thrive market: wholesome organic food delivered to your doorstep (US)

So I got a note about Thrive Market in a newsletter I got a few days ago and I thought how perfect for our permies and homesteaders who live in rural areas that don't always have access to good, organic food. And also, it's cheaper than it is in actual grocery stories, especially the little stores in small towns.



What is Thrive Market?

Thrive Market is the first socially conscious online store offering the world's best-selling natural and organic products at wholesale prices. They carry over 2,500 of the highest quality food, supplements, home, personal care, and beauty products from over 400 of the best brands on the market, all delivered straight to your door at 25-50% off retail prices. Their mission is to make health living easy, affordable, and accessible for every American family.

CLICK HERE to register for 25% off and a $25 kickback to permies.com!





Why did they start Thrive Market?

Call us radical, but we believe that the ability to live a healthy lifestyle shouldn’t depend on income level, geography, or any other arbitrary barrier. Whether you’re a corporate executive or an elementary school teacher, whether you live in on the upper westside of Manhattan or in a small town with no local health food store, we think you and your family should have access to healthy, wholesome, and non-toxic products at or below the price of their processed, artificial, and often toxic alternatives. That hasn’t been the case for a long time in this country and we wanted to do something about it.

CLICK HERE to register for 25% off and a $25 kickback to permies.com!
ooh! also permies get $10 dollars off their first purchase!



Why does Thrive Charge an annual membership fee?

Like Costco, Netflix, and NPR, Thrive Market is a membership community. By paying the equivalent of just $5/month ($59.95 annually), your membership fee makes it possible for us to search high and low for the best healthy products, buy them directly from suppliers, and combine our buying power to bring them to the Thrive community at 25-50% below retail prices. This allows us to sustain our mission to make healthy living universally accessible.

CLICK HERE to register for 25% off and a $25 kickback to permies.com!



Is the membership financially worth it?

In our humble opinion, absolutely! At average discounts of 35% to retail, with just $110 worth of purchases on Thrive Market, you will have made back your initial membership fee. That means that if you’re an average American family of four, buying just 25% of your monthly groceries at Thrive Market will pay back your membership fee in under one month. Just as importantly, your paid membership will sponsor a free annual membership for a low-income family. That’s free access for an entire year to healthy, wholesome products at prices lower than their highly-processed, unhealthy alternatives.

CLICK HERE to register for 25% off and a $25 kickback to permies.com!



What kinds of products does Thrive Market carry?

We’ve curated the Thrive Market catalog to include each of the top products from hundreds of the leading natural products brands across categories like cooking ingredients, healthy snacks, nutritional supplements, natural home goods, and bath & beauty. What you won't find: 115 different varieties of almond butter stretching down an aisle as far as the eye can see. What you will find: over 2,500 of the most popular natural products from the very best brands - brands that exude the values of health, sustainability, and premium quality.

Savings Guarantee

If you don’t make your membership fee back in savings by the end of the year, we’ll automatically give you the difference in Thrive Market credit after you renew.*

For example, if your membership fee was $60, and you only saved $40 in the year, we will automatically add a $20 Thrive Cash** to your account after you renew.***

CLICK HERE to register for 25% off and a $25 kickback to permies.com!

I've been watching this company grow from the ground up, via the Facebook posts of its founder. 4 years ago, I first learned about permaculture through a workshop at a festival called Ecotopia, which was hosted by the founder of Thrive market in Ojai, CA. It's been great to watch the birth and growth of this company, based upon the ethics of permaculture. It's also been great to see the amount of support there is for a business like this, and the huge demand for their products shows how many people care about good food. It seems this company is growing like a weed, and permies love weeds!

It's cool to see this in the daily is email, I'm glad the permaculture community is connecting to support each other. It also makes me wonder what other permaculture based businesses are just waiting to shoot up like weeds.

Would someone please pass the word on to the Thrive Market people that I clicked on the link to see the foods that they offered and got a sign-up page. I would like to see what they have and then decide on whether it is in MY interest to sign up. The idea of signing up for a free month to see what they have and then have to opt out later if it is not for me is a PITA. As much as the Thrive Market idea looks like something I might be interested in, this process already shines a bad light on the company.

In my mind this is deceptive marketing. If a company is willing to do deceptive marketing what other deceptive things are they willing to do?

I can't even find a contact button on their site. It is sad that I get such a really bad felling about this company when I'm interested in their products.

I just signed up for the free month. It didn't take any payment details or anything, just an email address, which they didn't even verify before letting me in to see what they have to offer. Not that I'll be ordering anything as I'm not in the US, but just as a heads up...

I signed up and placed an order!

They have avocado oil mayo that I can't find through my other sources, and fermented cod liver oil, too.



FWIW, I logged out, then used the search bar for "mayo" and it pulled up the mayo options and prices without being logged in. A boxed popped up asking me to log in or register, but I was able to close it out easily and keep going.

Also found a sugar-free fish sauce, too!

