I am very health conscious and thrive on all things that involve routine, so you’d think that taking vitamins for me would be super easy. But I’ve always been terrible at it. I can never figure out which ones to take or seem to keep up with taking the ones that I buy. Insert: Care/of!
Full disclosure, it took me awhile to become a Care/of fan. I tried their service out last year right before my trip to Africa and that threw my whole schedule off so I kept forgetting to take them and then I couldn’t remember what I’d selected in the quiz or if I still felt like my lifestyle fit the same vitamin routine. But a few months ago, I decided to try again. It was around the holidays and I knew I needed to get my butt in gear for the new year.
The first time I tried, I was referred by someone, so my box was basically free. When it came to paying for it myself… I wasn’t too keen on spending quite that much on vitamins. Couldn’t I do it cheaper by buying the bottles myself? But then, would I really take them? Was it worth it? Insert: the Care/of rewards program: carrots! Now that I’ve been using it for a while and earned my way to an affordable way to use their service, I am hooked! Here are all my tips, tricks and things I’ve figured out along the way.
What is Care/of?
Care/of is a mail order vitamin company that sends you a monthly shipment of personalized packets (one for each day). When you first sign up, you take the quiz and they help you figure out which vitamins work for you.
Each pack comes with a daily quote, challenge or encouragement. I was thrilled that one of mine came with a quote from one of my favorite poets. The packets come in a decorative paper box that you can use as a dispenser for your packs each day.
Carrots: The Basics
“Carrots” are Care/of’s currency for rewards.
There are basically just two ways to earn “carrots” – you can refer friends and you can use their app to track your vitamin habits and earn rewards as you go.
How To Earn Carrots by Referrals
The first one is easy, refer your friends and get rewards once they sign up. The deal they are offering at the moment is “Send your friend $40 off their first order and you get 8,000 carrots”. It works out that you are basically sending your friend a free month of vitamins (depending on what they choose) and you get enough credits for a $10 credit off your next box. It’s also almost enough to add a free vitamin to each of your packs the next month – that costs 10,000 carrots. After you’ve referred a few people and gotten to a balance of 25,000 carrots, you can donate prenatal vitamins to someone in need which is a lovely charity component. There are a few other things to choose from, but those are my favorite rewards.
Sometimes they do a bonus where you can earn more for referring someone. Recently they did one for double the carrots, so I earned 16,000 on my last referral.
How To Earn Carrots by Using the App
The second way is to use their iPhone app to track your daily vitamin intake and earn carrots for streaks. For example, in the screen shots below, you can see that after I completed a 6-day streak of taking my vitamins, I earned 1,000 carrots. If I’d skipped a day, I’d loose the streak. After I earned the reward, my balance changed and a new streak started for me. Once I’ve done another streak of 2 days in a row, I’ll earn 700 carrots.
It varies a bit as to how much you can earn and how long the streak will be. You can see what you’ll earn by clicking the carrot icon at the top. You can see what you can redeem for by clicking on the carrots balance in the top right corner.
How to Earn a Free Box
The cost of your box is determined by the vitamins you select. So you may need a different number of carrots than I do to earn a free box.
My current box costs $25, so I need two $10 coupons (8,000 carrots each) and one $5 coupon (5,000 carrots) for a total of 21,000 carrots. However, since I am a deal hunter and I had enough carrots for three $10 coupons, I decided to do that instead. So I spent 24,000 carrots on three $10 coupons and now my next box will be free and I’ll have a $5 balance off a future box. Don’t worry, I double confirmed with their support team that the credits will roll over 🙂
What else do I need to know about the app?
In the app, you’ll also be able to see your next box: what’s in the shipment and when it will arrive. You can also click over to your profile to see vitamins suggestions and update your quiz so that you can stay up to date on what makes sense for you to be taking.
If you have not tried care/of yet, I’d love for you to use my link to sign up. As you can tell, I’m obsessed with earning carrots and getting free vitamins 🙂
Has anyone else tried Care/of? Do you like the service? Have you earned any free vitamins yet? Let us know in the comments!