Fresh Food from Our Farms to Your Table

Bountiful Sprout Producer Operating Procedures

General
Products that may be sold through TBS
Standards for processed or prepared foods
Standards for sale of nonfood items
Procedure for listing your products on our price/product list
The Order Cycle of TBS
How to prepare your product(s) for delivery through TBS
Delivery day procedures
Problem Producer Procedure

If you are a producer who needs technical assistance with entering a product, or editing a product, or any other issue with our website, including a request to refresh the product list, please email our Producer Assistance Technician at producer-care@bountifulsprout.com. Thanks!

General

Only members of TBS may buy or sell through our website.
Acting as the agent of producer members, TBS posts on the internet, provides a printed list, and publicizes the products its producer members have for sale within its marketplace of members. We receive orders, collect payment from the customers and make payments to the producers.
Acting as the agent for customer members, we provide them a catalog of available local food products that includes information about how and where the product was grown or processed. We receive their orders and notify the appropriate producers, arrange for the food to be delivered, receive and process their payments. For both producer and customer members, we provide a basic screening of products and producers based on our published parameters, and education and training regarding the use and the advantages of local foods grown without chemicals.
All producer members are responsible for reading and complying with the operating procedures of TBS. Producer members are welcome to make suggestions to make these procedures more efficient and understandable.
The most efficient way for us to communicate is by the internet. When you join TBS, you will be assigned a user name and password so you can access the members only pages of our web sites. You will also be assigned a member number. All members will need to keep track of their member number. Internet users will need to keep track of their user name and password.
From time to time we will have events to highlight the great tastes of Texas Hill Country grown and processed foods. Producer participation is not mandatory, but it will be to your advantage to participate. This will give you a chance to meet your potential customers and showcase your foods and products.
TBS will initiate payment to the Producers for their products within 4 days of Delivery Day. Producers who ship their products or whose products are brought to delivery day by route drivers, will also be paid by mail, unless other arrangements are made. Producers will only be paid for products ordered by customers. TBS reserves the right to refuse to accept delivery for products that are not what customers ordered, or which are spoiled or contaminated or otherwise not acceptable.
Any customer complaints regarding product quality, requests for refunds or return of merchandise will be referred directly to the producer. Each producer will provide us a written statement of their policies for returns. This policy must be listed on the producer’s information pages at the coop’s website. In the event of a dispute between a customer and a producer, the matter shall be referred to an arbitration committee. One member shall be appointed by the customer, one by the producer, and one by TBS. In the event the dispute is between the producer or the customer and TBS, a similar procedure shall be used. The producer or customer will appoint a member, TBS will appoint a member, and the two chosen arbitrators will then together choose a third person.
These procedures are established to benefit the common good of the members. The more members we have, the more critical it is that we achieve near 100% compliance with these procedures. At present and for the foreseeable future the administration of TBS is all volunteers. By following these procedures, we minimize the demands on any individual volunteer’s time. This is necessary for the long-term sustainability of this business enterprise.
To log in to TBS, www.bountifulsprout.com, sign in with your USER NAME and PASSWORD. If you don’t have that info handy, send an email to membership@bountifulsprout.com and ask for your info again.

Products That May Be Sold Through The Bountiful Sprout

Producers may only sell Texas grown or made products they themselves have grown or processed. Nobody can buy wholesale from someone else and then retail through our service, unless they are buying ingredients for processed foods. If ingredients are bought, value must be added to the product by the producer. You can, for example, buy flour or cornmeal and make bread or tortillas to sell, but you can’t buy bread from someone else and sell it through the cooperative. The only exception to this rule is if TBS has nothing local yet listed for a certain category. For example, a producer may list items that are bought wholesale and re-sell them on our website only if that item or a similar one is not already offered by a local producer. The board of Managers has agreed that as soon as a local source is found for those products, the non-local products will be removed from our website. In addition all non-locally made products listed on our site must be listed in the non-local category of our website and labeled as such in the description of that item.
No GMO foods or products may be sold through the Bountiful Sprout. No meat, poultry or egg products from Confined Animal Feeding Operations may be sold through the Bountiful Sprout, nor may they be used as ingredients in processed foods. Animals may not be treated with bovine growth hormone nor may routine antibiotics be used in feeds. Our assumption is that supermarket meats originate in CAFOs, so meat, poultry, or egg products used as ingredients in processed or prepared foods should be bought directly from local farmers or from a certified company. They do not have to be bought from TBS members, although some members may find this as an added benefit of your product.

