Welcome to Lettuceshare, Indooroopilly Ethical Groceries Group!
This is the third group to start as part of the Orca Project. They operate out of the Indooroopilly Uniting Church, with box pickups on Tuesday. If you know anyone who lives in the area that might like to be involved, please direct them to the signup page at: https://lettuceshare.org/indooroopilly
A few groups have mentioned that every now and then a member will say they've ordered, but nothing is found in Lettuceshare for them. To try and resolve this I've added an order confirmation email, so that every time they submit an order they receive an email saying their order has been saved.
This feature can now be turned on for your group via the group settings page. Click through to section 8, and you should see these new options at the bottom of the page:
You can customize the subject and body of the email, but it won't include the items they've ordered (which is a separate email). It will fill in their name and be sent from your Lettuceshare email address:
Individual members can choose to not receive these emails, just direct them to their settings page for their account via the page menu in the top right corner. Scroll down to the Purchase section and click do not send under Order Confirm Email. Any questions please let me know!
Welcome to Lettuceshare Beanstalk Organic Co-op! Beanstalk are an established co-op based in Newcastle, NSW. They're using Lettuceshare with a shop front model, as well as to place orders for the following week. Check out their website for more information, or some inspiring posts on their facebook page!
It's great to hear that so many co-ops are reporting an increase in memberships and interest around joining. It comes at a time when most groups are also thinking about limiting interactions between members and the food they're packing. People are finding a balance between the two though, by welcoming new members and putting new processes in place at the same time.
The following information is from The Chewsday Collective, who are a bulk buying group in Brisbane. They've written up some of the new procedures they're using and are happy to share with others. I'm including it here with their permission. Let me know if you want to add more information from your group!
Chewsday in the time of Coronavirus
We all need nutritious food, and sourcing through food collectives enables all of us to be part of an amazing network of food and care. Even - and perhaps especially - in times of physical distancing for everyone's health.
If we can all be careful, and support people to stay at home if sick or needing a drop-off, then our food collective can probably be 'safer than a supermarket', and continue to give access to nutritious foods, and to support our amazing network of farmers, Food Connect & Sovereign Foods.
Keeping everyone healthy:
Please do not come if you have any signs of cold or flu (e.g. sore throat, fatigue, fever or dry cough). Regardless of what illness you may have, we all need to be as healthy as we can be, so please take care & recover.
If you need someone to drop off your box to your house, please contact the group.
Everyone who comes to Chewsday:
Hand sanitiser – please use the sanitiser at the entrance, before you enter (70% alcohol, with moisturiser, no fragrances)
Wash and dry your hands for at least 20 seconds.
On arrival, and
After handling things such as your own phone.
Packers please wash your hands several times during your shift, especially following a shift between types of goods, e.g. chilled, dry goods, fresh produce.
Hand soap & paper towels are next to the laundry sink.
Please greet each other in ways that don’t involve touching (these can be sincere, and/or a time to do something silly and laugh together)
Space ourselves out (recommended 2 m, or 'a packing station')
Packing shifts:
We plan to start earlier, with 1-hour shifts to enable only 1-2 packers to be present at any one time and maintain at least 2 m distance (I think we can maintain distance even with 4 packers, as we’re fortunate that the space is quite large and very well ventilated)
Everyone is being asked to stay home if they have an illness of any kind (and we’re co-ordinating drop-offs to those who can’t pack or pick up)
Gloves / Masks:
Gloves – We haven’t yet decided to supply gloves (reasoning that hand washing should be thorough and frequent anyway), but we’re interested in hearing views on this from others.
Masks – could be worn to reduce possible transmission of droplets from the wearer to others, by catching any droplets from speech or exhaling. For this purpose, they wouldn’t need to be N95 graded (which protects the wearer from inhaling tiny particles), and accessing even basic surgical masks appears to be difficult in most areas. Any clean covering of the nose and mouth should help to protect foods from being breathed on, provided it does not lead to anyone touching their face more often (to adjust etc), which itself would increase risks of transfer via the hands. Perhaps masking could be suggested on the proviso that it is comfortable and doesn’t require any face-touching while wearing?
If you're in Brisbane this Thursday the 7th of November, the Wilderness Society are screening the documentary 'Fair Food' in Yeronga. More details on their website, looking forward to an interesting discussion on farming and food distribution!
Do you live on the north side of Brisbane? Interested in joining a bulk buying food community? Come along and check out Windsor Food Collective next Wednesday!
