To accommodate these improvements, we will no longer be carrying a number of products that do not sell well. Our revamped product selection will more accurately reflect our customers’ shopping desires and their requests for a product line that is primarily natural, organic, and free of hormones and antibiotics. We are listening!

To accomplish these changes, over the next few weeks you will notice 50% OFF CLEARANCE stickers throughout the store on selected items. These products will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis. All sales of these items are final and will not be refundable.  Co-op members are the first to learn about this opportunity, but all our shoppers will receive the clearance prices!

Thank you for shopping Boise Co-op! We look forward to continually improving as your favorite locally-owned natural foods grocery store.

For the month of February, the Co-op Vitamin Department is offering special member pricing on our Ascenta line of NutraSea products.  If you’ve considered incorporating a dietary supplement into your wellness regimen, adding an omega-3 oil would be a smart one to start with.

Rachel Davis in Vitamins loves her some fish oil

If you’ve been paying any attention to trending health stories over the years, you’ve undoubtedly learned that foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids are good for you.  And while the juxtaposition of “good” and “fats” may seem oxymoronic, omega-3 fatty acids are essential for optimal health. Omega-3 must be provided by our diet, since it is not produced by our bodies.

EPA and DHA are the active forms of omega-3 required by our bodies to perform vital functions that include:

• Promoting cardiovascular health
• Reducing inflammation
• Supporting mental focus & cognitive function
• Supporting positive mood & emotional well-being
• Promoting brain, eye, & nervous system health
• Supporting healthy immune system function
• Enhancing the appearance of skin and hair
• Promoting optimal fat metabolism

As impressive as the above benefits may be, a deficit of omega-3 is equally impressive on the “not so good for you” side. In fact, a decreased amount of omega-3 relative to omega-6 in our diet results in an increased risk of degenerative disease.

Unfortunately, a number of dietary habits, such as the widespread use of vegetable cooking oils (omega-6), industrial milling, and the decreased consumption of fish (omega-3), have contributed to an omega-3 deficiency, or imbalance, in the diets of many North Americans. As compared to the ancestral diet of Neo-Palaeolithic humans, omega-3 consumption has dropped 20 fold from a daily intake of 3.0 grams down to a meager 0.15 grams. At the same time omega-6 consumption has increased dramatically, far exceeding the recommended daily intake. Conversely, experts generally advise that we consume more omega-3 and less omega-6.*

Among the fish oil brands that we carry in the Co-op Vitamin Department, we are featuring one in particular this February: the Ascenta line of NutraSea oils. We carry 6 different formulations of NutraSea. They include a basic version with balanced EPA and DHA, NutraSea +D (added vitamin D) NutraSea hp (a 3:1 concentration of EPA to DHA for healthy mood and enhanced concentration, joint and skin health, and inflammation), a concentrated DHA version recommended for pregnant women, and a formulation designed for children. Ascenta even makes a vegetarian version with omega-3 not derived from animal sources.

During the month of February, the Co-op Vitamin Department is offering special member pricing on our NutraSea products. If you’ve considered incorporating a dietary supplement into your wellness regimen, adding an omega-3 oil would be a smart one to start with – and with our Ascenta line, you can even tailor its benefits to your specific needs.

* The above nutritional information is sourced from the Ascenta website.

What exciting changes are in store the upcoming Boise Co-op remodel?

Ben Kuzma, General Manager

Boise Co-op conducted several customer surveys over the last year and we are taking action on many of your suggestions. It was clear that shoppers would like to see a number of changes to the Co-op while keeping it alive and healthy. In response to our shoppers’ feedback, we are going to make some modifications to the store layout to enhance the shopping experience. Suggested changes include more room in the Deli with an expanded menu, café style seating, and an easier shopping experience with a less crowded store and improved lighting.

To accommodate these requests and improvements, we will no longer be carrying a number of products that presently do not sell well. Our revamped product selection will more accurately reflect our customers’ shopping desires and their requests for an improved product line that is primarily natural, organic and free from hormones and antibiotics. We will also be eliminating narrow aisles and bottlenecks throughout the store by reducing and updating our shelving and fixtures. We want our shoppers to know that we are listening!