Just as an FWI - My wife did sign up for one of their free trials. At the end of the period she felt their site would not work for us and asked them to unsubscribe us. There is/was no way to unsubscribe from the site it's self and you actually had to contact someone there to do it. They said "sorry you want to unsubscribe here we will give you another month." To which she said "no thanks." They signed us up anyways and then charged our credit card at the end of that period (with no/little notice). It took her a week to get them to refund the money.

Bernard Welm wrote:Just as an FWI - My wife did sign up for one of their free trials. At the end of the period she felt their site would not work for us and asked them to unsubscribe us. There is/was no way to unsubscribe from the site it's self and you actually had to contact someone there to do it. They said "sorry you want to unsubscribe here we will give you another month." To which she said "no thanks." They signed us up anyways and then charged our credit card at the end of that period (with no/little notice). It took her a week to get them to refund the money.

Hi Bernard! I am so sorry that you were charged despite contacting us to cancel. It was definitely not our intention to charge you for a membership that you did not want and we will be looking into why this situation transpired. We have expanded our member services department tremendously to reflect our growing member base so we hope that you will feel confident in knowing that your requests will be handled much more quickly in the future should you choose to return to Thrive Market!

Mike Schroer wrote:Would someone please pass the word on to the Thrive Market people that I clicked on the link to see the foods that they offered and got a sign-up page. I would like to see what they have and then decide on whether it is in MY interest to sign up. The idea of signing up for a free month to see what they have and then have to opt out later if it is not for me is a PITA. As much as the Thrive Market idea looks like something I might be interested in, this process already shines a bad light on the company.

In my mind this is deceptive marketing. If a company is willing to do deceptive marketing what other deceptive things are they willing to do?

I can't even find a contact button on their site. It is sad that I get such a really bad felling about this company when I'm interested in their products.

Hi Mike! This is Michelle from Thrive Market's Member Services team. Thanks for checking out Thrive Market! You do not begin your thirty day free trial until you decide to place your first order with Thrive Market so you can browse for free before purchasing for as long as you'd like. We only use your email to send you coupons and information about our products and you can opt out of receiving them as any time. You can find our contact information here: https://thrivemarket.com/contact-us. We hope that this will make your decision to shop our selection easier!

I'm enjoying poking around more on Thrive today for our second order. The first order arrived packaged beautifully, by the way! I appreciated the care they took in wrapping the glass bottles of mayo (with paper-based stuff, not plastic!).

Speaking of mayo, the Primal Kitchen folks have a store on Amazon, but it's not eligible for Prime shipping, so you have to pay shipping. Plus, it doesn't look like they allow selling the mayo separately - it seems to be paired with other Primal Kitchen foods.

Found out the little tins of sardines (wild, in olive oil) are cheaper on Thrive, even singly, at $2.35 each, than on Amazon $2.686 ea in case of 12. That's $4.04 less per case of 12.



Also did a quick price check on one of our staples, Thai Kitchen organic coconut milk. It's $2.15 per can on Thrive (as a single, no need to buy a case) whereas Amazon is $2.32/can when buying a case; and Azure is $2.275/can when purchasing a case. Which is $1.50 less per case than Azure.



IMHO, the fat seems richer/creamier in the Thai Kitchen brand than other brands I've tried.

So if we're consuming a case each sardines and coconut milk per month (reasonable, for even the two of us, believe it or not) that's $5.54 savings just on two items, or $66.48 per year. That's more than the membership fee! And, it's delivered to our door, which means less trips to town and less schlepping groceries in and out of the car.

Happy over here!

Oh, Paul asked me how quickly they shipped. I ordered Sunday, May 24, received a notice it was shipped Monday, May 25, and received the box Friday, May 29.

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:Also found a sugar-free fish sauce, too!

By the way, I meant a fish sauce that does not contain sugar, no sugar substitutes either; just anchovies and sea salt. I have been unable to find this in my local stores.

Red Boat fish sauce - $6.45 for an 8.45 oz. bottle.



Maybe some day I'll get brave enough to ferment my own fish sauce. Or maybe not. Until then, this one makes me far happier than all those others that contain cane sugar (why?).

I was able to look this up without logging in, too.

Is anyone else having a hard time unsubscribing to this service? My free trial is to expire in 2 days, and I cannot utilize the service much yet (autoimmune food issues). I tried to cancel using the email they had on their site to cancel memberships, and I received a message that the email is not monitored. So, I tried to call, but got a message about their open hours, which I was calling during, but never got through. I left a message on their site about these issues, but never received a response. I simply cannot find a way to get through to Thrive! Any ideas/help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Tiffany Morris wrote:Is anyone else having a hard time unsubscribing to this service? My free trial is to expire in 2 days, and I cannot utilize the service much yet (autoimmune food issues). I tried to cancel using the email they had on their site to cancel memberships, and I received a message that the email is not monitored. So, I tried to call, but got a message about their open hours, which I was calling during, but never got through. I left a message on their site about these issues, but never received a response. I simply cannot find a way to get through to Thrive! Any ideas/help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I think posting here is a good tactic, too, since they have been following this thread responding here.

