thread Re: Thrifty Thursday - How do you save money? in Orders, Menu Items, Catalog & Fulfilment

Thrifty Thursday - How do you save money?

WoodCandleCo — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 09:43:30 GMT

As a small business, every penny counts. What creative ways do you save your business money on various expenses, materials, etc?

My favorite is by reusing all the packing peanuts that come with my material orders. Packing peanuts are surprisingly expensive!

Re: Thrifty Thursday - How do you save money?

VanKalkerFarms — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:45:05 GMT

Overall the thing that has saved us the most is that we buy most of our supplies, pots, trays, chemicals, etc through a Co-Op. The entire point of it is that they get their 100s if not 1,000+ customers to buy thru them giving them huge buying power AND they are not there to make money on top of expenses, the goal is to pay their bills and 6 employees well and pass on any extra back to the patrons as dividends.

For example, the exact same pot is 4.16¢ from our co-op, but 4.63¢ from a nationwide dealer. You say, but that is only .47¢ and true, except we buy almost 500,000 so that is over $2,500 on this one item alone and there are hundreds.

Unfortunately, this isn't available in all industries but it is a huge savings every year of over 100 grand between supply cost savings and Dividends.

Re: Thrifty Thursday - How do you save money?

WoodCandleCo — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:49:02 GMT

Do you mind if I ask which co-op? Would love to share with the greenhouse I mentioned on the other post.

Re: Thrifty Thursday - How do you save money?

VanKalkerFarms — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 17:55:29 GMT

mostly with Vriesland Growers co-op in Hudsonville, MI but they have customers all over the Midwest and do pickup and can schedule freight loads too. Hudsonville box and basket is another but I don't use them but other friends do.

I haven't used the big guys like Carlin, BFG, etc for years and years. Plastic is all made in Michigan at East Jordan Plastics.

Re: Thrifty Thursday - How do you save money?

WoodCandleCo — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 18:09:07 GMT

BFG was one of their big suppliers, but they were starting to move away from them. They became way, way too expensive.

Thank you for sharing!

Re: Thrifty Thursday - How do you save money?

rtfulk — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 23:47:07 GMT

@WoodCandleCo We sell a ton of hairbows and have them on plastic cards, so everytime we sell a hairbow we remove them from the card and reuse it. It has saved us a bunch of money over the years.

Re: Thrifty Thursday - How do you save money?

Summer2024 — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 14:30:07 GMT

LOVE this conversation starter. Definitely a good one to think about in this economy too!