What changes are specific to the Deli? Will the menu change?
The Co-op is responding to shoppers’ requests for a more open Deli that is easier to shop, with an expanded menu of basic to gourmet natural foods. In response to shoppers’ specific requests, the Deli will now feature a hot and cold self-service food bar, and at least three types of soups daily to choose from along with other hot entrees created by our talented chefs.

In addition, our sandwich choices and salad selection will be even greater and we will have a new self-serve antipasti bar with marinated olives and vegetables. We will continue to have one of Boise’s best cheese selections with the addition of a service counter for special cheese requests and cuts. The new layout will result in a more open, attractive and expanded selection of great food for our shoppers!

Will more seating be available for shoppers to eat their meals here at the Co-op?
In response to feedback from shoppers, we will be creating more of a café-style seating area in the store, while keeping the front window seating bar. This will allow more people to eat their breakfast, lunch or dinner on site rather than having to take it ‘to go.’ Also, shoppers with small children will be able to sit down at a table and enjoy their snack or meal in a safe and more relaxed atmosphere.

As many shoppers may be aware, our lunch hour is very busy and we want shoppers who may be on a tighter lunch break to be able to experience a faster turn-around for their sandwich, soup or salad, and also have a place to relax while eating their lunch. Of course, we will continue to provide hot and cold selections on a “to go” basis if desired.

Finally, we will expand our special sandwich, platter, special order and catering options to accommodate the growing demand for this delicious service. We are very proud of our Deli staff and want our shoppers to know that we are committed and eager to provide great service with an improved layout.

What other exciting improvements do you see for the Co-op store?
We are looking into the option of moving the greater part of the pet food department to its own storefront next to the Boise Co-op Wine Shop. Our customers have come to expect a greater selection of pet products with larger quantities available, and this new store will address this growing need. We will still carry a limited quantity of pet supplies in the main store for customer convenience. This move will allow the added space for café seating and new restrooms for our customers.

Our housewares and non-food products will be better merchandised. The flow of customer traffic will be greatly improved as will the layout of products. Brighter lighting will allow shoppers to read product labels and easily find their favorite items. The overall result will be a brighter, cleaner and friendlier store that will allow our talented staff to share their product knowledge and provide the best customer service in Boise.

We will keep our members and shoppers aware of the timeline of these changes, which will happen over this next year. Our goal is that your shopping experience be undisturbed as possible while we complete these improvements. We want to thank you for shopping Boise Co-op and we look forward to continually improving as your favorite locally owned natural foods store.

Jake Erickson and "friend"

Jake Erickson is pleased to be known as “The Urban Chiropractor,” which is the name of his downtown Boise practice, but he’d just as soon you not call him “doctor.” “That implies diagnosing and putting together a treatment plan,” he says. “I think of what I do as being more about health maintenance – about turning your power back on.”

Jake’s view of chiropractic falls in line with his overall approach to health care as a holistic combination of nutrition, fitness, and healing “from above down and inside out.” From his perspective, this approach has always been at the heart of his profession, which he feels has been somewhat perverted by the health insurance industry.

“When health insurance started accepting chiropractic, the focus shifted to treatment,” he says. “Diagnosis and pain alleviation fit the insurance model for compensation, but focusing on symptoms and their cure simply doesn’t take full advantage of the broader benefits of this discipline.”

What Jake instead chose to do with his own practice was to develop a service model based on unlimited visits, generally involving a few minutes of adjustment per session, in exchange for a fixed monthly fee – a model much closer to a health club membership than a health care visit. While the current cost of this service plan is $69 a month, The Urban Chiropractor’s rate for Boise Co-op members is just $49 a month.

Located at 416 S. 8^th (8th & Myrtle) in the Drake Cooper Building, The Urban Chiropractor opened its doors in July 2011. By eschewing the more traditional medical insurance/compensation model, Jake is able to focus on what he refers to as “old school chiropractic” – methods based on the intrinsic health benefits of freeing up nerve pathways – it’s an approach that also creates a simpler practice model. Patients can drop in at any time during office hours with no waiting room, paper work, X-rays, or prescribed treatment regimen. “I don’t claim to diagnose or treat, I clear up pressure on the nervous system and let the body do the rest,” Jake says.