I did finally get a response from Thrive (whew), so my faith in the company has been restored. They must be having some growing pains, since some of the instructions on their site and some of their email addresses are unresponsive. Anyhow, I likely will renew my subscription with them, when I can begin food reintroductions next year. For now I am sticking with fresh veg, a bit of fresh fruit, and some meats, which Thrive doesn't deliver. Still, I found their selection pretty great and priced well. Thanks.

Tiffany Morris wrote:I did finally get a response from Thrive (whew), so my faith in the company has been restored. They must be having some growing pains, since some of the instructions on their site and some of their email addresses are unresponsive. Anyhow, I likely will renew my subscription with them, when I can begin food reintroductions next year. For now I am sticking with fresh veg, a bit of fresh fruit, and some meats, which Thrive doesn't deliver. Still, I found their selection pretty great and priced well. Thanks.

Hi Tiffany- I am so sorry that you had difficulties getting through! We recently introduced a new contact us page to make it easier for members to reach out to us with requests (found here: https://thrivemarket.com/faq) so emails to our old address will be returned with links to the FAQ page after August 1st. In the mean time, we have been receiving both emails and requests through our FAQ, which is making our response time a little longer than usual. We will be able to get back to you within 24 hours again soon. Thank you for your patience and we look forward to you rejoining Thrive in the future!

Does it seem odd to anyone else, that a Thrive representative is monitoring this forum, and addressing the issues one by one, trying to maintain a good face in the presence of a large number of readers?

I ordered and their stuff came on time in good condition, but I did not extend beyond the trial period. I did not find a lot that I wanted there, and ended up buying a lot of dishwasher detergent to get to the free shipping minimum. If something - email- does come in from Thrive, it's been marked as spam, so I don't know what might be arriving.

My opinion is that the issues reported here to the permies community should be attended to through their business model software and customer service employees for ALL users. That their representative is here answering factual reports I take as a warning that all is not well with Thrive's execution of their corporate mission, and they may be just one more green washed aggressive marketer wolf in sheep's clothing.

I've heard Paul talk about corporate trolls, and this seems similar to me. Their rep is getting paid to come on here and counter every negative report with an apology and addressing the particular issue reported. Just trying to keep a good face on things. Is Thrive too busy stomping alligators to drain the swamp? IE rectify the corporate strategies that are generating the bad reports?

I'm glad some folks have enjoyed their service, but I'm not one of them.

Thekla

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Does it seem odd to anyone else, that a Thrive representative is monitoring this forum, and addressing the issues one by one, trying to maintain a good face in the presence of a large number of readers?

I personally asked one of the thrive people to have someone come here and address the issues permies users were having in this thread.

Ah, good call Cassie, and thank you for that. I just hope they are doing something beyond taking care of the permies crowd who came to them because you passed the word to us.
Thekla

It's true that Thrive sells packaged foods for less than you can pay locally. So if you buy enough packaged food that the annual membership costs pencil out for you, Thrive is definitely worth it.

The key word here is packaged/processed. If you are looking for bulk foods, you won't find them here.

i will say the customer service with Thrive is awesome.
we received an email back in ~ 7 mins on a weekend about an issue we ran into.

they fixed everything with no questions asked.

On my last order with Thrive, if you ordered over $79, they gave you a free 15 oz jar of Nutiva organic coconut oil! I thought that was cool.

Then, in addition to the affiliate fees, we received this thank you box for all the sign ups through this thread. Thank you Thrive and thank you permies!!

The picture is a good example of how they package things. Any glass jars or bottles are wrapped in that paper webby-looking stuff underneath the jars in the right side of the box. I've ordered a lot already and things arrive in great shape!

And you know, there's just something about an actual thank you gift, that isn't money, that still is super fun to receive.

Michelle Harley...

Since I'm having no luck unsubscribing on line or through the phone number they say to call, I thought I would try permies as 'issues' seem to get answered here fairly quickly, at least two years ago when this thread began?  Apparently others as mentioned above had some of the same challenges I'm facing today.

I signed up for the free month and ordered some things...quick delivery and very nice quality, etc.  There just isn't that much that I need or want from the catalog though, so wanted to drop my free membership well before it runs out.   Apparently we still can't do that on line.  I did send a message on line but there was no place to send something specifically to drop the free membership and I got a robot like answer saying someone might get back to me sometime.

 I liked this business and would promote to others although now I'm just feeling annoyed.....

EDIT... my suggestion would be then, for wonderful public relations, to allow folks to drop their membership just as easily as they picked it up

Membership dropped by email...perfect.  The site still says that you have to call a phone number to drop but apparently sending a message to a random one of the subject choices for 'contacts' works also...there is no listed option for 'dropping' online, just that of a phone call.  

I would recommend their products and service to anyone who is buying those sorts of things anyway....prices are good, delivery is prompt.

I'm so excited about the new curated, clean and affordable wines at Thrive!



If you want to look at the prices and offerings, and you sign up through this Thrive Market affiliate link, you get 25% off your first order and permies.com gets a $25 kickback!

Btw, Thrive did have some growing pains at the beginning, which seem to have smoothed out. Paul and I order from Thrive every month, some times a few times per month, because they have the best prices on foods that fit our limited diet choices, including foods that are difficult to find elsewhere. Their shipping has gotten speedier as well.