Brown Bag Organics to offer vegetable delivery service for Sussex students

These are the 5-a-day saviours of your freshers’ flu


Brown Bag Organics are a newly rebranded vegetable delivery service in Brighton that delivers fresh fruit and veg to your door.

The student-run co-operative is here to stave off your kale yearnings and cauliflower cold turkey, all for less than a tenner.

The service is popular among Sussex students, offering a weekly organic vegetable and fruit box to be picked up at the Tuesday Falmer market.

If you feel like the fresher 15 is becoming more like 30, then it is probably high time you got some more veg in your life. We spoke to the team to find out more about their service:

So…what is Brown Bag Organics?

We were formally “Sussex Shoots”, we’re now going to be rebranded as Brown Bag Organics. We’re basically a cooperative service that brings fresh organic veg from the local area onto campus – for students to buy. It’s all fairly cheap because we’re all volunteers, there’s no funds going to us, what is put in is given back to the customers. That’s the basic premise of the society.

Are there many customers?

It is growing now, we’ve had a lot of members join in the past few weeks, and we’re trying to reach out to get more customers, because we feel like it’s a good way for environmentally conscious students to get fresh vegetables at a reasonable price. We usually get around £80 coming through per week from orders, from 10-15 regular customers.
How long has the service been going?

It started in 2013, but we are now all first years, so it’s going to be our spin on things really – we’re going to make it a bit more organised, a bit more professional. It used to be run by third years and was fairly disorganised, whereas we want it to be easier to use and hopefully more fun.

What do you offer?

We have three different sizes of box: the big box, the small box and the fruit add-on. It depends on what people are ordering really. It ranges from £2.00 to £5.00. It’s a creative way of doing things because you don’t know what you’re going to get in terms of vegetables until the day before you collect it. We also post recipes on Facebook for what you can do with the veg you’ve been given.

What is the weirdest vegetable you’ve seen delivered?

Sorrel, although that’s not too weird. Black radishes…didn’t know that was a thing. And something called Kohlrabi, I think it’s a Chinese cabbage…? It gets interesting, definitely.

Finally…what would you say to a student thinking about getting involved?

Competitive prices, it’s environmentally-friendly, and it is convenient because all the veg comes onto campus. There’s no need to worry about where to order it or anything, or needing to go out to the shops.

Even at the campus veg market, people think its local veg when in fact it’s not, it’s all imported…apart from the kale! I think it’s really nice knowing you’re buying from a local organisation. It’s better for our country too, because it makes us less dependent on other countries by producing your own veg.

Whether you like veg or not, having a student-run service that delivers a magic freshers’ flu cure can only be a good thing. Economically viable, non-profit, less colds. What’s not to like?

If you want your veg fix asap, contact the guys and girls at Brown Bag Organics on their Facebook page.