Front Range FoodshedCOOPERATIVE
DemoInvest

Boulder Farmers Market · Saturdaysboxes from $80

Dinner from twenty miles away.

Saturday at eight, a crew member walks the Boulder Farmers Market with your order in hand. They bag it at the market and drive it to your door the same morning. You order by Wednesday and then think about something else.

The farmer’s name is on the box.

Join the waitlistSee how a week worksorders close wed 8pm3d 04h
68¢
of the box price, spent at the stalls
20 mi
median distance your dinner came
4 hrs
from the stall to your step
10 mi25 mi50 mi100 miYOUR KITCHEN
sat

in this box · saturday, week 41

  • Ollin FarmLongmont · delicata, kale18 mi
  • Ray & Ana'sLongmont · rainbow chard16 mi
  • Buckner Family RanchLongmont · short ribs22 mi
  • Moxie Bread Co.Louisville · sourdough9 mi
  • Haystack MountainLongmont · chèvre17 mi
shopped and driven by sam$120

The thesis

The hard part of local food was already solved. It happens every Saturday.

  1. 01

    The market is already the warehouse

    Every Saturday morning a hundred farms park a full inventory eight blocks from downtown Boulder and stand behind it until two. Cold chain, quality control, a price chalked on a board. None of that needs building. It needs a shopping list and a route.

  2. 02

    What stops people is the errand

    Households who love the market still get there maybe six times a year. It costs a parking space, an hour on foot, cash you forgot to bring, and you come home with chard and no plan attached to it. Appetite was never the missing piece.

  3. 03

    The last mile decides who gets paid

    Delivery apps took the errand away and took thirty percent from whoever stood furthest from the customer. Twelve stops an hour off one origin is what makes a route pay for itself. Who owns the route decides where that money ends up.

So we shop the market you would have shopped, on the morning it is open, and drive one dense route out of it. A chef writes the week first so the box has a reason to exist. And the whole thing is owned by the growers and the crew, because a company that has to return capital will eventually take it out of the farm.

The weekly cycle

Order Wednesday. We shop Saturday.

The market opens on Saturday, so the week bends around Saturday. Orders shut Wednesday at 8pm, which gives the chef time to plan against what is actually on the tables and gives every crew member one list, cut by stall, before they leave the house.

Saturday, the week before

The chef walks the market

Dani goes stall to stall the Saturday before and writes down what is actually on the tables: who has the last of the chard, whose peaches are still two weeks out, what a pound of anything costs today. Next week's menu comes off that walk.

Chef studio · crew census

Paused. Click a day to move through the week.

Show the split

Where your dollar goes.

These are lines in a settlement run, not sentiments in a values statement. The rate card is published in the co-op’s charter, the solver that applies it is deterministic, and every member can read the week’s books.

One box dollar · target

100¢

For comparison — the U.S. food dollar

USDA ERS farm share, most recent series

About 15¢ of a retail food dollar reaches the farm. The other 85 goes to marketing, distribution and margin. A grower at the market keeps the whole price they set, because there is nobody standing in between to take a share of it.

  • 68¢

    Stalls

    Spent at the market tables on Saturday morning, at the price chalked on the sign. No wholesale discount, no invoice, no waiting.

  • 7¢

    Crew

    The member who shops the run, bags it and drives it. A $120 floor per run, posted on the shift card before anyone claims it.

  • 10¢

    Chef

    Ten percent of the box, to the chef whose menu you chose. Written into the rate card, not negotiated week by week.

  • 12¢

    Co-op

    Insulated totes and gel packs, insurance, the software, and the steward who runs the week. The charter caps this at 15¢.

  • 3¢

    Reserve

    Shorts, credits and redeliveries, plus the retained capital that eventually opens a second market day.

Targets, not results. The chef fee (10%) and the reserve (3%) are the published rate card to the basis point. The spend target is 68% of the box price with an ±8% band, and the band is the co-op’s problem rather than yours — your price is fixed when you order. The charter caps the co-op’s take at 15¢; the 12¢ and 7¢ above are how this pilot budgets inside that cap. Every Monday the real numbers replace these in the open books.

The deal

Who gets what, in dollars.

A grower and a driver are the two people the food business is built to squeeze. Here they hold the shares and the board seats, and the terms are the same for everyone whether or not they read this page. So here they are.

You pay

$120, fixed

One price for a medium box, agreed before we shop. If the tomatoes spiked on Saturday that is our problem, not a surcharge on your card. Nothing is added at checkout. Skip any week and you are charged nothing at all.

