As I explained last time, filling our shopping cart with vintage Tupperware and thrift-store tins might prove we’re crazy, but there’s at least one element of buying organic food in bulk that’s decidedly sane. My favorite thing about shopping organic, and the absolute best-kept secret of the food co-op world, is the spice section.

Just like the grain, pasta, bean, nut and flour bins, our store (as well as most other co-ops and many natural food stores) has almost every conceivable herb and spice in bulk jars, tidily arranged in alphabetical order.

The idea is that you bring your own jars (or use the paper or plastic bags provided by the store; we bring old spice jars saved from our old shopping days, or discarded by friends and family), and pay only for the weight of the spice itself—not for packaging or branding. Just like with our other jars and tins, we mark each spice jar with the tare weight and PLU number, and fill ‘er up. This way, we only buy what we want—that’s great for spices we might only use for one recipe.

Reducing our amount of trash is only half of it—the real virtue of bulk spices is the price. To give you a little comparison, I compared the prices of what we bought at the co-op with what’s for sale at a conventional grocery store not far from our house. I’m comparing the co-op prices with non-organic spices at the grocery store, because not only is that what most people buy, but the sticker shock is crazy enough without comparing organic to organic!

Now, while I was researching this post, I discovered that grocery stores (including our co-op) are extremely touchy on the subject of price—carrying a camera with me must have made me seem like a secret shopper or something, because I had to answer to a co-op employee for what I was doing. So to protect their “anonymity,” I’ll just say that the local conventional grocery store has the word “Safe” in its name. Ha. (I have to say, though, that no fewer than twelve different employees there asked me if I was finding everything okay. Either jotting prices down with paper and pen and leaving empty-handed looked suspicious, or they were just very helpful folk.)

Anyway, here’s a snippet of our most recent co-op receipt. If you look closely at the per-pound price, the spices seem expensive—but look again. We paid $3.42 for 0.29 pounds (just over 4.6 ounces) of organic whole black peppercorns. A 4.25-ounce bottle of McCormick’s conventional (non-organic) peppercorns at the regular grocery store goes for $5.49. So we saved a little bit there, and got an organic product out of the deal.

Now for the real magic. Peppercorns are relatively heavy, so the price comparison to packaged spices isn’t spectacular—but take a look at some common powdered spices and dried herb leaves, like this organic parsley, priced at $18.69 a pound.

We paid 37 cents for that parsley—0.02 pounds or 0.32 ounces of it—and that jar is a reused McCormick’s jar (those fancy-branded glass ones). A slightly larger, 0.5-ounce jar of name-brand (i.e McCormick’s) non-organic parsley? $3.49. That’s $111.68 a pound! I don’t know about you, but to me that’s completely nuts. And let’s not forget that some herbs and spices, especially dried parsley, don’t stay fresh for long. We almost never get through our jar of parsley before bugs get in there (and they do, let’s face it). I’d rather have to waste 37 cents’ worth of parsley than three-and-a-half bucks.

How about some other examples? Let’s run down our grocery list.

Co-op: Organic thyme leaf, 0.05 lb (0.8 oz): $0.49, at $16.39/lb
Grocery store: Non-organic: $4.09 for a 0.37 oz bottle, or $176.86/lb

Co-op: Organic rubbed sage, 0.03 lb (0.48 oz): $0.82, at $16.19/lb
Grocery store: Non-organic: $4.59 for a 0.5 oz bottle, or $146.88/lb

Co-op: Organic rosemary, 0.06 lb (0.96 oz): $0.62, at $10.39/lb
Grocery store: Non-organic: $4.79 for a 0.35 oz bottle, or $218.97/lb (!)

Co-op: Organic whole bay leaf, 0.02 lb (0.32 oz): $0.39, at $19.29/lb
Grocery store: Non-organic: $3.39 for a 0.12 oz bottle, or $452.00/lb (!!)

Holy cow. Forget any debates about organic farming—let’s talk about highway robbery.

You can also buy many baking supplies,

or hey, even coffee and tea in bulk, if it floats your boat. (Tea will likely save you some money, but the various baking ingredients probably won’t. We buy our coffee and tea elsewhere, so I won’t get into that.)

And there’s one more juicy secret about the bulk section: liquids.

Not every co-op has this, but if you can find a place that sells bulk liquids (maple syrup, honey, extracts, vegetable oils, etc.—though I’ve never seen peanut oil in bulk, and I don’t know why that is), you’re golden. Buying maple syrup in bulk will usually save you a huge bundle, compared to those little glass bottles that can go for up to $30 a pint. This time we happened to stock up on vanilla extract (the real thing, not the fake stuff), so I’ll compare that to what the “Safe” grocery store has to offer.

Co-op: Non-organic (that’s all they have) vanilla extract, 4 oz: $1.96, at $7.84/pint (16 oz)
Grocery store: Non-organic vanilla, McCormick’s: $7.19 for a 2 oz bottle, or $57.52/pint
Grocery store: Non-organic vanilla store brand: $4.49 for a 1 oz bottle, or $71.84/pint

Deceiving Interesting that the generic store brand was more expensive than the name brand. They even had a 4-oz jug of organic vanilla for cheaper, at $9.99 a bottle ($39.96 a pint)—I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt, and tell myself it was on sale or something. Still can’t touch the co-op, though.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but if you’re wondering whether it’s worth the effort to buy spices in bulk, go ahead and bring a calculator the next time you go shopping. For us, it’s a no-brainer. The money we save every year on spices is plenty enough to justify the larger budget required for the certified-organic meat we buy—that’s the subject of the next post.

Thanks for all the comments and emails in response to the last post. One email asked how to find a co-op in one’s region; I did a little digging, and it seems like they’re all over the place. Visit www.coopdirectory.org to find information for hundreds of co-ops around the country, and even a few internationally.

Minnesota comes in first, with a staggering forty-one food co-ops (forty-two are listed, but the North Country Co-op went out of business a couple of years ago)—far more than both New York and California, the seemingly “obvious” states. We’ve got twenty-three here in Washington, and even tiny Vermont has fifteen. The only state that wasn’t listed as having a co-op is Alabama.

The fact that so many of these things (not to mention all the natural food stores and conventional markets with bulk sections) exist means that stores are listening to their customers, and providing more and more choices for all of us. I think that many stores depend on the fact that many people shop out of habit, simply trusting stores to have reasonable prices and healthy items. And co-ops face not only the huge marketing budgets and competitive tactics of corporate grocery chains (I don’t shop at Trader Joe’s because they moved in right next door to our co-op—eat it, Trader Joe’s!), but also the perception that organic always equals expensive. But between the variety of bulk foods now available and the heightened awareness of many shoppers armed with calculators, I really think this is beginning to change.

And that’s a heartening thought.