Bountiful Baskets Co-op: $15 for a laundry basket full of produce (select states)!
If you live in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Texas, Arizona, Nevada or Washington I have an amazing deal on produce for you from Bountiful Baskets Co-op.
You can get a laundry basket full of produce each week for only $15. And organic produce is only $25 per basket!
Homemaking Expert, who shared this deal with me says:
Here’s how it works, go here to find your site and schedule. Sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday (depending on where you live) you’ll go online and purchase a “basket.” Conventional baskets are $15, organic ones are $25. Then on Saturday, you take a basket (I use a rectangular laundry basket) and they FILL it with produce!!
How cool is that?! Anyone else out there have experience with this program? I’d love hear.
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{ 51 comments... read them below or add one }
I really love Bountiful Baskets! A friend and I used to get one and share it because it was more than either of our small families could use alone. My favorite part was that I would get some things that I wouldn’t typically buy at the store, so I ventured out and tried new things.
I have been participating in Bountiful Baskets the last couple of months and have been happy with my experience. You do get some random stuff sometimes but they are mixed in with tons of stuff that my family loves. We eat a lot of produce so we get our own basket every week. It is great if you have a little baby – my daughter just pretty much eats what comes in the box for the week.
I just signed up yesterday im so excited to get our first basket when we get back from vacation!
I’ve been buying from BB for a few months now and I love it. It’s fun and the quality is great. My favorite is the add-ons like multi-grain bread, cakes, tortillas, granola, and organic olive oil. I’m moving to FL this summer and I will be very sad to say goodbye to BB.
We do this about every couple weeks…it’s one of the things that has lowered our grocery budget and we feel like we eat a lot more fresh fruits and veggies. It’s awesome! It’s so exciting the day we get the basket….even our three-year-old wants to know what we got that week!!
My neighbor and I do BB. We get a basket every other week! We love it! We just did the tomato add on and we’re bottling 100 lbs of tomatoes this weekend. We’ve done applesauce and strawberry jam. Their bread is delish and so are the “mexican/italian/asian” packs. You get herbs that are EXPENSIVE in the packs for REALLY cheap!! I LOVE BB!
Wow! this sounds so great! Do any of you fellow readers know of any similar programs in the state of Georgia?? Please let me know if you do. Except for bananas, I’ve bought very little fruit this summer because it’s just so expensive. Thanks for your help.
@Sandy Nipper,
www.localharvest.org would be a good place to start
Thanks for the heads-up. I’m going there right now.
Anyone know of a similar program in Houston/Katy, TX?
@Lynn,
Lynn, I’m right there with you! I live in Katy and would DIE for something like this!
I live in AZ and have been participating in the BB co-op for months. We contribute just about every week and we absolutely LOVE it. It is a lot of food for our family of three, but in doing it we have lowered our grocery budget and increased the amount of fresh fruits and veggies we eat. Talk about killing two birds!
My very favorite thing is when they have the mexican food add-ons. Last week we got 7 dozen tortillas for $10, and they are the most amazing, delicious tortillas ever! We also make homemade salsa with the mexican ingredient pack add on as well.
It is fun (and challenging) when we get new foods (sometimes I have to ask others what the veggies are!) and I have learned to cook bok choy, swiss chard and fresh artichokes as of late! Yummmm!
We missed a few weeks ago and my previously vegetable intolerant husband grumbled about having to eat “grocery store” vegetables! Score!
I LOVE bountiful baskets! We have been participating for the last several months. If you are picky about what you eat then this is not for you. It is a complete surprise each week. We have always gotten bananas and some kind of lettuce. A couple of weeks ago there must have been a mixup because we received 20 bunches of bok choy. That was hard to use all of it up. That week though we received over $80.00 worth of produce. Most weeks even when I buy things on sale the items that I receive would equal about $40-$50. So it really is a great value.
Now I only wish that I could find a group that does other essential purchases (like flour, oil, eggs, milk, cheese, etc)
Thanks for reminding me to order!
We started with BB about 6 weeks ago… WE LOVE IT!
I like getting different items… like eggplant, which I would have never bought on my own… the bok choy was a bit much for my family, but one dud out of dozens isn’t bad!
My mom and I priced out my first basket and figured it was probably $30-$35 worth of food! It’s like couponing with produce!
I have been getting the Bountiful Basket for 2 years now. I love this coop. I started when my son first started solid foods. I made all my own baby food, so this was ideal since they give a lot of each fruit and vegetable. They also have amazing 9 grain bread that we buy and freeze. Over the past year I have been happy with the additional offerings and always sample them! This is very cost effective and a great way to add in addional fruits and veggies you wouldn’t normally purchase. I have had so much fun planning my meals around the basket & my husband and I always try to guess what the odd ingredient will be before I pick it up.
