Oh, my goodness, the excitement!  You wouldn’t think making a bulk order would be such a big deal to someone like me who’s been making orders like these for years!

To back up, I thought this order would have happened right after getting here.  Before moving to Israel I learned about a bulk baking supply company, and took their phone number with me in order to place an order as soon as we got our phone line hooked up.  The woman I spoke to, upon hearing that I lived in the northern part of Israel, suggested I contact one of their suppliers in the north, and order directly from him to make things easier for me.

Great idea, I thought!  I got on the phone right away with him, but he didn’t seem to think selling to me was such a great idea at all.  No problem – I’ve convinced a few sources who usually only sell directly to stores to sell to me, and so even though this was in Hebrew and there’s a definite gap between my English and Hebrew fluency, I set to work to convince him as well.  He finally agreed after two or three weeks of conversations, and I happily placed my first order.

My happiness was premature, however, since he called a day later to apologize.  He told me he really wanted to find a way for it to work for me to order with him, but since I wasn’t registered as a business, the computer system was rejecting my order since my identity number is linked to a private person – and he was only allowed to legally sell to businesses.  Oh, shucks.  I couldn’t find a way to get around this, aside from finding a business that would be willing to tack on my order to theirs, but I don’t yet have the connections to make this possible.  So there went that idea.  (Someone since suggested that I register myself legally as a business, which might be an idea worth looking into but will take a lot of legwork and time in government offices.)

At the same time, I was negotiating with a different store to sell to me in bulk, which they agreed to do but they hadn’t told me what the discount would be for buying in those amounts.  I literally spoke with five different levels of management about this, getting referred to a higher up each time, and it’s clearly the first time anyone spoke to any of them about this.  But I finally lost my interest in continuing to persist, since the top guy kept telling me to call him in the few days, and then he’d be in a meeting or not have the numbers in front of him or whatever.  I still have his number for a time when I have nothing to do but but repeatedly call until I get a final answer.  (I don’t think this will happen – when I lose interest, I move on – I don’t have time and energy to waste.)  So there went that idea.

Then I thought to arrange a bulk order locally from the first place that’s far away, and to split the gas costs to pick it up.  There was only lukewarm interest in the idea, and later I realized that to do something like this, you first have to teach people how to buy in bulk, how to store in bulk, how to split orders, how much money can be saved.  It was too much work to get this together with other people, so finally I decided to make my own order.

Dh rented a car to go pick this up, and between the rental cost and the gas cost ($8 gallon), it really decreased our savings.  But there were a couple of things that justified it because I can’t get it locally at all (eg palm shortening) so we felt it was necessary by this point.

So three months after arriving, we got our first bulk order, and it literally felt like old times!  My kids were shlepping all the bulk bags up and asking me where to store things, and it was so something that our family does, and it was a nice heartwarming feeling.  For me, anyway.  🙂

It doesn’t seem like so much when it’s written down, but in the little rental car with three kids along for the ride, dh was hard pressed to find a place for everyone!  Here’s what I got:

• 60 kg palm shortening
• 12 kg chocolate chips
• 5 kg cocoa
• 5 kg shredded coconut
• 5 kg baking powder
• 25 kg baking soda
• 25 kg oats
• 25 kg sunflower seeds
• 25 kg coarse salt
• 10 kg powdered sugar (for dd17)
• 1 kg garlic powder
• 2 kg cinnamon
• 1 kg cumin
• 2 kg sweet paprika
• 1 kg oregano
• 1 kg curcum (sorry, I don’t know if this translates to curry or tumeric, if someone knows please clue me in)

I like having what I need on hand and not running out!, and I really like paying 25 – 50% or less of store prices!  The challenge is always where to store things, which in much more compact Israeli apartments is definitely a legitimate issue.  (This is where I think doing a shared bulk order is a win-win; people get the cheaper price but don’t have to store large amounts of food.)   Initially I was surprised that with food costs so high, Israelis don’t seem to think of buying in bulk or getting lots of things when they’re on sale, but it seems the space constraints as well as the ‘buy it fresh the day you need it’ mentality don’t lend themselves to bulk buying.

Avivah