Boulder Food Exchange is a group of about 6 people who live in and around Boulder, CO. We each bulk meal prep a large meal and portion it into 32-oz mason jars. Then on Tuesday nights we meet to swap our jars. Everybody leaves with their food for the week. Then throughout the week all we have to do is warm up our already done homemade meals. It’s a big time saver for me and it’s definitely the wholesomeness highlight of my week. I want to credit Riyah Thor for coming up with this shape for community.
The swap has been going on for about 4-5 years, happening every week except around major holidays when much of the group is traveling. We took a break during covid and then started back up with masks for a bit.
If you live near Boulder and are interested in joining hmu.
What I love about this group on a meta level is that it’s a positive sum social game. Everyone makes a batch of food but because we chose to organize we now have taken the work that everyone was going to spend on themselves individually, distributed it, and exchanged it into something that we all benefit more from. We all have a variety of healthy food ready to go for the rest of the week, we get to feel loved by others by receiving the gift of their food and creativity, we get to regularly give a gift to others, we get to grow our culinary abilities each week, and we get to build beautiful relationships with people who show up for community, good food, and positive sum world building.
I contributed the shape of this social game to Metalabel’s Collaboration Cookbook. Super cool to participate in this collaborative library with them.
If you’re interested in starting a food exchange of your own, please reach out to me. I love helping folks seed their own groups and I have a clear process with more details than whats in the Collaboration Cookbook that I’m happy to share.