Not to mention if you use green bags it all lasts about 2 weeks!
@Charissa, What do you mean by green bags? I’ve been participating for the last few months and I love it too!
@Crystal,
I believe she is referring to the “green bags” used to store produce in ~ they go the fridge and extend the life of the produce. I have used them and I think they work well. I bought mine at CVS with ECB’s
@jen,
debbie meyer green bags. They’re great
@Crystal,
Hi Crystal,
The Debbie Meyer Green Bags. They are reusable produce bags that really work!
https://www.getgreenbags.tv/flare/next?etag=greenbags
I got mine at Bed, Bath & Beyond. 20 for $9.99 and used my coupon, a great deal in my opinion
I just ordered my basket for Saturday pickup! Very excited to see what’s in there. My small family did great polishing off one basket in the last two weeks- including the coconut, tomatoes, broccoli, banana’s, apples, apricots… to name a few. It has been great at getting my family to eat more fruits and veggies
I can’t find anything like this near me
The closest one is a few hours away.
My hubby and I live in AZ and we’ve been doing BB for about 3 months. We do organic, so my review is based only upon those baskets. I like things broken down, so here are the good and bad points.
The good:
1. The quality of produce is great. I have yet to receive anything bruised, cut open, etc.
2. It’s much cheaper than buying organic produce at the grocery store, plus organic is hard to find in the small city I live in.
3. You’re exposed to new things. We got apriums in our basket a few weeks ago and I had to figure out what they were on Wikipedia. (They were very tasty, BTW.)
4. The Italian packs. I loooove the fresh herbs! I make killer homemade meatballs.
5. The produce tastes great. You will never want another bagged salad again; it will be an insult to your palette.
6. They have a message board where you can ask what something is, trade recipes, etc.
The bad:
1. You have to go early on Saturday morning to pick it up. I am not a morning person. Now that it’s summer in the desert, pick-up time is 7:15 AM so the produce won’t spoil/wilt in the heat. Pick-up time in the winter was 8 AM (still too early for me, LOL).
2. Sometimes you get a ton of one thing. I think we got 4 bunches of celery one week. That’s too much for us. I often lament the fact that we have no family near us, because BB is better if you can share/trade items with another household. Some items in our basket end up getting thrown out because we either received too much or we don’t like the item. I really wished I liked veggies more!
3. The produce is regional, not local.
4. Since I’m gluten intolerant, I can’t purchase a lot of add-ons like the bread and flour tortillas.
5. Their website isn’t the most user friendly. They recently moved to a different format and their message board isn’t linked up to the new one yet.
Hope that helps anyone considering BB!
@Jennifer,
Here is the link. The MB is still up and running as long as you had book marked it. Not sure why it’s still not on the homepage though.
http://bountifulbaskets.websitetoolbox.com/
Arrgh, why is Oregon not included in this? Bummer!
We just found out about this as well. We ordered our first basket last week and were very happy with what we got! Just so you have an idea, we got peaches, cherries, grapes, cantaloupe, green beans, plums, lettuce, broccoli, bananas, avocados, tomatoes, and baby carrots for the $15 basket. There is a processing charge of $1.50 for each transaction and the first time you order a basket there is a $3 charge, so my total for last week was $19.50 – still a great deal, but I just thought I would mention that there are other fees. In the future the baskets will only cost me $16.50 since the $3 charge is a one-time charge.
We have been using Bountiful Baskets for a while now and LOVE IT!! We actually pay $25 for the organic basket!
You can see pictures and a list of what we have gotten in our basket a few times:
Our first basket: http://thethriftycouple.com/2010/02/27/great-deal-on-produce-using-a-co-op/
Pictures of a few others:
http://thethriftycouple.com/2010/04/24/our-grocery-shopping-trips-this-week-filled-with-freebies-and-organic-produce/
http://thethriftycouple.com/2010/05/08/part-2-of-this-weeks-shopping-trips-organic-produce-basket-for-25-we-need-help/
http://thethriftycouple.com/2010/05/22/another-bountiful-organic-produce-basket/
We live in Utah and use Bountiful Baskets specifically – but there are quite a few produce co-ops across the nation.
@Alex and Cassie – The Thrifty Couple,
Thank you for sharing the photos. I think I am going to try this… looks good.
A friend of mine here in Las Vegas does this, and she loves it. I was able to see her produce, and it was nice.
However, I also saw that the variety of produce was about what I had in my garden (with the exception of the pineapple and avacados that she received).
If you don’t have a garden, I think it’s great.
Also, you don’t have to do it every week. You can do it just once, if you want to just try it.
