How It Works

A refillery is a store where you bring your own container and fill it from a bulk supply. There's no pre-packaged bottle to throw away - you take exactly what you need, pay for what you take, and go home with zero extra plastic.

The Purple Wheel is a mobile refillery: instead of a fixed shop, our team loads up a van with bulk products and brings them directly to neighborhoods, farmers markets, and community spaces across Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.

Almost any clean container works:

• •Mason jars and glass containers of any size

• •Old shampoo bottles, pump bottles, and dispensers

• •Reusable bags for dry goods like grains and flour

• •Any food-safe container with a lid

The container doesn't need to be new or pretty - it just needs to be clean and dry before you fill it.

To keep products clean and safe, we can't fill:

• •Cracked, chipped, or damaged containers

• •Unwashed containers (anything with residue, mold, or strong odors)

• •Containers not rated for the product type (e.g. a water bottle for laundry detergent)

If you're unsure, rinse it out and let it dry completely before bringing it. When in doubt, bring it clean and we'll take a look.

Tare weight is the weight of your empty container. Before we fill anything, we put your jar on the scale, note its weight, and subtract it from the final total. That means you only pay for the product inside - not the glass.

So if your jar weighs 0.4 lb and you take 1 lb of oats, you pay for 1 lb of oats. No surprises.

Everything is priced per pound, per ounce, or per fluid ounce - posted on a board at the popup. You decide how much to take. There are no fixed sizes.

You pay at the end, once we've weighed your filled container and subtracted the tare. The pre-order estimate on the website is based on the amount you requested - the actual price may vary slightly depending on how much you take.

You're always welcome to walk up at any popup - no reservation needed. Pre-ordering just means your products are set aside and measured out before you arrive, so you skip the queue and get in and out faster.

Pre-orders close 24 hours before each popup. After that, walk-up only.