Sizes at $80 · $120 · $160

The stalls get

Retail, at the stall, that morning

We hand over a co-op card at your table like any other Saturday customer and pay the price on your sign. There is no wholesale discount, no invoice, no net-30. Around 68¢ of every box dollar crosses a market table before eleven.

Spend target 68% · band ±8%

The crew get

$120 floor, posted before you claim

One market run is shop, bag and drive: eight in the morning to about two. The floor is on the shift card before anyone taps claim, hourly takes over when the run goes long, and crew get first refusal on every shift. No algorithm can deactivate a member.

$22/hr · 1 patronage point per hour

The co-op keeps

Capped at 15¢, published either way

Insurance, insulated totes and gel packs, the software, the steward who runs the week, and a 3¢ reserve for shorts and credits. The charter caps the take and the books go up every week, whether the week went well or not.

Chef fee 10% · reserve 3%

No middle to extract from

Between a Longmont field and a Boulder kitchen there is normally a packer, a distributor, a retailer and an app, each taking a cut for standing there. On Saturday there is a crew member with a cart. The farm is paid its own asking price at its own table, we publish what the rest cost, and the surplus at year end goes back out on hours worked and dollars sold.

One member, one vote inside each class — eaters, producers, crew, chefs. Books published every week, good week or bad.

For the farms

Your farm earns ownership here before you’ve heard of us.

We are not asking any grower to sign a contract, install anything, or discount a crate. We shop your stall, at your price, on the day you are already standing there. The money and the ownership that came with it are waiting whenever you want to pick them up.

  1. L0

    You do nothing

    We buy at your stall on a Saturday like any other customer, and pay what your sign says. The spend is recorded against your farm and patronage accrues in its name from the first crate.

  2. L1

    You claim it

    A minute, from a card at your stall or an email. You see what we bought week by week, you correct anything we wrote down wrong, and the points move into your account.

  3. L2

    You say what you'll have

    A form we pre-fill from what we already bought from you, about two minutes a week. The chef plans on real supply, we pre-order, you bag ours before the market opens.

  4. L3

    You're a producer-member

    Harvest to order, paid through the co-op, a seat on the board, and a catalogue that stays yours to take anywhere. This is the top of the ladder, not the price of entry.

Nothing about a farm is published anywhere until that farm claims its page and separately says yes. Until then the record is ours to keep and theirs to correct.

You own it

Spend here, own here.

Front Range Foodshed is a Colorado cooperative with no investors to satisfy. Taking part is the ownership mechanism: every settled cycle credits patronage to the people who made the week happen, and at year end the surplus goes back out on those same numbers.

Political power is deliberately not proportional to points. One member, one vote within each class — eaters, producers, crew, chefs — with board seats reserved by class and one seat held for the commons itself.

Weights v0, adopted by founding vote: producer 1.0 per dollar sold · eater 0.5 per dollar spent · crew 1.0 per hour · chef 0.25 per dollar of boxes moved. Five-year linear decay, revisited annually, published as a protocol record.

Eater-member

0.5 points per dollar spent

60pts this week

On one $120 box. Points start at your first delivery, before the co-op has finished incorporating, and are honoured at formation.

Producer-member

1.0 point per dollar sold

240pts this week

On $240 bought at your stall in one Saturday. Nothing to sign, nothing to install. The points wait in the farm's name until somebody there claims them.

Crew-member

1.0 point per hour worked

6pts this week

On one market run claimed rather than assigned: shopping from eight, loaded by ten, last porch by two.

Illustrative single-cycle accruals. Chef-members accrue too, at 0.25 per dollar of boxes their menu moves.

Open Foodshed

Whatever we build, the next co-op gets.

Front Range Foodshed is the first cooperative running on an open protocol. A farm’s catalog and reputation belong to the farm, and the second foodshed to stand up gets our rails for nothing, because holding onto them was never the business.

  • Open lexicons

    org.foodshed.* record types — enterprise, offer, menu, attestation, charter — published, versioned, and free to implement.

  • DFC-native data

    Every catalog we hold imports from and exports to any Data Food Consortium platform. Interoperability is the growth strategy, not a checkbox.

  • Portable identity

    Members and enterprises are ATProto DIDs from day one. A producer's catalog and reputation follow the producer, not the operator.

The network effect belongs to the commons.

