I've been using spices like they are going out of style, especially for baking, pickling, lacto-fermenting and other things for the garden. The spices at the store are horrendously expensive, and we don't have a local spice outlet or bulk place.

I saw on a blog that someone mentioned a spice company in California they order from, called San Fransisco Herb, sfherb.com. They mentioned there was a discount at a certain price level, and that their church went together to put one big order so the discount would pay for the shipping.

I decided to see if I could get a big order together. I had 3 people at work interested, and 10 facebook friends (including a sister, my MIL and GMIL) go in with me.

I just placed an order worth $1,011! Holy cow.

There was a discount of 15% if over $500, and the shipping went down by $95 compared to if each person had bought by themselves.

I entered each person's order into the website to get their shipping charge, then when I finished the order, I gave them back a discount on the shipping proportionally to what theirs should have been.

I'm keeping the discount amount ($128), cause I had to do all the work to tally everything up. That will actually pay for all my spices, so once I get paid by everyone, I will get about 16 pounds of spices for the cost of keeping track of things on a spreadsheet And making the payment and waiting to get the money, of course.

I think this would be a great fund raiser for schools, at least for schools that aren't close to a bulk spice provider.