As you may be aware, if you’ve been to GBCompost.com lately and seen our subscriber count, been keeping an eye on our Instagram account or Facebook page, or seen us on the news recently, we have experienced explosive growth as a company, especially in the last month or so (and of course, we have our subscribers to thank, in large part, for this).

In the last month alone, we have signed up about thirty new subscribers, and we have also held our first Annual Pumpkin Drive, which saw us visit over 90 different households and save several tons of pumpkins, gourds, straw bales, and corn stalks from getting tossed in the trash. Furthermore, since we started taking on subscribers on 8/4/2021, we and our subscribers have kept well over two tons of organic waste out of landfill!

To summarize: Together, we are making a very real, positive, and sizable impact on our community! And we all deserve a round of applause for this.

That said, as has been the case with many other small and local businesses in the last year, we have also seen explosive growth in our costs to operate our business, most notably in the area of our food safe, five gallon buckets and the gasoline required for us to do our Bucket Swaps/Compost Pickups (as well as, to a lesser extent, with regards to our bucket lids, the stickers for our buckets and lids, the compostable liners we put in every bucket, and even our utilities, such as the water we need to clean our buckets each week).

Due to the massive growth of our subscriber base, which has grown from 16 to 72 in less than four months, we have also necessarily upgraded the vehicle we use to perform our Bucket Swaps/Compost Pickups from a vehicle that can fit a maximum of 19 buckets at one time to one that can fit over 60.

These concerns, combined with feedback we have received from our subscribers over the past several months, consideration of the market we operate in, and an analysis of our profitability, have led us to conclude that we have been undercharging for our services and that for us to not only stay in business but to continue growing and expanding, we will need to increase prices for our Curbside Compost Pickup Service plans.

That said, we are sensitive to the fact that we are in the middle of the Holiday Season right now, and so being that we are not wanting to spring any price increases on our subscribers or our Greater Green Bay community right before Christmas, our planned price increases will not become effective until January 1st, 2022 at Midnight.

Currently, our prices for our Curbside Compost Pickup Services are as follows:

• Every-Other-Week, Month-to-Month Plan: $10/month
• Every-Other-Week, 6-Months-Paid-in-Full Plan: $54/six months
• Weekly, Month-to-Month Plan: $20/month
• Weekly, 6-Months-Paid-in-Full Plan: $108/six months
• Add-A-Bucket Option (for Weekly plan subscribers only): $10/month
• Special, One-Time Pickup (for Every-Other-Week subscribers only): $5 one-time payment

Effective 1/1/2022, our prices for our Curbside Compost Pickup Services will be as follows:

• Every-Other-Week, Month-to-Month Plan: $15/month
• Every-Other-Week, 6-Months-Paid-in-Full Plan: $81/six months
• Weekly, Month-to-Month Plan: $30/month
• Weekly, 6-Months-Paid-in-Full Plan: $162/six months
• Add-A-Bucket Option (for Weekly plan subscribers only): $15/month
• Special, One-Time Pickup (for Every-Other-Week subscribers only): $7.50 one-time payment

PLEASE NOTE: If you’re already on one of our Six-Months-Paid-in-Full plans, you are locked/”grandfathered” in to your current plan at the price you originally paid for it, at least until it renews at the end of your six-month subscription period, whenever that may be, at which point you will be automatically renewed at the new price for your plan detailed above (unless you cancel or otherwise change your plan with us before then).

If you’re on one of our Month-to-Month plans, you will not experience a price increase until your monthly renewal date in the month of January, 2022, whenever that may be.

These price increases will address a few issues we’ve determined to be hurting our profitability and putting us at risk of going out of business:

1. They will ensure that we are adequately compensated for every trip we make to our subscribers’ homes, regardless of how many Sundays/Pickup days occur in any given month
2. They will better reflect the value of our services and the actual work that goes into doing what we do (not just the Bucket Swaps/Compost Pickups, but everything else in between that makes our business work as well)
3. They will better reflect the fact that we are the only Curbside Compost Pickup Service in the Green Bay metropolitan area (with the next closest being in Stevens Point, Madison, or Milwaukee)
4. They will take into account the Rewards Programs we offer our subscribers (which we were not offering at the time we set our current prices, and which is something most companies like ours do not offer)
5. They will provide us the ability to invest in the things we need to invest in to grow, such as, for example, more or bigger compost sites (or facilities), employees/contractors, etc.
6. They will keep our prices in line/competitive with what similar companies, such as Waste Not in Chicago, Illinois, charge for their services (with these other companies, in many cases, charging quite a bit more than we do, even accounting for our new, 2022 pricing)

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us via email at gbcompost@gmail.com, by phone at 920-819-0446, or through our Contact form located at www.GBCompost.com/Contact. We are always here to help and look forward to continuing to serve you in the months (and hopefully years) ahead!