General Manager’s Blog

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.

August General Manager’s Report

Working Together to Nourish our Community

Market Relevance

During the height of the pandemic, customers shopped less often but bought more during each shopping trip to the Co-op. Now, as more people have been vaccinated and the county has relaxed the rules about how many people could be in the store at a time, we’ve returned to smaller “baskets” (how much people buy per trip) with more trips to the store. This trend has been reinforced by the return of the hot bar, as more members stop in to buy freshly produced food from our kitchen.

Food System Development

I’d like to share an example of how of supporting the local food system, even in small ways, helps local producers grow. For a couple of years, One Straw Ranch has sold their CSA of pasture-raised meat and eggs at our facilities shop on Sundays. At first this was available only during the winter months, but as they grew, they had enough product to sell to us so their meat and eggs were available in the store all week long. Now they have another big change coming, with their CSA pickup being moved to Saturdays in Uptown, closer to the Farmers Market. This means at the Co-op we will receive our meat and egg orders one day earlier every week.

We have several interesting new items and vendors this month:

· Sweet Seed Flower Farm in Port Townsend is bringing us flowers. For the last few years, they have been growing flowers for a CSA and other direct sales.

· Raincoast Farms from Port Townsend has sold us produce in the past. This year you can also find one variety of their hard cider.

· Local Goods from Orcas Island is providing us with three varieties of specialty pasta, made with traditional bronze cut dies.

Thriving Workplace

For some fun and yummy staff appreciation, we had a (surprise) Thai lunch in early June, then cooling popsicles on that super-hot weekend in late June, and we are planning for more fun food-related activities this summer. Feeling hopeful, we have secured the Maritime Center for a holiday gathering for staff on December 12th.

We have 14 new hires this year and currently have 9 open positions, including Grocery Manager and an Accounting Manager to lead our finance team. Applicants are fewer than usual during this challenging hiring climate. We are offering a free day of PTO as a signing bonus and a similar benefit to staff who make successful employee referrals.

Environmental Sustainability

Last month we mentioned that the compostable meat tray we have been using was no longer being manufactured so we would be switching to a foam-based tray. Since then, though, we have been using the rPET (recycled plastic) trays and they appear to be working well, though they are a little bit more expensive than the commercially compostable pink trays we used previously.

Outreach

We have been facilitating some cool giveaways this year, including a paddle board, a hammock, and a pretty sweet BBQ basket. Last month we gave away a $200 Visa Card from C2O Coconut Water, ‘cos who doesn’t love FREE money. We also ran a social media giveaway for #plasticfreejuly, where we encouraged people to pick up trash on the beach and tag us in order to win a Food Co-op branded water bottle.

One thing to be super proud of is our voter turnout for the board elections! We used a new platform called Simply Voting which allowed us to engage with people who hadn’t yet voted. We also pledged to donate $1 to the food bank for every vote. As a result, we had 744 people vote in this year’s election and donated $744 to the food bank. YAY!