We are in AZ and have done it off and on for over a year (more on than off). Its a great deal, and a really good way to get a wide variety of produce into your diet. If you aren’t used to using unfamiliar ingredients there is a recipe section on the website to help. The early morning pickups aren’t always fun, but it is typically in and out since they’re pretty organized. They just upgraded to a new website and it seems to have taken care of a lot of the technical problems they were having.
Oh, and the whole thing is 100% volunteer run, which is sort of neat.
We love BB. We’ve been doing it for about 2 years now. If you help out you get a few extra produce items. I’ve priced our basket out a few times with the prices from fry’s/kroger and we seem to get about $50 worth of produce.
I have been doing BB for over a year now and am thrilled with everything I’ve gotten. In fact, I took over as the coordinator of the site I pick up at because I believe in this so much! My family has gotten to try so many different produce items that I would have never thought to try before – and at such a reasonable cost! I never buy produce except on sale, and from the times I’ve added it up, the produce would have cost me $25-$30 on sale at the store. $15 is a steal!
Does anyone have any photos or a list of what types of items come in the $15 basket? I understand it varies but would love to see what kind of quantity items I might get. Thanks.
Check the photos posted above by The Thrifty Couple.
@Crystal, Saw those but that was the organic. Was wondering if it was any different for the $15 basket.
@Tina, You can see a couple of the regular baskets we gotten at these links. http://matthewlovestiffany.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-have-been-working-on-cutting-down-our.html and http://matthewlovestiffany.blogspot.com/2010/03/forgive-me-for-posting-about-our-co-op.html
We have been ordering for about a year now, and LOVE it. I researched a lot of co-ops before going with BB. I loved that I only had to order when I wanted to (no contract to force you to buy every time like a lot of co-ops) and I loved that everyone who works with BB is a volunteer – meaning every penny of my “contribution” goes straight towards more food! Note that the first time you order there is a $3 extra fee making your total $19.50 ($1.50 S/H) the $3 goes towards buying more baskets for them to sort your food into at the pickup site. After your first order, your price will be the $15 + $1.50 s/h (they have to pay for gas somehow!)
I price matched my basket and it was $48 at Smith’s vs $16.50 at Bountiful Baskets. Definitely worth it!
I’m in the St. Louis, MO area and a lady at our church just told me about something very similar that they do. Their baskets are $20 I think, but it sounds like the same deal. I didn’t know if it was that good of a deal, but it sounds like it is. I’ll have to check into it.
It sounds as if I’m the lone dissenter. I’ve purchased baskets twice and I didn’t find it to be a great bargain — instead I had problems each time.
I’ve only purchased the conventional baskets (organic wasn’t available in my area at the time) I brought it home and weighed all the produce and then went to Walmart (my nearest grocery) and wrote down current prices for all my items.
At the time, the owners claimed you would receive $50 of produce. My produce would have cost only cost $28 at Walmart — so it’s not as good a deal as they claim. And they produce wasn’t any fresher or better than what I get at the grocery.
Also, I don’t shop and just buy whatever. I tend to buy what’s in season and on sale. If strawberries are cheap, I buy them. If squash is expensive, I might buy carrots instead. On a typical week, I easily could get an equivalent amount of produce for the same price. It would just be different stuff.
I also had trouble with the service both times I ordered. The first time I ordered, I did so only because they opened a new site that was 15 minutes from my house. However, they had trouble with the site, and ended up moving it to a site 30 minutes away from me. I wouldn’t have placed an order for a site that required 1 hour round trip of driving.
The second time I ordered, the trucks were late, and I waited 45 minutes at the site before I could pick up the basket. They sent an e-mail communicating the delay 15 minutes after the pick up time — obviously I had already left to pick up the basket. I know they can’t control shipment delays, but they could have sent a more timely notice about the delay. 45 extra minutes plus the travel time to the site to ‘save’ 15 bucks? Not worth it to me.
Still after all that, I thought I would give it one more shot. I tried to place an order one more time because they were offering 12 lbs of strawberries for $8 as an add-on. I couldn’t get my order in and the sites near me sold out while I was trying (poor website issues other have mentioned.) It turns out that the strawberries were bad, and they ended up rejecting a truck load of berries, and many people didn’t get them at all. The ones who got the berries only received 8lbs and not the 12 they were promised. BB didn’t mention the strawberry problem until people picked up their baskets. Had I ordered that particular week, I would have been very upset, because I wanted the berries more than the basket.
Too many kinks in the program, too much extra time it required over my regular shopping, and too little savings to make it worth it for me.
The one part I did like was trying new things, but I can do that by just buying different stuff at my regular stores. I just have to remind myself to do it.
