FAQs

How it works

The quick guide

1. Create an account.

2. Choose your fruit, veg and groceries just like in a real life store.

3. Select your delivery date.

4. Check out, then dive into our recipes!

Want to chat with our customer service team?

There are lots of ways to reach us.

Our Contact Us page is here.

Ordering

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Delivery

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Payment

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Other

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Most Frequently Asked Questions

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Most common questions

We deliver all over Melbourne between 9am-7pm, and accommodate workplaces within inner city suburbs with our 9am-5pm delivery window.

We’ll give you an approximate 2 hour delivery window, a link to track your order and a delivery confirmation via SMS.

Note – Specific delivery instructions can be very helpful for our drivers. Do you have a side gate, key code or special request? Keep us up-to-date in your profile!

You can choose the day of delivery (Mon-Sat) but not the time. This helps us keep our energy use and transport costs to a minimum.

Folks can edit all existing orders (add or remove items, delete orders, change the date) up until cutoff – 7:00pm the day before delivery.

To add items to an existing order, add items to your cart and select the same date and delivery location as your existing order, then ‘checkout’ as usual. You will not be charged the delivery fee again.

To view or edit an upcoming order simply go to the My Orders tab when logged in.

Receiving a box of fresh organic food and groceries on your doorstep can be a truly beautiful thing. Did we mention we deliver chocolate?

Our downloadable gift vouchers are available for purchase here. Gift vouchers are valid for 3 years from the date of purchase.

Alternatively, send a Fair Food delivery through your own account by temporarily changing your delivery details. Or set up a new account in their name (and hand this account over to them if they loved the present!).

We’re more than happy to remove a printed invoice from a delivery and tuck in a personalised message – just get in touch with us via email at info@ceresfairfood.org.au by 4pm the day before delivery and we’ll help you create a beautiful gift.

Yes we deliver our full range to offices and workplaces! A number of inner city suburbs fall within our 9am-5pm delivery window. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

A great trick for workplaces: create a recurring order to place 6 weeks of orders at one time. Easy!

If you are having trouble with online ordering, please feel free to call or email us and we will happily assist you as best we can.

If you have any quality issues please contact us promptly and we will happily resolve it with you. We may be able to redeliver, or provide a credit or refund.

Ordering

Order cutoff is 7pm, the day before your delivery. So if there are available delivery spots and you order before 7pm, we’ll get it to you the next day!

To make it easy, the calendar at check out will always show the next available delivery day.

You can place up to six regular recurring orders at once to be delivered weekly or fortnightly.

Before adding an item to your cart, tick the “Recurring Order” checkbox below the item price. Once you “add” the item to your cart, you will get the option to choose how many orders and how frequently you want them. Repeat this for each item you add to the recurring order, and make sure the total cost of each individual order reaches the minimum order spend of $40.00.

Once you’ve checked out and paid, all of your recurring orders will appear on your profile under My Orders > Upcoming Orders. You can edit each order as you need to until midday, the day before delivery.

You can cancel your order (or any items in your order) up until the usual cutoff time – 7:00pm* the day before your delivery. You can do this through the My Orders tab on your profile. The cancelled order value or item value will be added to your Fair Food account balance as store credit. To request a refund to your card, please contact the Customer Service team

An order cannot be cancelled once it has been packed and is on the road for delivery.

A $10 cancellation fee will be charged to your account if your order is cancelled after the cutoff time.

Bakery items (baked to order) will also be charged to your account if your order is cancelled after the cutoff time.

*Items with unique cut off times (eg bakery, island home), can not be cancelled after those set times.

Order as frequently or as infrequently as you like. You could create a recurring order, set up a future order (for after the holidays, say), or just jump online whenever you need.

Yes we have a $40 minimum for all orders.

You sure can!

At Fair Food you can choose exactly what you want, and how much of it you need, just like a real life grocery store. Minimise your food waste and love everything you see when you open your delivery!

We also offer a selection of seasonal set boxes. The weekly selection for each box is listed on our What’s in the Box page. PLEASE NOTE: substitutions cannot be made to these seasonal boxes, and contents may vary slightly.

Our fruit and veg are grown by many hands, on farms big and small. This includes certified organic and biodynamic farmers, as well as small scale market gardeners, urban mushroom entrepreneurs, even keepers of backyard lemon trees – all working together to create a diverse and thriving local food network.

Our wholefoods and grocery products come from businesses who are as local as possible, and who we believe are making smart choices for the future – on our grocery shelves you’ll find organic ingredients, circular packaging systems, and non-toxic products backed by ethical business standards we respect.

Individual product information is included in each product listing.

Read more about our Growers and Makers, our Buying Policy, or find out more about certified organic produce.

It sure is! Our organic fruit and veg growers do not use any chemical solutions, such as Apeel or Edipeel, to extend the shelf life of their produce. You can be confident of natural, chemical free food grown and harvested without nasty pesticides and chemical additives.

IPM farms encourage and protect beneficial insect species like ladybirds that control insect pests. These farms are not organic, though they employ organic techniques such as crop rotation and green manuring. These strategies ensure that IPM growers use fewer chemical sprays than conventional farms.

We’re keen to support farmers growing food in a more Earth-friendly way than traditional conventional practices and want to ensure our community has the best options available for their budget when grocery shopping. Find out more about IPM here and here.

This box includes a unique mix of fruit and veg sourced from select farmers who practise IPM (integrated pest management), and the same organic produce that you’ll find in our other Fair Food boxes. The box contents will vary depending on seasonal availability – check our weekly What’s In The Box? for more details.