Standards For Processed or Prepared Foods

Processed and prepared foods that are offered for sale shall be submitted with a complete list of ingredients. Ingredients that originate in Texas shall be noted. The producer should estimate the Texas content of the product. The list of ingredients must be included in the product description displayed at TBS website.
Producers shall not include CAFO meats, poultry, or eggs or derivatives from them as ingredients in their processed products.
Genetically modified animals, plants, seeds, grains, or fruits shall not knowingly be used as ingredients.
Customer members of the Bountiful Sprout are interested in local foods produced with sustainable practices that show good stewardship of the environment. Consequently, they have a preference for organically or naturally produced foods that originate in Texas and will be much more likely to buy these foods, which they regard as superior to the foods offered by supermarkets.
All products from new producer members must be reviewed by the Board of Managers to ensure that they are eligible for sale through the Bountiful Sprout. To review your product(s), this information is required:
1. A statement regarding the geographic location in Texas of the origin of your products and that you are the grower or producer. In the statement, the producer must give the exact location(s) where the crop(s) was or were grown, animals were raised, or processed product was prepared.
2. A statement regarding your production practices, which explains whether you use herbicides, pesticides, or chemical fertilizers in producing the product. No animal products or byproducts may be used in animal feeds of meats sold through TBS. If your product is certified organic, include a copy of the organic certification.
3. For processed products, a list of ingredients, note any of Texas origin and estimate the Texas content of the product, and a statement regarding the processing practices. Also include the location of the kitchen or processing facility for each product. A current copy of the license for that kitchen must be on file with TBS.
The information regarding new products from new producers must be sent by email to standards@bountifulsprout.com.
Once the product is approved, follow the procedure described below to actually list your product in our database for access by our members. Getting the product approved, and then having it appear in our database of currently available products are two different steps. TBS does not automatically enter products in our database. That work is done by the producers.
After a producer and his or her initial product list have been approved, the producer may add similar new products in subsequent months without having them approved in advance by the Board. However, if a producer would like to list a product that is in a different category, then that product must be approved by the Board before they will be able to list it. Products that do not meet our standards may be removed from the public price lists of TBS by the Board of Managers.
To protect the integrity of our marketing system, TBS reserves the right to verify the production claims and geographic production location of everything sold through our marketplace.
Each producer has a page (or pages) in the on-line Customer Handbook and information on our website and in the product lists for their product(s). Each producer has a page to introduce themselves and tell the story of their farming operations and its products. In the “product types” field of the producer information set-up page, list the products you sell. Producers may not use ALL CAPS, bold, italics, or programming techniques that cause the words to jump back and forth or blink. This particular field appears on the pages where all the producer’s names are listed, with links to the various producers’ products. If all producers use such “decorations” in that field, then the page becomes almost unreadable.
Producers set their own prices, and receive the full retail price they set for their products, less the 8% handling fee. The charges TBS makes for its services are always under review in consideration of our expenses. TBS is not in a position to lose money on its operations, so the financial structure of the business may be changed from time to time.
The TBS order/delivery cycle is every two weeks.
You may book orders in advance through our service. For example, meat producers may take orders for meat in advance of the actual dates the animals will be delivered, to allow appropriate time for processing of the meat or poultry. Vegetable producers can book sales for the following season from customers interested in larger amounts of produce, for example, people who do home canning may be interested in buying vegetables by the bushel, and this can be arranged in advance. Producer members must comply with any relevant health codes or agricultural laws regarding direct sales of farm and food products to the public. A copy of any licenses or certificates required for your business must be on file with the cooperative.

Standards For Sale of Nonfood Items

Please adhere to the following:

Anything that is washable should come delivered with washing instructions.
For any item that is stuffed, disclose material used.
Recycled items incorporated in designs must be disclosed.
Specify the appropriate age range for children’s items.
Nonfood producers warrant that their products meet all legal and regulatory standards. All bath, body and health products must adhere to FDA standards. Products must adhere to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act.
This standards list may be revised at any time and notice will be emailed to producers.
A producer is required to keep contact information updated. This includes, telephone number, email address and physical address.
All TBS products are subject to regular review by the Board of Managers, and they may remove a product from the public listing if it does not comply with these standards.
The Bountiful Sprout’s general producer procedures also apply to nonfood producers.
Submitting an application to be a nonfood producer indicates acceptance of TBS’s Terms of Service.
Authorized producers who are presently selling nonfood items do not have to go through the application process again, but their products must comply immediately with these standards.

Procedure For Listing Your Products On Our Price/Product List

To offer your product for sale through TBS, you need to tell the customer everything he or she needs to know in order to make an informed decision about your product. When you enter products on-line, you will be prompted for the relevant information.

Name of the product.
Basic description of the product. If the approximate size, weight or contents are not clear from the name of the product, list those details here. If it is a processed item, include a list of the ingredients and estimate the Texas content of the ingredients.
Category or subcategory that it should be listed under. If we do not have an existing category and/or subcategory, please give us some guidance on how the product would be categorized.
If it is a package of several items, the approximate (or exact, whichever the case may be) number of items in the package should be listed.
The price, the pricing unit (e.g. whatever comes after the “per” in $ per ____), and the ordering unit (when the customer orders, they will order number of ______). Also, we need to know if the item has a random weight - the customer will not know the price until you provide a weight for it after the item is ordered.