Born in South Dakota, Jake first experienced the world of chiropractic while in college, where he played fullback for the South Dakota State University and University of Sioux Falls football teams.  It was a team chiropractor who initially inspired Jake to pursue chiropractic, but it was his visits to chiropractic offices that convinced him that the profession had broader health consequences than treating pain.

Following his graduation from chiropractic school in Minneapolis, Jake chose to practice in Boise for the same reason so many people come to the City of Trees: quality of life. “I’m not a big city person, and I like to hunt and cycle, so I just fell in love with Boise when I visited here during chiropractic school.”

Nearly three years on, Jake hopes to add to Boise’s quality of life as its “Urban Chiropractor.”

What makes the story of teff so fascinating is the fact that aside from the Great Riff Valley of Africa, the center for its cultivation just so happens to be located in southwest Idaho.

I love to point out local products to Boise Co-op customers. Depending on where in the store I encounter our shoppers, the objects of my enthusiasm could be grapes from Ron Mann, salsa from Amigos, coffee from Full Circle Exchange, grass-fed beef hot dogs from Homestead Natural Foods, or soap from Dr. Susan. When you buy from more than 180 local and regional suppliers, you’ve got a lot to love at Boise Co-op…if you love local.

One of my favorite local products to introduce customers to is an ancient grain that you’ll find in Aisle 2 of our store: teff — which we purchase from (appropriately enough) The Teff Co. of Nampa.  About the size of a poppy seed, teff grains come in a variety of colors, from white and red to dark brown. Its history traces back thousands of years to the ancient civilizations of Abyssinia and beyond. With a physiology that can withstand high heat and bright light, teff thrives even in unpredictable and difficult climates, and historically has been cultivated predominantly in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where it has long been the staple grain of those countries’ diets. Ground into flour, teff is used to make injera – a flat, pancake-like, slightly sour bread that complements the exotic spices found in Ethiopian food, as anyone who has enjoyed the cuisine will attest.

Some other interesting teff trivia, while we’re on the subject:

• Eragrostis tef borrows its name from Greek, meaning “the grass of love,” — from eros (love) and agrostis (grass).
• For its survival, teff uses a type of photosynthesis called Carbon 4, which developed early in the ice ages and allows teff to be most efficient in temperatures as high as those of the human body, in contrast to wheat, whose optimal temperature is 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
• One pound of teff can produce up to one ton of grain in only 12 weeks. The amount of seed required for this yield is hundreds of times less than that required for planting wheat. This productive potential and minimal time and seed requirement have protected Ethiopians from hunger when their food supply was under attack from numerous invaders in the past.
• Three thousand grains of teff weigh one gram – a testament to teff’s small seed size.

All of the above would certainly be enough to make teff an appealing, if not exotic, grain choice for everything from gluten-free baking flour to a hot breakfast cereal. But what makes the story of teff even more fascinating is the fact that aside from the Great Riff Valley of Africa, the center for its cultivation just so happens to be located in southwest Idaho. And for that, we can thank a former Peace Corps volunteer turned public health expert turned teff advocate and agricultural entrepreneur: Wayne Carlson.

Carlson grew up in Southern California – long enough ago, he points out, to witness what he describes as “the transition from commercial agriculture to urban development that was in progress after World War II.” Carlson went to Ethiopia in 1973 as a Peace Corps volunteer.  This was a time of revolutionary change as the country transitioned from a feudal land system during the last year and a half of Emperor Haile Salassie’s reign.  “Almost everyone at that time was a subsistence farmer, as had been the case for thousands of years,” says Carlson.

As a public health expert, Carlson saw first hand the impact of modern medicine and public health policy on the life expectancy and population of Ethiopia, and the subsequent inability of the country’s outdated agricultural system to feed itself as the population grew. He witnessed a famine in 1973 that led to the downfall of Ethiopia’s feudal regime.

“At the time there were hordes of development experts coming into the country from both the West and the Soviet Union telling Ethiopians that all they had to do was to reorganize their system of agriculture to resemble the models they championed,” Carlson remembers. “This meant bringing in the latest corn seed and eating corn instead of teff as a hedge against famine. Teff, however, was an integral part of the food system – not just as a food, but as a means of paying obligations. It was essentially the coin of the realm.”

