Here’s the thing.
Deep down we know when we pay $1 litre for a carton of milk or 85 cents for a loaf of bread there's nothing left to help a farmer care for their land or for a grocery maker to pay their workers fair wages. Deep down we know that shopping for the "lowest
prices" means we're hurting our community and our environment. It's cheap food but it's not fair food.
We know that for people to make the change from mainstream grocery shopping we have to make buying Fair Food as easy and affordable as possible. And every month hundreds of people are making that change and trying out Fair Food but are returning to Coles
and Woolworths because they find our system doesn't fit with the way they shop or their budgets. Because as good as our ethics and our mission are the bottom line for customers is that grocery shopping can't be hard work or unaffordable.
Our campaign.
In the four years since
CERES Fair Food launched it has become Melbourne's most popular organic delivery service. Fair Food wants to make a big difference by buying from local farmers and grocery makers, giving crucial first jobs to asylum seekers and sending all our profits to
environmental education programs at CERES.
Our mission is to make it as easy as possible for anyone to buy Fair Food . Because the more people we serve the fairer our food system becomes. If we rewire our webshop and logistics with smarter software then we can make buying Fair Food fit more people's
lives and budgets. And if more people can shop with Fair Food, then....
.…we'll buy more food at fair prices
from farmers like Craig and Shelley ….
…give more jobs to asylum seekers like Somaya….
.... open more neighbour Food Hosts like Amanda's....
.....and fund CERES to
teach more kids to take care of their world.
The Tipping Point Solution
Our customers tell us they’d stay with us if they could swap items in and out of set fruit & veggie boxes and get next day delivery. They want to shop by recipe and they want shopping with Fair Food to be more affordable. Sounds simple right? Well not
really, to offer these features would cost over $200,000 and take us more than two years of software development. All the while the new people wanting to get Fair Food are going back to Coles and Woolies.
There is a solution – we’ve found and tested a piece of webshop software called Delivery Biz Pro that’s specific to food delivery enterprises just like us. Over 100 food businesses around the world use this to deliver local food. It does all the things
our customers want it to do and best of all it will cost us a quarter of the price of developing it ourselves. And if we reach our tipping point we will have Delivery Biz Pro up and running in March next year.
The Ultimate Solution
We know if we can keep our costs down then more people will be able to afford Fair Food. We'll never squeeze our farmers and grocery makers like Coles and Woolworths do so we need to be really smart at getting food from our farmers to our customers as efficiently
as possible. To do this, and it's not very sexy but it is a huge step from the old school paper lists we currently use, is installing a Warehouse Management System. This is software that use barcodes and hardware like order picking tablets with visual picking
lists that helps our floor crew pack orders faster and make fewer mistakes. It also gives our workers with English as a second language opportunities to do a more diverse range of jobs. A Warehouse Management System helps us keep track of our stock and deliveries
which means we'll have fewer items out of stock, less wastage and fewer missing orders which as everyone knows is the last thing you want with your shopping.
Who we are;
CERES Fair Food’s Mission – Do good at every part in the food chain
Buy Fair: We buy food from local farmers and grocery producers at fair prices and stick with them seasons after season.
Employ Fair: We give asylum seekers and new arrivals (around half of our 25 staff) that crucial first job in Australia.
Build Community: We deliver our food orders to a network of 67 volunteer Food Host pick-up points in neighbourhoods across Melbourne.
Offset Carbon: We offset our delivery vehicles carbon emissions with contributions to the
Lao Cook-stove Project.
All Profits Go to CERES Environmental Education: All our profits help
CERES, Australia’s most visited environment park, teach children and adults to care for our planet. Since 1990 over a million school children and adults have participated in CERES
programs.
CERES Fair Food: Rewiring the food system is proud to be a
Fair Food Week event.