Regular users of the invoices page in Lettuceshare would know that as their members list has grown longer, this page has become harder to use. Instead of just trying to fix some smaller problems, it was decided an overhaul was necessary.
When the invoices page first loads, it now lists purchases for the current week (depending on your group settings). This keeps the grid more manageable, and is probably the information that you were after anyway!
The responsibility of listing all members is now left to the accounts page. It is also able to display balances, and that is now the only place to find this information. The invoices page also had a button to download member history, this functionality has been moved to the accounts page too.
Changing the way the invoices page works means there's now lots of new features to play with! Here's a screenshot of the new page:
The form at the top of the page means you can now search by username, date or invoice number. Full names will also auto complete and can be used to find a username.
When you first load the invoices page, you might notice that some rows in the grid have an invoice number of 0. This means an invoice has not yet been created for these purchases. Clicking on that row and then clicking send will create the invoice and return an invoice number which will be added to the grid. You can also send multiple invoices at once by selecting multiple rows in the grid.
You can also edit the email address of a member in the form, if you would like to send their invoice to another email address. (This is only done once, it doesn't change the default email address for the member.) Clicking on Search between start and end dates will reveal more search options, including a quick search menu to fill in search dates for the last month, 6 or 12 months, or the previous or current financial years.
One last feature to mention, the remove button will not only remove an invoice from the system, but also the associated purchase data. This saves having to visit the manager page to perform the same search. I hope this page is now easier to use, but please let me know if you have any feedback.
Ok last update for the week! If your group uses wholesale or retail prices (available via the group settings page), you can now view the current markup percentages for all your products on the stock page.
To do this click Edit Display, and you will see new Markup checkboxes depending on which of the price options you're using:
Clicking these checkboxes will add new columns to the grid, just like the other options. The difference with these two options though is that they calculate the current markup from the prices in the grid, they don't store any data.
Other than that, they operate just like any other cells in the grid. You can filter and sort by markup, and you can edit the markup to change the price. You can also select multiple rows and update the markup for the selected products, so that each product gets a new price based on it's cost price and the markup you've just provided.
Yesterday I wrote about a new ordering mode that includes pictures next to product names. Today I want to run through how your stock team can use some new features on the stock page to upload your own images. When you take a photos of your products and upload them, they will be visible to your group straight away, but other groups will also be able to use them for their own products.
The first step is to go to the stock page and click the Edit Display button at the top of the page. A dialog will open like the one in this screenshot, click the Image checkbox to add the Image column to the grid. When you click an image in the grid, a larger version of the image will be displayed along with options to Edit and Remove the image.
Click Edit to browse all shared images. A new dialog will open which will allow you to select from existing shared images or upload new ones. When you click the Browse button, your web browser will allow you to select one or more files from your computer. When you close that window the images you selected should start uploading automatically. If they don't you can just click the upload button to get them started. When an image has finished uploading it will appear in this dialog as the first image listed, so you can then select it.
When you want to update a product with an existing image, including those you've uploaded previously, you can use the search bar to find it. There are quite a few shared images uploaded already, so you can use the search field to reduce the number of images displayed. Just start typing and only images with a file name that matches your input will be displayed:
Once you've found the image you want to use, click it to display the buttons as shown above. You won't be able to rotate or remove shared images, so the only button you want to use here is the add button, which will apply this image to the product selected in the grid.
Welcome To Lettuceshare
This is the third group to start as part of the Orca Project. They operate out of the Indooroopilly Uniting Church, with box pickups on Tuesday. If you know anyone who lives in the area that might like to be involved, please direct them to the signup page at: https://lettuceshare.org/indooroopilly
Order confirm emails
This feature can now be turned on for your group via the group settings page. Click through to section 8, and you should see these new options at the bottom of the page:
You can customize the subject and body of the email, but it won't include the items they've ordered (which is a separate email). It will fill in their name and be sent from your Lettuceshare email address:
Individual members can choose to not receive these emails, just direct them to their settings page for their account via the page menu in the top right corner. Scroll down to the Purchase section and click do not send under Order Confirm Email. Any questions please let me know!
Covid-19 and co-ops
The following information is from The Chewsday Collective, who are a bulk buying group in Brisbane. They've written up some of the new procedures they're using and are happy to share with others. I'm including it here with their permission. Let me know if you want to add more information from your group!
Chewsday in the time of Coronavirus
We all need nutritious food, and sourcing through food collectives enables all of us to be part of an amazing network of food and care. Even - and perhaps especially - in times of physical distancing for everyone's health.
