From: the General Manager

By Lindy Bannister

We were having a conversation the other day about how you say the year: is it 20-10? 2000-10? The year 10? Regardless, it's hard to believe that another year is upon us.

I guess I'm more interested in other questions, like what differences will we see? Will economic pressures affect our business? How will shopping patterns change? What new classes should we offer? What will affect our farmers this year? Will our members continue to see the value in paying for our commitment to families and farms? What sets us apart from the other places people shop? What warehouse programs can we start to further help small producers get their products to market? We are so fortunate to have a retail store that remains strong in sales and in profits— this allows us to pursue answers to these questions.

These past few months have seen your board of directors working hard on strategic planning for our future. Our goals are well defined as the board and operations move forward together. We'll be talking about this more in the coming year.

A few in-store changes are coming that you can look forward to. Yes, we are going to move some products around. Now before you get ready to call me to say you don't like change, let me explain. All the changes are focused on making shopping more convenient. We've realized that some parts of the store were set up primarily for ease of stocking, which resulted in product placement that don't always make sense to our shoppers. Take hummus, for example. We carry several varieties of hummus by the juice bar, but if you want to buy the incredible Wedge Deli hummus, you need to go back to the Deli case by the milk and get it off the top shelf. And consider Organic Valley Cream Cheese. Do you see it with the other Organic Valley products in the milk case, where you'd think it would be? No, it's by the meat case, because that's where the rest of the cheese is. And while it seemed sensible, once, to put canned tuna across from the fresh seafood case, we will be moving it to Aisle 3 with other packaged products. Look for a new refrigerated case across from the juice bar. Soups, salads and sandwiches will move next to the juice bar. Would it make your lunch purchase easier and quicker if you could ring it up at the juice bar? Would you to buy your muffin or scone with your coffee, instead of making two stops to do that? Yes and yes? — you've got it!

There will be other changes, because as you can see this creates a sort of domino effect, but there will be plenty of staff on hand to help you find things; we're dedicated to making this as painless as possible. Believe me, we don't always like change either, but in the long run this will work much better for everyone. We look forward to completing this by the middle of February — we'll keep you posted.

There are other things to look forward to as well. Look for a pizza section by the cheese case, where you'll be able to pick up our Deli's awesome take-and-bake pizzas, or find all the fixings to make your own. We're even going to package up some of that special pizza sauce they make in the deli, and get you fresh, organic, bakehouse-made pizza crusts.

We're hoping that these changes will make you smile this winter, and as always, we welcome your feedback.