Following his Peace Corps stint, Carlson eventually journeyed to Idaho as a public health expert, and was almost immediately struck by the geological and climatic similarities between the Snake River region and the East African Rift – both of which were the result of major dynamics in the earth’s crust, and both of which were subject to hot summers with intense sunlight. The idea came to Carlson that it might be possible to grow teff in southwest Idaho, and he already had in mind a domestic consumer market: the expatriate Ethiopian community.

“I thought about the huge historical transformation that was going on in Ethiopia and the loss of language, culture, and crop plants,” Carlson recalls. “Since these individuals were now in a new environment, the fun thing to do would be to try and re-establish the relationship between a group of people and a plant — that was my motivation. To do this, I would have to make it work in a cash rather than subsistence/barter economy, so it was also a sociological experiment.”

With the help of a friend with an agriculture background, Carlson began his “sociological experiment” by not only growing teff himself, but also recruiting southwest Idaho farmers to do the same. To target their initial market of Ethiopian refugees, many of whom were settling in the Washington, D.C. area, Carlson and his wife Elisabeth went through the D.C. phonebook and began making cold calls to anyone with an Ethiopian surname.

“They were disbelieving at first,” Elisabeth, recalls, “but then some elderly Ethiopian ladies got their hands on it and starting telling everyone else that this was the real thing. The relationship between Ethiopians and teff is one I can hardly compare anything to.” Wayne has vivid memories of taking teff flour to newly arrived refugees from Ethiopia and seeing tears in their eyes from simply smelling it.

Now in its 30^th year of operation as a supplier of teff grain and flour, which it mills at its Nampa, Idaho facility, The Teff Co. has roughly 30 Idaho farms on its roster of suppliers, and has expanded its market beyond the Ethiopian community to include natural food stores and gluten-free food producers such as Sun Flour Mills in Eagle – which in turn finds its way into finished goods from Teddy’s Bakery. Over the past 10 years, Carlson finds that his company has benefited from a convergence of trends towards local food sources, incorporating more whole grains, and an interest in gluten-free alternatives, as well as from people who have always been interested in healthy food and ethnic cuisines. Carlson also cites the work of the Whole Grains Council in raising awareness among American consumers of the benefits of teff and other grains.

Click here for a YouTube video with Gareth Carlson

Remarking on the continued importance of the Ethiopian community to his business, which now includes his son Gareth, Carlson can’t help but see some irony in The Teff Co.’s success. “Our question in starting this business was, ‘why not change the direction of cultural influence?’ Rather than exporting development practices to Ethiopia, why not take some wisdom from an ancient culture? From there it was a small step to contact Ethiopians living in the American metropolitan areas and re-establish the relationship between the Ethiopians and their favorite grain.” Thanks to this “sociological experiment,” the Carlson Family has also shared a unique and ancient grain with the rest of us, and in so doing has added yet another bragging point to Idaho’s agricultural credentials.

“There are a lot of people who are working to make this a better planet – Peaceful Belly happens to be doing it through farming.” — Matt Fuxan

To Boise Co-op Fresh Foods Manager Matt Fuxan, Peaceful Belly Farm is so much more than a “supplier.”

“Peaceful Belly Farm has been a leader in the local food movement, and they’ve helped perpetuate it not only as dedicated organic farmers, but with their engagement of the community through outreach and education,” says Matt.

For nearly a decade, husband and wife Clay and Josie Erskine and their family have managed an ecologically sustainable urban farm on 70 acres in Boise’s Dry Creek Valley.  In addition to growing over 90 types of vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, and berries — as well as raising pastured poultry — the Erskines and their staff also manage a CSA Program (Community Supported Agriculture) that supplies 160 families locally.

To Matt’s point, however, what has set Peaceful Belly Farm apart has been their commitment to bringing people closer to the land — an outgrowth of their vision of the role that local farms should play in their communities.  This vision is front and center on the homepage of the Peaceful Belly Farm website:

We can’t do what we do without our community. It takes a community to produce veggies the way that Peaceful Belly can. Food should be grown close to the people that consume it. We work very hard to try to connect the people that consume the food to the people that grow the food they enjoy. We strive to help create a better community not only through our produce but through the many outreach and educational programs we have created and partner in. Our goal is to ensure that our food can be enjoyed by all social classes.

