Can this direct-from-farm co-op beat Coles and Woolworths on price and quality?

Within two weeks of opening, Box Divvy’s first Melbourne hub in Templestowe is full, with 45 members.

Kellie Wishart runs the Templestowe food relief charity CareNet and leads Box Divvy’s first Victorian hub. As a “hubster”, Wishart communicates with members via WhatsApp, receives the food deliveries on Monday morning, and sorts them for collection that afternoon.

“I, personally, am concerned about farmers, I’m worried about food production and what happens when the next generation of farmers don’t come though because the conditions are so rubbish,” Wishart says. “I’m worried about packaging and food miles. And I’m worried about the price of food and the duopoly.”

So, is Box Divvy is cheaper and better quality? The answer was yes, with some caveats.

Here’s how the process went. On Wednesday, I receive an email saying I have three days to order for the following week. I can choose from dozens of fruits and vegetables and am told where they come from, how much the farmer will be paid, and how much I will pay per item.

The ordering system takes a little getting used to because it’s based on box-sharing. Box Divvy is a co-op, not a shop, so you might not get the exact numbers of fruit and vegetables you request, or that produce at all.

If you want to order a rare purple cauliflower, for example, you can “suggest a split”. If other members of the hub also want a purple cauliflower, they can join your split. As soon as a minimum number of orders has been reached, the split is “in play” and everyone who is part of that split will receive what they ordered. But some items don’t get enough takers and won’t arrive – a process that won’t work for everyone, says Mark Field, who runs a food and grocery supply consultancy.

There is no minimum spend for members, although they are expected to commit to eight weeks and order at least fortnightly, spending at least $15 a week. Meat, seafood, dairy and other groceries are not yet available in Victoria. Pantry items are expected to be introduced before Christmas, and chilled items next year. “Anything we sell will be good for you,” says co-founder Jayne Travers-Drapes.

I’ve ordered 23 types of produce for my first week, and each item is approved on Saturday night. The food costs $54.03, Wishart’s commission is $8.10, taking the total price to $62.13. I end up getting eggs thrown in free, too.

Monday afternoon comes around, and I head to Wishart’s charity in Templestowe to pick up my box. Wishart’s arrangement is unusual, as most hubsters receive and sort the food from home. Some offer delivery for a fee.

The food takes up all the space in our vegetable crisper plus two fruit bowls, as well as mental energy. I’m an average cook, and my children generally hate my meals. Can I really use all this abundance?

The good news is I’m armed with the old (a second-hand copy of Stephanie Alexander’s weighty Kitchen Garden Companion) and the new (Google AI). Alexander’s book is a godsend for produce I don’t normally buy (purple cauliflower), while Gemini swiftly proposes a week’s worth of (occasionally strange) meals.

As the first week comes to an end, there’s a bit of uneaten produce, but it still smells and feels good.

“The trick behind the freshness is the fact we don’t store it, we don’t gas it,” says Travers-Drapes. “Every avocado is touched four times and squeezed in the supermarket. Ours aren’t.”

‘We pay 60¢ in the dollar to the farmers; Coles and Woolies pay roughly 30¢.’

Jayne Travers-Drapes, co-founder of Box Divvy

Stephen King, professor of economics at Monash University, says direct-from-farm models are not new, but the challenge has always been logistics.

“The issue is never the farm gate price — it is sorting, packing and shipping,” he says. “This is where economies of scale matter, and Woolworths and Coles have those, and a bunch of stores that avoid the home delivery costs [as] consumers themselves provide the sorting, packing and shipping from the store to the house.”

But Travers-Drapes says Box Divvy has been profitable since it started in 2019. “We’re making profits because we can set up mini-shops within a couple of weeks. We don’t have to have huge infrastructure,” she says.

“And everyone along the line gets paid well. We pay 60¢ in the dollar to the farmers; Coles and Woolies pay roughly 30¢.” Hubsters are paid a 15 per cent commission on produce orders, 12 per cent on pantry orders and 6 per cent for dairy.

On Friday, I tweak my order for the next week, requesting 18 types of fruit and vegetables including blueberries, passionfruit, carrots and snow peas.

A Saturday night email tells me there’s not enough love for green apples, honeydew melon, or kipfler potatoes, so they won’t arrive on Monday. But 15 of my 18 splits are successful, giving me a “success ratio” of 83 per cent. The food costs $36.16, with a hubster fee of $5.42, taking the total price to $41.58. The transparency is top notch.

Monday’s box looks appetising, albeit smaller. I’ll have a healthier-than-usual week because I’ll commit to using all this produce.

But Templestowe is not close to my home, so my Box Divvy experiment will come to an end.

I’ve learnt I don’t need to spend $108 a week at Coles and Woolworths. I can feed four people tasty fruit and vegetables more cheaply, and the produce will last longer – but as Box Divvy only offers produce in Melbourne, supermarket or market visits are still required for everything else.

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It also requires a lot of planning. Going to the trouble of ordering ingredients focuses the mind. Hubs are not supermarkets, and they don’t keep supermarket hours. Melbourne’s only hub is pick-up only, so those who can’t make the three-hour Monday afternoon pick-up window are out of luck. Some hubs interstate offer delivery, but the delivery window is short – not ideal for those who work nine to five and commute.

If I lived close to a hub, I would use it. We need more competition in groceries, better diets, and profitable farmers.

You can “unsupermarket”, but you’ll need to plan ahead.

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