Get started with Fair Fizz by simply adding a New cylinder to your cart. Alternatively choose a Fair Fizz Trade In to swap a differently branded C02 cylinder with a new one from Fair Fizz. Remember to leave your empty out to be collected by our drivers*.

Once you are rolling with Fair Fizz, refill for $10 by adding a Fair Fizz Refill to your next order and leaving out your empty for our driver to collect*. A freshly filled cylinder will be delivered in its place.

*If you do forget to leave out your empty cylinder, we’ll still deliver your fresh fizz! Our customer service team will simply be in touch to resolve the price difference.

Our Fair Fizz C0₂ cylinders are compatible with all soda water makers, excluding Sodastream Quick Connect machines. 450g CO2. Makes up to 60L sparkling water.

We try to offer a great range of products with low or no gluten, as well as dairy free alternatives. However, our warehouse is not an allergy free environment and we encourage you to read the ingredients listed for each product before purchasing.

Products packaged in our warehouse may contain traces of nuts.

Deliveries

Our driver will leave your order in a safe location at your address. Please include any specific details or requests in the delivery instructions.

Refrigerated items arrive chilled in a returnable cooler box.
A confirmation text is sent once your order is delivered.

We deliver Monday – Saturday

We deliver to households right across Melbourne, six days a week.

Use our handy postcode finder to see if we deliver to you.

We are an entirely online delivery service. All our Fair Food groceries are delivered directly to your front door, with free delivery for all orders over $75.

Other CERES enterprises do offer real life shopping – Joe’s Market Garden have their farm-gate market every Saturday morning and the CERES Grocery and Bakery are open 7 days.

We offer free delivery for all orders $75 and over.

Our delivery fee is $8.95 for orders under $75.

A $1 packaging levy applies to every delivery.

Your contribution helps us to provide a full range of plastic free, compostable and returnable packaging that is future focussed and used many times over. This includes our cardboard boxes, eco-cello bags and insulated coolers and pouches.

Together we can deliver fresh quality groceries with circular systems that reflect our values and vision for a fairer future.

– A $1 levy applies to every delivery.
– ‘Recurring orders’ paid upfront will include a $1 levy per delivery.

Packaging is one of our biggest energy loads so we want to reuse all our packaging as many times as we can.

You can help us make a huge difference by gently flattening your Fair Food boxes, and leave them out for our drivers to collect on their next visit.

All cooler boxes, insulated envelopes, freezer packs (that’s the water bottles) and any other cardboard boxes are all collected for reuse, so don’t forget to leave them out for us wherever your order is dropped off.

Any returned cardboard that’s worn out will be recycled.

You can find detailed information on our current packaging practises here.

Thank you!

We deliver all our refrigerated goods in our Fair Food envelopes and cooler boxes, which are packed inside our cool room and delivered cold. These include returnable frozen water bottles.

We collect our packaging for reuse, so please leave out all envelopes, cooler boxes and water bottles for us wherever your order is dropped off. Our drivers will collect them next time they visit (along with flat packed cardboard boxes!).

Over 2020 as we locked down and opted for the safety of a home delivery, our fifty Food Hosts went predictably quiet. Through the ongoing restrictions and changes, Food Host collection never really recovered and in June 2021 we closed our remaining Food Hosts to focus on providing the best home delivery service we can.

Food Hosts and what they represent are a defining part of CERES Fair Food’s story, and we are deeply thankful to all our hosts who have given their time and shared their homes, offices, schools and businesses to help thousands of us access our groceries over the last eleven years.

Payment

If your payment fails at checkout simply contact us as soon as possible and we will do our best to have your order reinstated.

Orders are finalised and payments processed at cutoff – 7pm the day before your delivery is scheduled. Once processed, your invoice will be emailed to you!

Click Pay Now to process your order in full. It’s your only option if you have a single order on your account. Pay Now can also process multiple future orders – we will charge the full amount to your credit or debit card now.

Alternatively, Pay As You Go will process your payment for the coming week only. You can choose this if you have multiple orders, are creating a recurring order, or adding to an existing order. All Pay As You Go payments are finalised at 7pm the day before delivery. You can add or delete items up until this time. Go to My Orders to edit your selection.

You can pay for your order through our secure website using a credit card or debit card.

Sorry we don’t accept AMEX, PayPal, Bank Transfer or cash.

Other

If a particular variety becomes unavailable, we’ll substitute it for something similar to be sure you’re not left without. And we’ll always notify you by email. We might need to send Nicola potatoes for Dutch Creams, for instance.

If an item becomes completely unavailable on the day (due to a farming emergency, weather event or supplier difficulty), we will credit your Fair Food account for future purchases.

Store credits are applied automatically next time you shop – they can be seen in your cart before you checkout or viewed in your profile as an account balance. All monies going in and out can be seen in your Payment History. Our store credits are instant and always ready for your next purchase but of course, we can process a refund to the bank card used for payment upon request. This can take 3-5 business days depending on your bank’s processing times.

To redeem your gift voucher, simply use the voucher code in your cart at the time of checkout.

You can use your voucher amount over multiple orders.

CERES members receive discounts at many of the social enterprises on the East Brunswick site, however we are unable to offer a further discount here at Fair Food. We work hard to provide affordable organic groceries, with savings passed on to all our customers.

100% of our profits (yes, all of them!) are used to support CERES – a place to fall in love with the Earth again.

Well hello, we’re so glad you found us. Fair Food came to life in 2010 and we’re more excited than ever to do what we do. Jump over here to read more about our story!