Food clubs make a comeback in tough economy: Families unite to cut grocery costs
Kendra Morrice isn’t about to pay $4.53 for a box of cereal at the grocery store, not when she can order a dozen at $3.75 a pop through her food-buying club.
“In the long run, you’re saving oodles,” said Morrice of Des Plaines, who estimates she salts away hundreds of dollars a year through membership in a club in Chicago’s Oriole Park neighborhood. “But you want to be sure you’re going to be using 12 boxes of cereal.”
Spurred by the sluggish economy, there is welling demand for such clubs, which allow consumers to band together–neighbors, friends, co-workers–and pay wholesale prices for large food orders, experts say.
Always a “well-kept secret,” food clubs have experienced on-again, off-again success. Now they are ripe for a new surge of interest during the economic downturn, said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, a non-profit based in Minnesota.
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