The Boulder grocery that charges you for the jar
Nude Foods Market sells groceries in returnable glass and keeps fifty cents a jar for washing it. The economics of a shop with no packaging.
On Walnut Street in Boulder there is a grocery with no packaging aisle, because there is no packaging. Nude Foods Market sells produce, staples, dairy and prepared meals in returnable glass jars, and the whole business turns on what happens to the jar afterwards.
How the jar works
You rent it. Each jar carries a fee of $1.50. Bring it back, to the store or to the delivery driver, and you get a dollar back. The shop keeps fifty cents, which by its own account covers washing it for the next person.
That fifty cents is the honest part. Most zero-waste retail hides the cost of reuse inside the price of the food. Nude Foods puts it on the receipt, and then offers a way round it: a membership called Nude Foodie, at $15 a month, waives the jar fees and takes ten per cent off selected items. The shop’s own arithmetic says a household filling twenty jars a week comes out well ahead.
Returns in store go into black bins by the checkout, and you tell the cashier how many you brought. The refund comes off the bill or sits as store credit.
What it sells
Organic produce, pasture-raised eggs, lactose-free milk, tortilla chips, pierogies, energy bars, and weekly meal kits. Over forty per cent of the products are sourced locally, the shop says, and a good share of the shelf is Colorado makers.
Bananas were a dollar a pound when I looked, avocados a dollar fifty each, eggs ten dollars. Boulder prices, in other words, not a premium on top of them.
Delivery, once a week
The store delivers on Tuesdays to Boulder, Gunbarrel, Louisville, Lafayette, Niwot, Superior and parts of Denver, for $7, on orders placed by noon on Monday. Pickup in Boulder is free on Monday and Tuesday afternoons. There is a second store on West 44th Avenue in Denver. Both are open every day from ten to seven.
Weekly rather than on demand is a choice, and it is the same choice as the jar: the route runs once, the jars come back on it, and nothing is driven twice.
The claim, and the caveat
Nude Foods says it has avoided the creation of more than 1.5 million pieces of plastic. That is the shop’s number, not an audited one, and the how it works page is the place to read the terms before you count on it.
What can be checked from the outside is the model. A deposit high enough to bring the jar back, a fee small enough to be fair, and a delivery loop that closes on itself. If you are in Boulder, it is at 3233 Walnut Street, and the jar is the reason to go.