At the end of December, Peaceful Belly Farm’s outreach efforts suffered a setback when their uncompleted barn/education center was damaged by a violent storm that swept through the Treasure Valley.  Once completed, this facility will become, to quote the Erskines, “The hub from which all the wonderful food, classes, workshops and dinners pour.”

To finish their barn and education center, Peaceful Belly Farm has set up a Kickstarter site to seek contributors for the $25,000 they will need to complete their facility — thus enhancing not only the farm’s daily operations, but also its educational programs and famous Farm to Fork dinners.

If you believe in the importance not only of family-run organic farms, but in the transformative power of bringing communities closer to the land that sustains them, we at Boise C0-op urge you to go to Peaceful Belly’s Kickstarter site. For as little as $25 you can help support the Erksine’s dream of their farm as a place where you and others can learn “How to grow and make your own healing salves, teas and tinctures; how to design square foot gardens, kitchen gardens and edible landscapes; how to cook seasonally, raise chickens, keep bees, preserve food—and best of all, how to teach children to grow their own food and learn animal husbandry.”

That’s the kind of world we at the Co-op believe in.  If you share that belief, please vote with your wallet and help Clay, Josie, their family and workers realize it.  Along with that appeal, I’ll leave you with a final observation from Mr. Fuxan: ”There are a lot of people who are working the make this a better planet – Peaceful Belly happens to be doing it through farming.”

Rachel Winer

Idaho Smart Growth was founded in 2000 with the mission of bringing Idahoans together “to keep our communities vibrant and our lands healthy.” The non-profit’s agenda is organized around a set of principles that include providing a variety of transportation choices, creating walkable neighborhoods, preserving open space, and promoting a range of housing opportunities and choices.

Collectively, “smart growth” principles guide development into more compact, interconnected, and mixed use patterns that have been shown to reduce the number of miles that people travel by vehicle every day, and that have also proven to use less energy overall than more sprawling communities.

Idaho Smart Growth relies on funding sources to carry out its day-to-day activities, which are centered on education, coalition building, and advocacy.  The organization plans to devote the money raised through Boise Co-op’s January 19, 2012 Shop for Good to support efforts to secure funding for better transportation options for all Idahoans.

To learn more about Idaho Smart Growth, we bring you this Local Heroes interview with Executive Director, Rachel Winer.

Q: Who was behind the founding of Idaho Smart Growth?

A: Idaho Smart Growth was created by a number of people in our community who were concerned about the rapid growth rate of our state, but who are also passionate about what a great place it is to live. Their goal was to work collaboratively to address growth in the belief that it is better that we plan our future rather than just let it happen to us. Our Board of Directors includes developers, architects, city planners, conservationists, and community leaders.

Q: How did you get involved with Idaho Smart Growth?

A: I was working more in the environmental community in preserving Idaho’s open spaces and seeing how issues of growth affect that effort. I’m very passionate about both preserving open space and building our communities, and the concepts of smart growth seemed the best way to accomplish both those objectives.

Q: Are there any particular models your organization is following?

A: I think there is a lot of good and bad to learn from all over the country. We can look at what Washington, Oregon, and Utah do and take the best of what works for them, then see how we can apply it for us. Utah has done a really good job of planning for their future, and I think we have a lot of similarities in terms of having some very conservative values but a passion about where we live. Utah really gets how growth issues and creating great places to live are really closely tied to the economy. As we pull out of this recession and talk about how we create jobs and a stronger economy, there is a great overlap for smart growth and how we plan our future.

Q: How do you approach the issues of smart growth in our current economic environment versus that of 2000?

A: Smart growth issues actually become more real, and we see more examples of their importance. For instance, when the price of gas goes up, this causes more people to want to live closer to where they work, go to school, shop, and attend church. A lot of the concepts we promote really ring true right now.

Q: How do smart growth concepts apply to the whole state?

A: We have some really strong and vibrant communities in Idaho, but we need to make sure that all of them are places where people can get their needs met affordably. There will always be folks who want to build on bigger lots further from towns, but we also have an incredible rise of folks 65 and older who would prefer smaller living units with less property to maintain and situated closer to the things they need, and we’re not building for that market. There’s a huge opportunity to build more within existing communities.

Q: How is your organization received outside of the Treasure Valley?

