May GM Report
By Kenna Eaton, General Manager of the Co-op
Each month, I report to the board on how we are progressing on our long-term goals, which we call our Ends. These Ends reflect our aspirations—what we want to accomplish—and they are what makes us different from a regular grocery store. We publish these reports as a blog to keep our member-owners up to date on what we are doing.
The reports are organized by our five Ends, although not all are discussed in every report. Our Ends say that, as a result of all we do—
- Our community is well-served by a strong cooperative grocery store, integral to the lives of our customers, our farmers, and our producers.
- Our community has a resilient local and regional food economy, supported by our Co-op and our community partners.
- Our staff and board have the knowledge, skills, and passion to make our cooperative thrive.
- Our members and customers are proud to shop at a local cooperative grocery that is working to reduce its impact on the environment.
- Our community is informed, engaged, and empowered to join us in making a difference.
May General Manager’s Report
Working Together to Nourish our Community
Market
The kitchen maintenance project went ahead as scheduled. We closed the kitchen early Sunday evening April 9th and all food production moved offsite for the week, which worked well. We prepared a lot of customer favorites offsite, packaged them, and brought them to the store for sale. Unfortunately, the maintenance crew ran into a few challenges (nothing major, thankfully) which took longer to complete than planned, and we ended up staying closed for a second week. While many customers missed the hot bar, they were understanding about the need to clean and happy to have us re-open the last week of April.
We have eight new Co+op Basics on the shelf this month: three frozen pizzas, a balsamic vinegar, two whole-wheat pastas, cocoa powder, and a pickle relish. Currently, most can be found on the new-items shelf, then they will move to their regular shelves in the next few weeks.
For Earth Month, we featured two unique cleaning bars, Canary Clean all-purpose cleaner and a produce wash (you add the liquid!), from Sea Witch Botanicals, located in Bellingham. We’ve been purchasing from Sea Witch for over four years, and we also stock their incense.
Food System
Local 5 producer updates: New farm names, same great people! We’ll be creating new profile signs to adorn our walls and shelves to reflect the name changes happening at Finnriver. I mentioned last month that Finnriver Grainery had changed to Chimacum Valley Grainery. We’re starting to see label and packaging transitions in the products we carry. Plus we now have their bulk pasta! Stellar J Farm is the new name of the 15-year-old farming operation previously known as Finnriver Home Farm. Stellar J is launching into the 2023 season growing with their familiar mix of annual vegetables, blueberries, strawberries, apples, and chicken eggs.
Also, the local veggie starts (and flowers) from Red Dog and Midori are here, adorning our front entry way and making it feel like spring here in Port Townsend. FINALLY!
And we have a few new Local WA items—Loki Fish smoked pink salmon and Moon Valley Organics refill sizes of liquid soap.
Thriving Workplace
At the Food Co-op, we believe it is important our employees feel appreciated and valued for their contributions. Post pandemic, we’re finding a small backlog of work that needs to be addressed and fun that needs to be had. As a result, the Fun Committee is back hard at work, alongside our HR team, to ensure our workplace thrives. In addition, we recently refreshed our rewards and recognition program, so now it is even easier for employees to recognize and reward one another for great teamwork.
Keeping current on evolving “people practices” is another way we support our staff, so both our training and our performance review systems will be upgraded in the coming months.
Outreach
We celebrated Earth Month with the return of in-person composting classes, taught by Laura Tucker of the Jefferson County Health Dept.; the amazingly cool bags made from old Co-op banners (funds raised are going to PT Potential); Earth Day Beach Clean-up; and an Organic Wine Fest featuring La Riojana wines, exclusively available at food co-ops across the US. La Riojana, located in beautiful Famatina Valley, Argentina, is not only that country’s largest wine cooperative, it is one of the top 10 wine exporters and produces a wide variety of award-winning Fairtrade and Organic wines and olive oil.
The Food Co-op supported other events this month with donations to the Jefferson County Connectivity Fair plus various other types of support to local non-profit organizations, including the Community Build Project, the reopening of The Recyclery, and WSU Farm to Foodbank program.
