Breadroot Guide to Special Orders

We order weekly from Rainbow/United and from Albert's Organics (produce). The deadline for placing these orders is 7pm Monday, for delivery on Thursday. Orders can be placed in the store, using catalogs and order forms; over the phone; or by shopping through our website, with your home computer or with a computer terminal that's available at the store. (See online ordering instructions, below.)

We order irregularly from Frontier Cooperative (herbs, spices, teas). Projected ordering dates are posted on the Frontier Order section of our online ordering page. We recommend not waiting until that date to place an order. As members' orders add up to Frontier's minimum of $250, the Co-op's store ordering committee will fill out the order with goods for the store, and submit the order to Frontier. Then a new projected ordering date will be posted on our website.

PAYMENT & PICK-UP:

Payment is COD for all orders. We accept cash, check, credit card, and EBT. Orders are available for pick-up on Thursdays, starting at 10 am. Some delays may occur, especially in weeks with large orders, and especially since the crew handling the orders is mostly volunteer--sometimes we are short-handed. (If you can volunteer to help on Thursday mornings, you will be much appreciated, as well as earning discounts for store purchases.)

Orders must be picked up and paid for by Sunday. (Sunday hours are 12-5.) This is especially important for produce, refrigerated, and frozen goods, as these take up valuable storage space at the store. We will call to remind you of orders not picked up by Saturday. If you can't pick up an order, please call the store and be prepared to pay with credit card over the phone.

Please note that it is not unusual for Rainbow and Albert's prices to change, either up or down, from their original amount, and your amount due will reflect any changes. Also, if there are any out-of-stock items, you may re-order promptly on the store computer or do so at home.

ONLINE ORDERING GUIDE:

When you go to our website, www.breadroot.com, click on Order Online, and enter your username and password, you're shown a page with the wholesalers whose catalogs we have placed online. Click on a delivery date for an order you'd like to place, for example Rainbow.

You'll be shown your order page for the current Rainbow order. It shows the delivery date and deadline for ordering. Click on Catalog to get started. In the blank search field, type a word for the product or brand name you are searching for, and hit Enter. You can leave it set at "All Categories" for starters. If you type more than one word in the search field, e.g., soy milk, it's best to click on the "Include approximate entries" box. You may also search by using the six-digit Rainbow product number, without the hyphen. (More on product searches later.)

Next, scroll down the list of products shown. The list is alphabetical by brand name. If multiple pages are listed, you can jump to the next pages by clicking selections at the bottom. When you find a product you want, type in an amount in the "Order Quantity" column. Then click on "Update." (You can order several different items from the page that's displayed before updating.) You will then be shown that same page, but with a dollar value shown in the "sub." (for subtotal) column. At the bottom of that column is a running subtotal, which will change as you add or delete items.

To see the list of only the items you've ordered, click on "My Order". This will show your order total, including the markup and tax. If your order is satisfactory, with the correct items, quantities, and dollar amounts shown, you can close the page or sign out, and your order will be entered in our system. However, if you need to come back and change your order, including add to it, you can do so anytime before the deadline.

You may also order a product by using its Rainbow product number. Enter that number in the "Add Item by Product Number" field, click Update, and one case/unit will be added to your order. You can then change the amount or delete it altogether. This is convenient for products you re-order periodically, so that you don't have to search for them.

SPLITS: You can offer to split cases of goods, including bulk bags of beans, cereals, dried fruit, etc. You do so by observing the units the product comes in, listed in the "Case" column. Then, in the "Order Quanitity" column, enter a number that's a partial quantity of those units. For example, you might want 6 of a twelve-count case of tomato sauce, or 15 lbs. of black beans. You'd enter 6 or 15 in the quantities column, then click on the "CS @ $15.99" selection (for example), then change that to "EA @ $1.33". Then Click on "Update". This "split case" will be entered in your order and the proper amount added to your total.

IT IS ESSENTIAL TO CHANGE THE "CS" TO "EA" IN THE ORDER QUANTITY COLUMN. If you don't, you may end up ordering 6 cases of tomato juice, or 15 bags of beans. If so, those should be obvious because your subtotal and order total will be a lot higher than they should be. Again, you can go back and change your order anytime before the deadline.

You can view other members' splits, along with those offered by the Breadroot Store. Click on the "Splits" half of the "Member/Splits" heading, and you'll be shown a list of the split cases available for the current week. You can offer to get part or all of the remaining case or bulk amounts by entering a quantity in the "Quantities" column, changing "CS" to "EA", and clicking "Update."

If you fill someone else's split order, or if someone fills yours, it will automically get ordered and be ready for pick-up on Thursday. However, if no one fills a split by the deadline, it won't get ordered unless the Co-op's store ordering committee
decides to fill that order. The committee will seriously consider filling splits, but not all of the splits offered can be filled by the store. Therefore, if you wish to insure that your order arrives, you should change it to a full case before
the deadline.

SPECIALS: Rainbow offers monthly specials, which are displayed in the far right columns of the catalog pages. If no dollar amount is shown in those columns, the items aren't on sale this month or the next. The "reg." column shows the regular price for products on sale in the current month. (The sale price is in the "Order Quantity" column.) The next column is headed with a date that is the beginning of the next month's sales. In this way, you may plan your purchases around sales, perhaps waiting for a sale or stocking up during a sale.

SEARCH TIPS: With a little practice, searching online makes shopping easy. Try entering a few words, one at a time, in the search field, and see what happens. You can also enter parts of words. Enter "sea" for example and you'll be shown sea salt as well as goldenseal and brand names like Celestial Seasonings.

At any time, you can click back and forth between "Catalog" and "Specials", to see the complete listing for that search word and the sale prices, if any.

Entering a part of a word may be helpful if you can't remember exactly how a brand name is spelled, or what the product is called. For example, not many soy milk makers call it that. So if you search just for "soy" you'll probably find a listing of soy milks, under brand names like "Edensoy" and "Westsoy". You'll also be shown a lot of other products. You can narrow your search by selecting a category. Once you've selected a category, you must click on "set sub/category" to make it active. Selecting sub-categories helps narrow the search even more. If your searches start returning "no results", you may want to reset to All Categories, and/or simpler words or parts of words in the search field. You may be shown a long listing of products, but it's something to work with. As you scroll
through the listing, you will begin to see some of the many abbreviations that Rainbow uses. Try using an abbreviation that's appropriate to your search. Finally, if you have no luck finding a product, call the store, and our staff will do their best to find the product for you.

PRODUCE ORDERS: To view the produce selection, click on the "Rainbow (date) Order" which is the heading for your order page. You'll be shown a list of ordering dates in the "Albert's Organic" section. Click on "SET ORDER" next to the most recent date.

Next, click on "Catalog". (NOTE: Albert's doesn't have a Specials catalog. Any deals on produce are incorporated into their weekly price list.) Now you'll be able to search through their catalog, entering words in the Search field. A good place to start is the categories. Scroll down and select a category, click on "set category", and you'll be shown the listing for that product, even if you've left the Search field blank. Now you can order products, and offer to split cases, the same as with the Rainbow catalog.

Produce prices and availability are very much subject to change. If you want the most up-to-date price list, shop on Mondays. Albert's sends us their price list on Monday mornings, and we'll update the prices promptly on our website. Also, the
store ordering committee will make an effort to offer split cases of produce on Mondays, which you can view and shop for before the deadline of 7 pm.