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 refreshed 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 Relevance

Sales continued to be strong during the first four months of the year, with food services and wellness picking back up to pre-pandemic levels. The supply chain also appears to be in recovery mode, and we were excited to bring in our first order from KeHE (a natural and organic foods distributor) in late April. We’ll be focusing at first on bulk—looking to fill gaps, reduce costs, and possibly find some cool new items.

Given the recently updated CDC guidelines regarding sanitization (we don’t need to do it quite as often) and current staffing levels, we are implementing some operational changes over the next few weeks. We will no longer staff the entrance to the bulk room. New signage asks shoppers to continue to follow the guidelines we put in place a year ago—leave your cart outside, wash hands & mind the gap—but the chain and bell will be removed. Additionally, we will no longer staff the north door, nor separate carts into clean/used. Instead, shoppers may clean their own carts if they wish, although we will still give the carts a good disinfection at the end of the day. Other small operational changes, such as no longer separating clean/dirty pens, will also be implemented.

Many members enjoyed the four free items—bacon, butter, beef, and cheese—available this past month through a joint coupon program with Co-ops across the country. The Synergy cheese, only available at co-ops, is a unique collaborative effort between Cabot Creamery (a co-op) and the NCG (a co-op of co-ops). Now that’s a great example of cooperation! We were then able to extend the great deals by offering a “Buy One Get One Free” deal on Tillamook butter, Applewood bacon, and Synergy cheese while supplies lasted. In the last two+ weeks, we have sold 25 cases of cheese and over 60 cases of butter.

We had two Member Only Deals in April: 1) Buy 3 Local 5 plant starts, get one free (when sales more than doubled from the previous week), and 2) Save 15% on all personal care.

Food System Development

So far in 2021, we’ve added four new Local 5 vendors – Deep Harvest Farm, Saltwater Seeds, Olympic Rainshadow Farm personal care, and Two Crows Bakery. This month another new vendor joined us, Forest Elf Farm from Port Townsend, bringing in tulips with more flowers to come. Also new, a Local WA snack from Ferndale arrived, Moon Cheese in three flavors. We always have several new Local WA beers, especially from our two more locally focused distributors, Orcas and Browar Polska.

Chimacum Eggs were new in 2020. Even though we had them set up as a vendor in 2019, we didn’t get product until last May. And due to retirement, we have several vendors who are no longer producing: Lamb Farm Kitchen, Joy Farm, Mozaic Gardens, White Lotus Farm—all small produce suppliers—and Seed Dreams.

Thriving Workplace

In mid April we welcomed Carolyn Pedersen as our new HR manager. Coincidently, we also added an Administrative Assistant position to our administration team and brought on Lila S. from Wellness to help us in this new role. As Admin Assistant she will be helping all teams at our Clay Street offices, with a focus on Finance and HR to begin with, but later helping other teams as needed. Welcome to both new staff members—we’re looking forward to working with them to help improve our support to all staff.

Environmental Sustainability

Our biggest facilities project of the year began in late March—re-roofing our store. The roofers did their job quickly and competently, in about four weeks. We’re looking forward to seeing the improvement with the next rains! The skylight will be missed, but the store is not as dark as I expected. Regardless, we are embarking on a re-lighting project that likely will take us a few months to design and install.

Outreach
We wrapped up another year of partnering with Jefferson Healthcare and the Jefferson County Farmers Market on the VegRx program, designed to increase the consumption of vegetables and fruits for families with children who qualify for Apple Health. In our third year of offering this program, we saw a 250% increase. And finally, for Earth Day we gave the first 50 customers free Food Co-op reusable bags to increase awareness about and use of reusable bags.