Beechworth Food Co-op

How long have you been operating for? 6 years

Where are you located? Beechworth

Tell us about the types of work you do: We provide our community with access to local food, with minimal waste, which supports regenerative agriculture. We provide local growers with a path to market, educate young people and we advocate for stronger local food systems.

Tell us about how important volunteers are to your work: Critical! Beechworth Food Co-op is entirely community owned and volunteer-run. This allows us to keep prices low and accessible for our community as well as undertaking our mission in education and advocacy.

What types of tasks do you need more volunteers for? The biggest job we have for volunteers is staffing the Hub during open hours on Friday 2pm - 6pm and Saturday 10am - 2pm. This requires looking after stock, helping with questions and processing payments. A friendly smile and a little bit of tech savvy are helpful skills; you can have some great chats about recipes, ingredients and the weather when you're in this role. There's also a job in packing online orders each Friday 10am - 2pm - this one requires less people contact, and you can turn the music up as loud as you like! There's also more midweek jobs: cleaning, venue management, picking up orders from suppliers, research about products and suppliers, book-keeping, designing and managing events, writing grant applications and acquittals. If you can commit 4hrs a week, we have a little discount to say thank you - working members receive 20% off the price of bulk dry goods (not fresh, sorry - the margin on that is much smaller) in addition to all the other co-op membership benefits.