transparency so that our members see where their money goes.
Flexibility. You manage your stock and availability and decide how much you can supply.
No wasted produce or time. Our members place their orders in advance so that you can harvest, cook, make and package exactly to order.
One delivery to one location. Members will collect their orders from us, meaning you save on delivery time, fuel and hassle.
Fast payment. We will pay you one payment for all the members’ orders within days of the food being collected. No more following up with individuals for missing payments.
Simplified accounting. We organise all your orders into one sales summary, we send out invoices to the members and follow-up on payments, and give you access to your sales history.
Join Our Harvest Club Community
As your first step, pop your information here to join our Harvest Club network.
If you’re a farmer or food producer with products you think would be a good fit for our Stanford & Hermanus food club, then look out for our email with the next steps to get your application in.
Especially for Farmers & Foodies
Support and Opportunities
Sharing Remarkable Food
More and more consumers are aware of the quality of their food – or the lack thereof! – and where their food comes from.
Harvest Club appeals to those individuals and families who want to directly support local farmers and food makers, and those actively seeking out healthier, regenerative, or minimally processed foods.
Harvest Club enables consumers to more directly buy from the farmers and makers they’d most love to support through a more transparent and win-win food system.
Finding a Healthy Balance
While our goal is to source clean, chemical-free food that has been farmed in a regenerative way, we understand that all of us – farmers, food makers and consumers – are on a journey. That journey isn’t always perfect.
We’re always learning. One day a certain ingredient is considered the best thing since sliced bread. The next day, it’s toast!
We’ll share useful knowledge and insights to help the transition to ever healthier, better food options.
Foodie Collaborations
Farmers can’t easily sell overripe tomatoes at the market; but for foodies, those juicy, squishy tomatoes could make the best sauce!
Slightly blemished courgettes will get ignored at the shop, but could make for the ideal ratatouille dish.
Our Harvest Club network actively connects farmers and food makers to support creative collaborations, which reduces food waste, creates more income potentials for farmers, and new opportunities for foodies for unique, seasonal, value-added products.
Frequently Asked Questions
Learn How it Works!
HOW DOES A FOOD CLUB WORK?
It’s a community food buying club where members get to place their orders via an online shop that opens once or twice a month.
We then send all the pre-orders to you, the farmers and producers, and you’ll have a week or so to harvest, pack and deliver to our Stanford venue, where members then come and collect their orders on a set Collection Day.
To facilitate this process, we use a platform called FoodClubHub. There are in fact over 30 food clubs around South Africa using the FoodClubHub app, and growing!
The system includes all the functionality to allow for online shopping, collating and managing supplier orders, creating members’ invoices, printing packing lists and so on.
As a fair exchange for the use of their app, FoodClubHub adds a 5% markup to the supplier’s product price; and we then add our markup to cover our time, effort and expenses.
Our Harvest Club markup will usually be between 10% – 20%, which is significantly lower than the usual retail markup, because we all collectively benefit from lower prices, increased access to higher quality food, and a more transparent food system that benefits the food producer as much as the food consumer.
What products get sold through the food club?
In general, our members are looking for healthier, real foods that are sourced as locally as possible, and preferably using organic or regeneratively farmed produce where possible.
This can include products such as:
- Cooked meals (fresh or frozen)
- Preserves, jams, pickles & fermented foods (or drinks)
- Cheese & grass-fed dairy products
- Breads and baked goods
- Grass-finished meat
- Pasture-raised poultry
- Wild-caught fish
- Fresh fruit and nuts
- Fresh farm produce (organic or regeneratively-farmed)
- Healthier snack foods & treats
- Ethically sourced coffee and teas
- Health products
- Pantry staples and dry goods
- Earth-friendly cleaning products
- And more.
Products we don’t stock:
- Highly processed foods or including chemical ingredients such as MSG, artificial sweeteners, and other nasties.
Guidelines for products we’ll accept:
- Wherever possible, we buy direct from producers and brands. Therefore, we can’t purchase another company’s products through local resellers – unless the local supplier is the only approved distributor, or has added value to the product in some way. For example, repackaging bulk items in a more convenient or eco-friendly way; or blending various dry goods to create your own unique mix (such as a special spice mix, your own gluten-free flour mix or baking pre-mixes).