@Maureen, So sorry to hear this Maureen! I think paying 15.00 and getting 28.00 worth of produce is still a great deal! Don’t give up- maybe gathering a few friends willing to volunteer and hosting a site super close to home would help you and others around you with that long drive time! Good luck!
@Patricia
$15 for $28 of produce is a good deal if you (a) like and use all of it and (b) wouldn’t be happy substituting other items that are cheaper. Neither of these conditions applied to my family.
For the most part, I don’t think it’s worth it, even though they now have sites 5 minutes from me. It’s still another trip out, and I don’t trust them not to make changes at the last minute. I might still use the service on weeks when the produce sales at our groceries are particularly bad, however.
I’ve been doing BB for a few months now and overall I really like it. I’ve volunteered a couple of times, you just show up early and they’ll tell you what to do. Volunteering was a lot of fun. Baskets typically have bananas, apples, tomatoes, and romaine lettuce. Other common items are potatoes, broccoli, celery, berries, and melons. More unusually items have included orange cauliflower, coconuts and kumquats.
It does seem like BB is going through some growing pains. My sister-in-law got a basket a couple weeks ago that had only half of what mine had (we have different pick-up locations). If you do have a bad experience (which is not common, but happens) give them another try, it’s well worth it.
I live in AZ and have been doing Bountiful Baskets on and off for over a year and a half, both my sisters love it too! They have sooo many pick ups and great quality stuff!
I love BB!!! It has added a ton of variety into our diets and I love that it’s organic! With my sons special gluten and casein free diet BB is a perfect fit for our family!
I’ve been doing Bountiful Baskets for about 2 years…LOVE it. It’s in season, usually local produce. The downside is that you don’t know what you’re going to get, but it’s supposed to be $50 worth of produce for $15. It’s an amazing deal, even if you need to go the grocery store to suppliment some of your staples.
They usually have at least 3-4 staple fruits and veggies with some different fun stuff to try. It’s gotten me out of my cooking box for sure! I got Kumquats once. !!!
I too am another fan of Bountiful Baskets! I’ve been participating for two years now and constantly am impressed with the amount of money I save. My husband is a produce manager for a chain grocery market- so he easily can add up the amount we save. Though there is some items occassionally we don’t eat ,we still get our money’s worth. It’s strictly run on a volunteer basis so if there isn’t a location close to you inquire about starting a new location- it takes some training and some volunteers but it’s all worth it to have quality fruits/veggies and an affordable price.
BB just started coming to my town. I haven’t done it yet because I’ve been out of town every weekend but my friends and neighbors have loved it. I’m excited to give it a try.
This Saturday is my first pick-up. I plan to volunteer in the near future but wanted to see how things are done first. I am excited about the price- pretty good deal- I hope. Wish me luck on our first time with Bountiful Baskets!
I have been doing BB for over 2 years now in Northern AZ. I love it. Sometimes you get weird things that you don’t like but even then, the remaining items are worth way more than $16.50. Also the granola is awesome. Not a ton for $10 but so good – it is chewy, tropical granola. One add on this week is peaches – 24 lbs of peaches for $12.50 which is only 50cents/lb. These are great to split with friends and go halves on.
Also it is supposed to be 1/2 veggies and 1/2 fruit. Last week (conventional) included: About 15plums, 10-12apples, 1 cantaloupe, bananas, 2 big bags of seedless grapes, 1 bag of cherries. Veggies – romaine lettuce, lots of green beans (filled 2 paper bags at home), 4 tomatos, broccoli, bag of peeled mini carrots. I think that was it. I might have missed a veggie. Everything is also high quality stuff. Many times they will give us the great stuff, like pink ladies apples, etc.
In the 2+ years I have been doing it, I think I have had only had 2-3 not so great experiences. Also the strawberry mix-up that the reader above, did happen. The website called it the Great Strawberry Fiasco, but it was the only time that had ever happened since I’ve been buying from them.
LOVED it! I used to participate in Bountiful Baskets when we lived in Arizona. One of the sad parts of moving away was that I couldn’t find another co-op in Alaska to rival the quality and quantity I was used to! There were often new veggies or fruits that I may not have picked up at the supermarket, but that gave my family a chance to try something new. There were often seasonal packs available around Thanksgiving and other holidays to augment the regular basket. Sometimes I got the organic basket, but often found the conventional also included many organic choices as well. I’m glad to see them working their way into new states, and wish it could make it all the way up here!
You say BB is in Texas….but I don’t see it on their website. Anybody know what cities? Thanks!
We have a similar program here in NC/SC called Neighborhood Produce. Go to yourneighborhoodproduce.com.
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