A second co-op in Fort Collins can index our producers, invite them, and cross-list — with the producer’s consent — without ever touching our private books.
SHAREDRECORDSBoulder CountyLIVE PILOTFort CollinsPEER CO-OPSalidaPEER CO-OP

Public records federate. Boxes, addresses, wages and balances never leave the co-op that holds them.

The plan

What the pilot has to prove.

Four numbers decide whether this is a business or a nice idea. We publish them weekly, and if they don’t come in we say so.

80

boxes a week

across three Saturday runs

12

stops per crew-hour

what makes the route pay

85%

of boxes shopped in band

within ±8% of the spend target

12

stalls with our money

three weeks running, by week eight

  1. Now — weeks 1–8

    Market shoppers

    One Saturday market, one chef, 80 boxes a week on three routes.

  2. Weeks 3–16

    Stalls claim their page

    Weekly reports on what we bought, patronage collected, produce held back for us before the crowd arrives.

  3. Months 3–12

    Farms declare, then join

    Pre-orders against real availability, producer-members with board seats, then a second foodshed on the same rails.

More markets and more market days is how this scales. There is no warehouse in the plan, at any size, ever.

The ask

Own a piece of your foodshed.

We are raising enough to run ten or twelve real Saturdays out of the Boulder Farmers Market and find out whether the unit economics close. It buys a pilot, not a land grab: a cooperative that has to earn its members back every week, with the books open while it tries.

R0 — pilot

$95–125k

Sept–Dec 2026

One market · one chef · ≥12 stalls · 50–150 households · 10–12 Saturdays

R1 — product v1

$450–650k

Jan–Jun 2027

Second market day · native apps · ledger v1 · governance · DFC read/write

Capital-light by construction

The market is the facility

One origin, and it is a public street on a Saturday. No lease, no cooler room, no truck, no inventory risk carried overnight. The first dollar of this round buys software and a steward, not square footage, and the same is true at ten times the volume: we scale by adding market days, not buildings.

Producer acquisition, solved

Farms are onboarded by being shopped

A stall does not have to sign anything for us to start buying from it, attribute the spend, and accrue ownership in its name. Twelve stalls with money waiting is a much easier first conversation than twelve wholesale contracts, and every rung a farm climbs makes the week cheaper to run.

Founding members

Pre-purchase the pilot

A founding-member share plus pre-paid boxes for the first twelve Saturdays. You get fed, the co-op gets working capital before week one, and your patronage starts accruing from the first delivery, before incorporation is finished.

Individuals · Boulder County households

Community round

Aligned capital, R1

An investor-member class inside a Colorado limited cooperative association: a capped, patient return, no control over the member classes, no pressure to sell the network. Structure under review with co-op counsel now.

Reg CF community round or patient philanthropic capital

What we are honest about

  • Every number on this site is a target from the plan, not a result. There is no revenue yet.
  • We sell a fixed box price and shop at whatever the market charges that morning. The ±8% band sits on the co-op, and a bad tomato week is a real hit to margin.
  • A Colorado market season is not twelve months long. Winter volume, indoor markets and a second market day are the open question we most want to be measured on.
  • Cell signal at a market is poor and the crew app has to work anyway. Until the offline outbox ships we run two crew per route, which costs more than it should.
  • The investor-member class depends on counsel confirming a Colorado LCA can carry four member classes plus investors. That memo is scoped for September.
  • Returns in a co-op are capped by construction. If uncapped upside is the point, this is the wrong instrument.
  • The protocol layer is open source under AGPL-3.0. The moat is the commons, not the code.

R0 use of funds

$95–125k

What we spend at the stalls and what we pay the crew come out of revenue, not out of this. Founding-member pre-purchases sit on top of it. There is no facility line because there is no facility.

  • Engineering (senior full-stack, 10 wks)$35–50k
  • Design (part-time, 4 wks)$8k
  • Legal — co-op counsel, LCA formation$10–15k
  • Ops — totes, gel packs, carts, insurance, card float$12–18k
  • Steward stipend$12k
  • Marketing & landing$3k
  • Infrastructure$1k
  • Contingency (15%)≈$14k

What it buys

This is a gate rather than a runway. Eighty boxes a week on three Saturday routes, twelve stops per crew-hour, 85% of boxes shopped inside the ±8% band, twelve stalls with three weeks of our money against their name, and a patronage ledger that reconciles to the cent. If those numbers don’t come in, we say so and stop.

Own a piece of your foodshedWalk through the demo firstRead the full implementation plan →