Kitchen Kaboodle
By Kenna Eaton, GM
It’s a little surprising to think that our expansion was completed almost four years ago, when, as you may recall, we added a large backroom to house coolers, back-stock shelving, a staff break room, and a new staff bathroom. We were able to expand a little inside of the store as well, redesigning the layout to make better use of our limited space, creating wider aisles, and adding a seafood/meat department plus a hot/cold salad bar. Those changes were awesome and are still much appreciated. But one of the tasks we weren’t able to do at that time was update our kitchen. We re-arranged the layout and added a couple of big food tools, but we didn’t shut down food production to tend to some important basics. The pandemic further postponed this work, but now it is time to give some love to the kitchen, to make it a better, easier-to-clean workspace for our staff.
This critical maintenance work will require us to close the kitchen for a week, and we can either stop food production completely during that time or we can move food production off site. We have chosen to do the latter, so we can keep feeding our people. It’ll be complicated for sure—frankly just thinking about it makes my head ache—but our staff really want to keep on preparing their great food, so we’re going to try to make it work.
When will this happen? We currently have scheduled it for the week after Easter, if we can get the stars to align. We plan to serve Easter dinner at the hot bar, but the kitchen will stop production Sunday evening around 7 pm, two hours earlier than usual. Plastic sheeting will then be installed behind our service counter (to contain any dust), and maintenance and repair work will start right away. Our best guess is that we can return to the kitchen the following Saturday, after the Health Department approves us to reopen.
What will this mean for you, our hungry shoppers? The worst part is we’ll have no hot food for almost a week. The best part is we will still be making our great salads, many of the cold foods you find in our big case, baked goods, sandwiches . . . and so on. Really, the list is quite large. I, for one, am super impressed with our team, who have spent months thinking, plotting, planning, and getting Health Department approval to make this complex plan work, so we could both improve our kitchen and feed our community.
What about our staff? Some staff will use the time for a well-earned vacation, while others will help produce food offsite. You will also still see staff in the deli making sure you can find your favorite food items and brewing coffee. Some Food Services staff may even work out on the sales floor, gaining a new perspective on our co-op.
What else can we say, except “Thanks for your patience and Go Team!”?!
