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.

December General Manager’s Report

Market Relevance

November is all about the last harvests of cucumbers and zucchini and the first harvest of the local squash. We ordered a full truckload of turkeys that arrived two weeks before T-day to ensure that our bird loving customers had a turkey for the table.

And in case you missed it, we won 1st place for Best Groceries in the PDN’s "Best of the Peninsula 2019”—we rock, and so do our staff!

Food System Development

In November, we saw a year’s worth of hard work pay off at the 2nd annual Eat Local First Trade Meeting. In collaboration with other key players in the local food scene, we invited farmers and buyers from Clallam, Jefferson, and Kitsap Counties, and over 100 people attended!  The Food Co-op was well represented with several buyers from the store who networked and made new local connections. While we had no new Local 5 items this month, Rodney reported some good possibilities from meeting with producers at this event. 

On the other hand, during the past month we brought in ten new Local WA items: five beers, three new cheeses, and two new sizes of raw goat milk. Our previous supplier of raw goat milk suddenly sold their goats, so we switched to St. John’s Creamery from Stanwood. The new cheeses to try are all from Ferndale: Ferndale Farmstead’s Asiago plus Twin Sisters Creamery’s farmhouse cheeses, plain and peppercorn. Our bulk frozen blueberries from Bow Hill quickly moved into our top 20 frozen items, keeping pace with our 2 and 3 pound bagged blueberry products. 

Thriving Workplace

The annual staff holiday party is scheduled for Sunday December 8, and we will be closing the store early to allow our staff to attend. While the holidays are a busy time of year for many of us, it is in line with our values (love, in particular!) to gather together and share, remembering a year of hard work and celebrating the results.

Wellness team member Kathy H. was recently promoted to the Wellness team leader position. In this new role, Kathy will be working with Laura S. to provide support and leadership for the team.

October 26th, the day before our annual staff meeting, we lost a dear friend and co-worker, René Tanner. René was an integral part of the Co-op for over 25 years, beginning as a volunteer, then a contractor, and finally as our facilities manager, overseeing the maintenance and repair of all of our four buildings and all the related equipment, such as refrigeration, cooling, heating, and everything in between. René was a key part our team and integral to ensuring that our recent renovation was a success, from helping design our transitional workspaces to building shelving at midnight to helping us learn how to take care of our new equipment—all done cheerfully and with kindness. He will be sorely missed for all those reasons and more.

Environmental Stewardship

This time of the year, we begin gathering our data points for our sustainability report. One item we recently calculated had to do with the metal display shelving in the grocery and wellness departments. For our remodel, we received two big orders of shelving (a smaller third one came later). Together, those two orders weighed 16,819 pounds. Although some of our old shelving was re-purposed in the back rooms, there was also some ancient shelving up in our storage unit. We guesstimate that we gave away at least 10,000 pounds of shelving to other Co-ops or businesses, with the remaining 5,000 pounds going to the metal recyclers. And this number didn’t include the approximately 33 pallets, each weighing 50 pounds (1,643 pounds total), that we either gave away with the shelving or to anyone who wanted the wood.

Outreach

We shared our love of food with kids in our community by sending Chef Sidonie out to teach cultural cuisine at Blue Heron Middle School as part of a four-part cooking series. In addition, Chef Sidonie and Mindy collaborated with the Port Townsend Public Library to provide a food inspired Paint and Sketch class for kids.