EXAMPLE 1: You are selling a 5 pound bag of wheat for $10.00. The price is $10.00. The pricing unit is “5 pound bag” (because you are selling at $10.00 per 5 pound bag). The ordering unit is also “5 pound bag” because the customer orders by the number of 5 pound bags that they wish to buy. This item is not considered random weight because the bags always weigh the same and the customer knows the final price when it is ordered. Notice in this example that even though the flour ends up costing $2 per pound, you would not list as $2 per pound because you are only selling 5 pound bags that cost $10.

EXAMPLE 2: You are selling a bag of ground beef. The bag weights range between .75 and 1.25 pounds and you sell the meat at $4 per pound. The price depends on the weight but you want the customer orders the number of bags, not the number of pounds because you do not package it in exactly 1 pound bags. In this case, your price would be $4, your pricing unit would be “pound”, and your ordering unit would be “bag”. This is a random weight product because the price cannot be pre-determined by the customer. It can only be determined after you (the producer) enter the weight.

EXAMPLE 3: You are selling packages of chicken breasts, the package varies in weight from a little under 2 pounds to a little over 2 pounds. However, you always charge the same price per package ($6.00). In this case, price is $6.00, the pricing unit is “package”, and the ordering unit is package. This is not a random weight product because the customer knows the price in advance.

Producers are responsible for entering this information for their products. The cooperative will do this if the producer does not have internet access, but we reserve the right to levy a charge for this service.
When this information is entered into our database, the product is assigned a unique ID number. Please keep track of the product ID numbers for your products. Any time you need to change that product, you need the specific product ID number for that product. . If you are able to use the internet, you can access any of your listed or unlisted products from the price lists at www.bountifulsprout.com. If you are logging in to our system and updating/adding new products yourself, you will be able to see product numbers for products that were on older price lists.
If you are no longer selling a product, please do not delete it from the database, instead, simply mark the product so it will not be displayed.
If you want to change an item from having a standard price to being a random weight item, create a new product for the random weight version of the product. If you want to change an item from being a random weight to being a standard weight/price, create a new product and select “do not display” for the original product. This is very important. If you change a standard weight item to a random weight, it will make that change on every invoice in the database history.
Our system has an inventory feature. If you will only have 10 units for sale, you can set the inventory control at 10. Once 10 items have been sold, no more orders will be taken for that product. If a customer changes their mind, and deletes their order for that product, the system will reset to allow the unsold product to be sold.

The Order Cycle of TBS

Delivery Day is every other Wednesday.
The order cycles always begin on the Thursday before delivery day and end on Sunday night at midnight.
You can view the on-going progress of your orders by logging into the site (www.bountifulsprout.com) but customers may change their orders (add or delete items, change quantities, etc.) until the close of the order desk. Do not consider your orders as “final” until after the order cycle is closed. If you print your orders early, you may lose business. (This has already happened to some producers, so don’t leave money on the table and disappoint your potential customers by jumping the gun on printing your orders.) At the close of order cycle, TBS will notify you that your orders are ready for downloading or printing. Generally this is early every other Monday morning.
When you check your orders at the close of a order cycle, there will be links for your orders sorted by PRODUCT, CUSTOMER, and by STORAGE/CUSTOMER. You will only see your orders.
If customers have ordered products from you that have random weights necessary for determining product prices, you will see that information on your invoice. When you have that customer’s information, enter it in the appropriate box and press the UPDATE button next to that entry. You can update either at the PRODUCT sort page or the CUSTOMER sort page. Both pages update the master database. This information is due no later than 12 NOON on the TUESDAY before Delivery Day.
If you run out of inventory on a particular product, notify the customer immediately (email if they have it is fine) so that the customer can choose a substitution from another producer if you don’t have a substitute to suggest. If customers have ordered products that are out of stock, there are several ways to handle the situation. (A) “first come, first serve”, in which case, look at the SORT BY PRODUCT list because the orders are listed there in the order in which we received them. (B) You could contact the customer and offer a substitution, the customer contact info will be on your list of orders. If you have a limited quantity of an item, use the INVENTORY feature to limit sales to your actual inventory.
If your customer accepts a substitution, send an email to producer-care@bountifulsprout.com with the details of the substitution. We need to know the customer’s name, the product originally ordered (its product ID number), and the product you are substituting (its product ID number). Please state that the customer has accepted the substitution.
Please be prompt in completing these invoices, especially if you have an out of stock situation. If you do not have the product, other producers may have it available. Customers expect to be notified if you are out of a product or can’t deliver it, and you will preserve your customer relationship with them if you are prompt in telling them that you are out of an item so that they can order a substitute from either you or somebody else. Some customers are ordering most of their family’s food from the cooperative, and if an item is not delivered, and they are not able to order a substitute, then that creates a problem for them. Don’t alienate customers by waiting until the last minute to discover that you are out of a product.
Each time you add info for a random weight item, you must press update, so you do them one at a time.
Once you have entered any weights for random weight items, and marked any items out of stock, and updated each item (you can only update one item at a time), review the overall invoice. All your changes should be saved and all item prices should now be correct. If all the information is there, you should have a total dollar amount at the bottom of your invoice that reflects the amount that you will receive from TBS for this order, less TBS’s 8% commission. If this total (or any of the individual prices of items) is incorrect, please contact us right way at producer-care@bountifulsprout.com. In the subject line of your e-mail, put “Invoice Error” and your producer name. This needs to be resolved prior to delivery day because prices listed on this invoice also feed into the individual customer invoices. Therefore, if the prices we have for your products are wrong, we will not collect the correct amount from customers. Our ability to pay you the right amount is dependent upon our ability to collect the right amounts from the customer members.
While the order is open, you can lower prices on products, but you cannot raise prices. You can also add new products during the order period.
If you make a change to any product, it will not appear in the public list until TBS refreshes the product list. Email producer-care@bountifulsprout.com to have this done promptly.