If we can all be careful, and support people to stay at home if sick or needing a drop-off, then our food collective can probably be 'safer than a supermarket', and continue to give access to nutritious foods, and to support our amazing network of farmers, Food Connect & Sovereign Foods.
Keeping everyone healthy:
- Please do not come if you have any signs of cold or flu (e.g. sore throat, fatigue, fever or dry cough). Regardless of what illness you may have, we all need to be as healthy as we can be, so please take care & recover.
- If you need someone to drop off your box to your house, please contact the group.
Everyone who comes to Chewsday:Modifications to packing:
Packing shifts:
We plan to start earlier, with 1-hour shifts to enable only 1-2 packers to be present at any one time and maintain at least 2 m distance (I think we can maintain distance even with 4 packers, as we’re fortunate that the space is quite large and very well ventilated)
Everyone is being asked to stay home if they have an illness of any kind (and we’re co-ordinating drop-offs to those who can’t pack or pick up)
Gloves / Masks:
Gloves – We haven’t yet decided to supply gloves (reasoning that hand washing should be thorough and frequent anyway), but we’re interested in hearing views on this from others.
Masks – could be worn to reduce possible transmission of droplets from the wearer to others, by catching any droplets from speech or exhaling. For this purpose, they wouldn’t need to be N95 graded (which protects the wearer from inhaling tiny particles), and accessing even basic surgical masks appears to be difficult in most areas. Any clean covering of the nose and mouth should help to protect foods from being breathed on, provided it does not lead to anyone touching their face more often (to adjust etc), which itself would increase risks of transfer via the hands. Perhaps masking could be suggested on the proviso that it is comfortable and doesn’t require any face-touching while wearing?
Thanks @TheCommonSpace
https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/14902/food-scotland-needs-sustainable-food-system
Invoices Page Overhaul
When the invoices page first loads, it now lists purchases for the current week (depending on your group settings). This keeps the grid more manageable, and is probably the information that you were after anyway!
The responsibility of listing all members is now left to the accounts page. It is also able to display balances, and that is now the only place to find this information. The invoices page also had a button to download member history, this functionality has been moved to the accounts page too.
Changing the way the invoices page works means there's now lots of new features to play with! Here's a screenshot of the new page:
The form at the top of the page means you can now search by username, date or invoice number. Full names will also auto complete and can be used to find a username.
When you first load the invoices page, you might notice that some rows in the grid have an invoice number of 0. This means an invoice has not yet been created for these purchases. Clicking on that row and then clicking send will create the invoice and return an invoice number which will be added to the grid. You can also send multiple invoices at once by selecting multiple rows in the grid.
You can also edit the email address of a member in the form, if you would like to send their invoice to another email address. (This is only done once, it doesn't change the default email address for the member.) Clicking on Search between start and end dates will reveal more search options, including a quick search menu to fill in search dates for the last month, 6 or 12 months, or the previous or current financial years.
One last feature to mention, the remove button will not only remove an invoice from the system, but also the associated purchase data. This saves having to visit the manager page to perform the same search. I hope this page is now easier to use, but please let me know if you have any feedback.
Stock Markup Columns
To do this click Edit Display, and you will see new Markup checkboxes depending on which of the price options you're using:
Clicking these checkboxes will add new columns to the grid, just like the other options. The difference with these two options though is that they calculate the current markup from the prices in the grid, they don't store any data.
Other than that, they operate just like any other cells in the grid. You can filter and sort by markup, and you can edit the markup to change the price. You can also select multiple rows and update the markup for the selected products, so that each product gets a new price based on it's cost price and the markup you've just provided.
Shared Stock Images
The first step is to go to the stock page and click the Edit Display button at the top of the page. A dialog will open like the one in this screenshot, click the Image checkbox to add the Image column to the grid. When you click an image in the grid, a larger version of the image will be displayed along with options to Edit and Remove the image.
Click Edit to browse all shared images. A new dialog will open which will allow you to select from existing shared images or upload new ones. When you click the Browse button, your web browser will allow you to select one or more files from your computer. When you close that window the images you selected should start uploading automatically. If they don't you can just click the upload button to get them started. When an image has finished uploading it will appear in this dialog as the first image listed, so you can then select it.
When you want to update a product with an existing image, including those you've uploaded previously, you can use the search bar to find it. There are quite a few shared images uploaded already, so you can use the search field to reduce the number of images displayed. Just start typing and only images with a file name that matches your input will be displayed:
Once you've found the image you want to use, click it to display the buttons as shown above. You won't be able to rotate or remove shared images, so the only button you want to use here is the add button, which will apply this image to the product selected in the grid.