Mixing it in the Kitchen Group Buying Network

The Buyers Group started as a way to help our local community use group buying power to access local organic and ethically grown produce. Over the past few months it has grown and is now being run as a social enterprise. Our goal is to make organics more affordable and available to more people in our local area while also supporting local farmers and food producers. A social enterprise as defined by Noble Peace Prize laureate, Prof. Muhammad Yunus, is a social business that is run as a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within todays highly regulated marketplace. It is distinct from a non-profit in that the business seeks to generate profit which is used to expand the company’s reach, improve the product or service or in other ways to subsidise the social mission. This is exactly what the Mixing it in the Kitchen Buying Group is about! All our profits are reinvested into developing local food production, whilst we also ensure that all participants in the supply chain are rewarded fairly for their contribution. This includes paying our farmers directly where we can and using other social initiatives such as the Food Connect Food Hub and then finally wholesalers when needed. Our preferred supplier carries produce that is grown within a 500 km radius of Brisbane. The current produce selections are ‘certified organic’, ‘certified bio-dynamic’ or ‘natural’ produce only. Natural simply means that your produce has been grown like certified products, without the use of artificial chemicals. The contents of our boxes are determined by what our members request for the week - as we are buying primarily from wholesalers we have to meet minimum box buys in order for certain orders to proceed. All orders are picked up from our 'headquarters' in Ormeau though I'm currently working on options to provide a home delivery service.