I could get most of my groceries in one monthly trip while living in Evansville, Indiana from 1988-2000. That’s because I was a member and coordinator of The Quality Buying Club, a group of five to a few dozen women and men who pooled monthly bulk orders and received delivery together from the Federation of Ohio River Co-ops (F.O.R.C.)
I could buy pretty much everything we ate from the Co-op except fresh vegetables, which John and I would buy at Schnuck’s, a four-mile bike ride away. We had a bike trailer called a Bugger that could haul up to 100 lbs of kids or stuff. Evansville was laid out in a grid of straight streets, allowing us to ride side streets. Often, we could leave our car parked in our driveway for a week at a time and still get everywhere we wanted to go. The monthly trips to the Patchwork Central Ministry where the buying club met would be my main use of the car to get groceries.