Skookum Food Provisioners' Cooperative

Skookum’s 2014 Rancho Vignola bulk order is ON! It’s a great way to stock up on dried fruits and nuts for the whole year. And if you ask anyone who has participated in past orders, they’ll probably tell you how great the quality and freshness of these products are.

The advantage to you, as a Skookum member, is that you can order as much or as little as you want, without having to worry about the $500 minimum order. And we’ll be setting up a splits page, like the one we use for the Abundant Pantry orders, to help you split cases or bags with your fellow members.

Here are the basic facts:

• Rancho Vignola makes their full product list available only once per year, when the nuts and fruit are at their freshest (they do a spring order too, but not everything is available);
• The final deadline for our order to go in is Monday September 29;
• The final deadline for members to get their order and payment in will be Wednesday, September 24 (extended from Monday September 22)
• They will ship to us in November or thereabouts;
• We need to make a minimum order of $500;
• Shipping is free;
• Skookum will be adding 11.11% to each member’s order, so that of each dollar spent, 5¢ goes to the coordinator and the other 5¢ to Skookum;
• We will also try to benefit from the 2% discount by paying for the order by October 15, so we will be asking for prepayment.

What you should do as soon as you can:

• Take a look at Rancho Vignola’s price list (emailed to you as a member; not a member of Skookum? Become one right now)
• Browse though the product descriptions at http://www.ranchovignola.com/products.html
• If you have questions, please contact us as soon as possible at skookum@skookumfood.ca;
• Otherwise, print out the attached price list, mark the products you wish to order, and calculate the total price. Don’t forget to add 11.11% at the very end (i.e., not for each item individually, but on the final total);
• (If you prefer, you may simply email me with the list of products you want and a final tally. I’ll verify the total amount and get back to you);
• Get the order form and payment (by cash, cheque, or e-transfer, cheques & e-transfers strongly preferred) to me in person or to Kingfisher Used Books at 4468 Marine Ave. in Powell River no later than 12:00 noon on Monday September 23. No money means no order! (E-transfer payments do not need to accompany your order, but must be transferred to Skookum’s account before Monday September 22.)

As we have done in past years, we will verify the final tally for each member’s order when we receive the goods. Some members will receive a refund in case the final amount comes in less than anticipated. Some members may end up owing a little more, although this is less likely if we’ve done our jobs correctly.

We will soon be arranging a splits page, as we do for The Abundant Pantry Bulk-Buying Club. For example, a member might want to order almonds but might not want the whole ten pound case (which has a better price than smaller units). If someone else wants to split that amount, then one of them can order it and then the two members can arrange to split it between them later. To be clear: WE WILL NOT MANAGE YOUR SPLITS. We cannot deal with one member paying for half a case and another member paying for the other half. It’s complicated enough without that. So all splits will be between members, with one member ordering and paying for the entire item to be split.

(We will not manage splits, but we will do my best to work with members to consolidate orders for better prices. We did some of this last year and it worked well; e.g., several members ordered five-pound bags of almonds, so we consolidated those into a 25-pound case and everyone saved a little money.)

Thanks!