How To Prepare Your Product For The Bountiful Sprout

Each order has a customer delivery code that tells us the information we need to know to get the products the customers ordered delivered to them. This code must be on each product or bag of products to be delivered to a customer, as explained in more detail in the rest of this section.

The steps to preparing your product for delivery are:

Package individual orders, label the product(s) properly. Orders are delivered packaged for individual customers. Do not deliver 50 pounds of bulk lettuce and expect us to divide it up between your customers for you. The order should be packaged securely.
If a customer has ordered several products from you, you can put all of those products in one bag, box, or container, or you can deliver them as separate items.
Each bag, box, container, or other product for a customer member must be labeled with the first and last name of the member receiving the product and their customer delivery code, the name of the producer, what the product is, and the storage (e.g. refrigerated, frozen, produce, eggs, non-refrigerated. You can use your own label or you can write this information on a box or container (but not on a plastic bag), or you can use the label documents we provide you at the membership page of our website. If you are making your own labels, all of the information on our labels must be on your label.
If you are sending products as separately packed items, use the individual product label provided in your member area. If you are sending all of the customer’s products in one container, use the “one label per customer” label set.
If you are sending a member’ products in several containers with more than one product for that member inside, attach each of the relevant individual product labels to the outside of that box.
Customer labels should not be on the outside of any box or container that contains orders for more than one customer. Those containers, bags, or boxes should be labeled with your producer name and the regional sorting hub or hubs with customer products inside.
You can put another label on your product, such as weight and price labels for frozen meats, your own unique producer label or tag, etc.
Make sure the ink you print your labels with is WATERPROOF. If you don’t use waterproof ink, if the label gets wet, we may not be able to deliver the product to your customer.
If you have some products which are frozen or refrigerated, and some products for a customer that are dry goods or otherwise non-refrigerated, they should be delivered in separate containers, and frozen and refrigerated items should arrive in ice chests. Frozen items must be hard frozen, and refrigerated items must be cold to the touch.
If you are selling eggs, they must be labeled “UNGRADED” and have your farm name and address on them.

Delivery Day Procedures

Delivery Day is always every other Wednesday and is noted on the home page of our website.
The producers are responsible for getting their properly prepared, packaged, and labeled products to the sorting location by 1pm on Delivery Day. If you have products that have been sold in multiple locations you need to get your products to your closest delivery site by 10am so that our routing person has time to get those items to our other sites by 1pm.
The producers deliver their products to the Delivery Day Sorting Site (16933 RR12 Wimberley, TX) or the soon to be announced Fredricksburg location.
In the event of a truck breakdown or family emergency that would prevent you from making it to delivery day on time, or if you are unable to make delivery to the sorting location, please contact your location Manager immediately by telephone.
When your products arrive at Delivery Day, our manager checks them in to make sure everything is there that is supposed to be there.
If an item that a customer has ordered is missing, we create a Missing Item Ticket. You will be charged $1 for each missing item ticket, plus TBS will still charge you the amount of commission it would have received on the missing items.

Problem Producer Procedure

The Producer Committee will work with producers to overcome problems, but when that fails, the following steps will be taken:

We will notify them in writing that they must submit a written plan telling us what they will do to correct the situation , and they will not be allowed to sell with TBS until we receive their written plan.
They are expected to make immediate improvement. The following order cycle, if their written plan is not followed and improvement is not made, we will notify them in writing again and their check will be withheld for one week.
If the same problems persist on the following order cycle, they will be suspended from selling, pending Board review.
The Board will then determine whether they will be allowed to sell through the Bountiful Sprout.