- We always look for local products and ingredients in preference to anything international.
- We look for products that use real food ingredients, such as real butter, olive oil or coconut oil instead of margarine or highly-processed seed oils.
If you have a product you think would be a good fit for our Harvest Club food club, and you’re able to have it delivered to Stanford, then make sure to join Harvest Club (hit the green button on this page). You’ll then receive the next steps along with a product application form.
Do my ingredients all need to be local?
While we love to highlight and support fully local, seasonal and regeneratively-farmed foods, we totally understand that this is not always possible.
Consumers understand too. But what they do expect from Harvest Club and its suppliers is full transparency so that they can always make informed decisions about their food choices.
What about pricing and markups?
The food club is all about transparency – something you never see in the supermarket system.
You set a fair price for your goods and then we add a small markup to your products to cover our time and costs. This markup is usually between 15% to 25%, which is significantly lower than the retail standard.
In addition, the food club members get to see the markup and the money paid to the farmer or producer, helping to create more awareness, value and connection back to the farm and the food process.
How do I get my products listed on the food club?
If you think your products are a great fit for our Harvest Club members, we’d love to hear from you!
First, you need to sign up to join our Harvest Club network by hitting the green button on this page and enter your name and email. It’s free to join and you can unsubscribe any time.
Once you’re in, you’ll receive an email with more details. Simply hit reply to that email and we’ll start the conversation about your products.
If your application is successful, we’ll take you through the next steps to get your products loaded onto our system.
Please note these guidelines for products we’ll accept:
- Wherever possible, we buy direct from producers and brands. Therefore, we can’t purchase another company’s products through local resellers – unless the local supplier is the only approved distributor, or has added value to the product in some way. For example, repackaging bulk items in a more convenient or eco-friendly way; or blending various dry goods to create your own unique mix (such as a special spice mix, your own gluten-free flour mix or baking pre-mixes).
- We always look for local products and ingredients in preference to anything international.
- We look for products that use real food ingredients, such as butter, olive oil or coconut oil instead of margarine or highly-processed seed oils.
Products we don’t stock:
- No highly processed foods or including chemical ingredients such as MSG, artificial sweeteners, and other nasties.
What about deliveries?
Once members have placed an order via our online shop, we’ll collate all the orders and send it to you, the supplier.
You’ll then have about a week to prepare your goods to order and deliver to our central location in Stanford.
The goods will be kept in either our store room, cool room or freezer and we’ll then host a Collection Day for members to collect in Stanford and Hermanus.
All the dates – for online shopping, deliveries and collection days – will be communicated with you well ahead of time each month (provided you’re signed up for our Harvest Club emails, of course).
What if I can't supply each month?
No problem. Some products are seasonal, or sometimes you just need a holiday!
You can let us know each month what you have available and in what quantities, and we’ll sell accordingly.
But I already sell to the local farmer's market!
Wonderful!
Hermanus and Stanford have some fantastic markets!
Harvest Club works differently in that members can place pre-orders once or twice a month, often for those items they usually can’t find at the weekly market (or get sold out too quickly).
Farmers and producers benefit by receiving these orders ahead of time, meaning you know exactly how much to harvest and pack, eliminating those usual market day problems of either selling out way too fast, or having too much that gets wasted.
But actually, a food club and a farmer’s market works beautifully together! Members get certain goodies they know they need from the food club, and delight in discovering new things they didn’t know they needed at a market!
“The Food Club platform has been amazing for us as a growing farm business.
It has enabled us to reach lots of new people who share the same values as us (ethical, regenerative practice and quality over quantity) when it comes to choosing what to eat, while at the same time keeping the “food chain” very personal. We can communicate almost directly with the people buying our produce – through the host of each club. This allows a lot of trust and respect to flow both ways.
We believe that by eating as much as possible from our local area and supporting ethical local business, we can create a bright future in terms of soil health, planet health and our own health and well-being.”
“I love being a part of the movement to build a new, healthy, regenerative food system that’s good for the planet and good for the people who live on it!”
“Food clubs really are an ethical system – ethical in that the farmer gets a fair price for its labour, ethical to the earth and ethical to our bodies. I am so impressed.”
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