April GM Report
by Kenna S. Eaton
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.
April General Manager’s Report
Working Together to Nourish our Community
Market
About 31 weeks ago (yes, that was the stated lead time), we ordered a new cheese cooler to replace our outdated, leaking one. Now it’s here and is it ever big! There’s plenty more room for cheese and other fresh items that need to be kept chilled, plus snazzy night shades to help save energy. We’re still working to fine tune the shelving placement and fill it up. The first round of new items included several choices of fresh pasta and additions to our Violife and Miyokas vegan cheese selection to meet customer requests.
FYI—We’re hearing that olive oil imports are expected to be smaller than usual this year due to drought and fires in Spain and Greece. We will continue to work to find other great olive oils that meet our standards at a good price from both inside and outside our country.
Food System
We have fresh salad mix and baby spinach just beginning to come in from SpringRain Farm. Local greenhouse tulips from Lexi Mara Design have been in since late January, and now, what a delight it is to see more local flowers from Diamond Day and Red Dog Farm. We received a small selection of plant starts in mid-March from Midori and Red Dog Farms, with more deliveries coming each week.
Our newest Local 5 (Jefferson, Kitsap, Island, Mason, and Clallam County) item is a rose blush chocolate bar from Goodness Tea, located in Sequim, WA. Goodness Tea believes in creating a lasting impact in their community and on the environment. They began with a love of tea and a commitment to sustainability, sourcing all their ingredients from their own farm or as close as possible. Now they’ve added chocolate bars, which, while not made from all local ingredients, are made with Fair-trade organic cocoa, dates, and yacon syrup—plus rose petals for this newest flavor.
We also have a nice selection of canned fish from local boats—Smackdown, Katfish, and Cape Cleare. Recently, we added both Cape Cleare pink and silver salmon with their unique label artwork, and soon to come is Cape Cleare tuna ventresca. Ventresca is a cut of albacore tuna belly poached in oil giving it a rich, buttery taste. We also added Loki Fish (Local WA, Seattle) sockeye salmon in olive oil.
Thriving Workplace
We sure were pleased to offer four more internal promotions to staff during March and expect a few more in the upcoming months. We’re beginning to see the typical spring staff turnover, plus several staff retiring from co-op work life. We wish all those folks happy days wherever their paths may take them.
Environment
Our staff green team now has a charter and key roles identified. The team name is still underdevelopment, as are their plans for which issues to tackle in the coming year. I hear waste audits are high on that list and personally look forward to dumpster diving with them when the time arrives.
We’ve several plans for lighting improvement at the Co-op planned for 2024. First on the list was updating our smart lighting system to reflect the needs of operations. This program, installed in 2018 as part of our expansion project, was supposed to help us save energy but it hasn’t worked as we wanted. Now, two hours before dawn and dusk our exterior lights will automatically turn on or off. This may sound small but represents years of effort with programmers. The next phase of lighting upgrades are planned for inside the store, with no date set yet.
Outreach
Our Farmer Fund passes shopper donations through the Co-op to farmers in the form of grants and other programs, and we are thrilled with our members’ continued generosity, currently generating about $10,000 per month. In March, the Leader featured a long story about the funds granted to our local producers for 2023. And in April, the Peninsula Daily News also featured this program in their “Living on the Peninsula” magazine. We’re super pleased to get this recognition and excited to continue to build up these funds—our members are the BEST!