A: We’ve gotten a good reception. We work on building trust and relationships to help communities adapt solutions that work for them. They don’t have a lot of tools from the state, so we can be an asset. We typically build coalitions with folks involved in active living task forces, as well as planning staff, school teachers, parents, the local health community, transportation departments and police departments – people with a common interest who develop their own goals for stronger communities – and then take them to their planning and zoning boards. We also share stories with them about what other communities are doing.

Q: What makes you feel good when you think about the accomplishments of Idaho Smart Growth?

A: A lot of our work in smaller communities has been very encouraging. In places like American Falls, Kimberly, and Potlatch we have seen communities come together to focus on kids and how they can safely get to school by walking or biking. When you accomplish something like that, it’s all about how you can make the community safer and healthier. You get the parents involved and the community working more closely together. A walkable community for kids is walkable for everyone.

Q: How will Idaho Smart Growth use its Shop for Good funds?

A: We want to apply them to our work in creating more transportation choices for Idahoans because we believe we don’t have enough choices at present. Local communities need tools like a local option sales tax to address transportation, so we work with AARP, National Federation for the Blind, and the Community Transportation Association to engage people and present concepts such as a train from Caldwell to Boise, new bus systems, and rapid transit. Based on what we envision, implementing it would create a funding gap of $253 million a year. That seems like a lot, but we want people to understand that if each of us were to contribute to that shortfall, it would be only $37 a month. For the price of a tank of gas or a latte a week we could build that system – so it’s not that intangible. We simply need to get the tools together.

Looking to reset after weeks of holiday feasting? Shelley Spurlock from our Produce Department offers a simple recipe for miso soup that makes four servings in less than half an hour (Shelley says 10 minutes, but I’m allowing for slow prep technique). Some silken tofu, miso, chopped green onions, a little Nori or Wakame seaweed and some water and all that’s left is to simmer and add a dash of Gomasio and Tamari…then sit back and feel the warm!

Click here for a YouTube interview with Shelley on making the perfect bowl of miso soup. 

Our Culinary Educator, Sylvie Ryan, will be rejoining us soon from her visit with family in France.  In the meantime, she shares this culinary postcard with us from her New Year’s Eve celebration in Paris.  Oh, la la!

Sylvie (far right) in Paris

New Year’s Eve, also called Saint Sylvestre, offers a perfect reason for feasting surrounded by friends and family, so I decided to visit my friends in Paris for the holiday. I took the bullet train from Mulhouse to Paris, which took a little over 2.5 hours, and enjoyed an easy, relaxing trip that allowed me to appreciate the gorgeous French countryside.
 
Though I admit it feels like I have not stopped eating for the past two weeks, the evening of the 31st promised to be irresistibly delicious and very gourmet! The celebratory drink of choice for the occasion is, of course, Champagne — and our hosts had plenty of bottles to last for the long evening of feasting and sharing! Each guest brought a special dish, and I was really excited to try all the delicious recipes. There was some smoked salmon served with toasted light bread, a real staple of this most celebrated evening. My favorite dish of all was a Salmon Terrine — it was delightful, rich and creamy with many subtle flavors that married perfectly with the Champagne. The cook promised to share the recipe with me!
 
We toasted the New Year with a precious view of the shimmering Eiffel Tower. What a treat!

We concluded this paced dinner with a beautiful cheese tray, featuring Goat Cheese from Provence, a creamy Roblochon, a Comte, and a tangy, rich Roquefort. It was a fabulous way to begin 2012!

Ben Kuzma

One reason why Boise Co-op joined the National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) several months ago was to benefit from the institutional knowledge their members have gained over the years through collaboration with other food co-ops. Sharing knowledge and experiences is a major benefit of membership and a better alternative to going it alone. Many NCGA member food co-ops have experienced new competition in their marketplaces and learned valuable lessons from those experiences. They cooperatively share their wisdom with food co-ops in similar situations.

For the last five months we have been making changes at our Co-op to prepare for new market competitors that will soon be arriving in Boise. We would have made the changes under consideration at some point regardless, but the timing has created a new sense of urgency to implement these changes sooner than later. We have asked NCGA for their help with our preparations. By working in partnership NCGA, we are planning an all-out effort to make critical improvements to our Co-op to better serve our member-owners. In the coming months you will begin to see the results of this collaborative effort, so hang on to your hard hats!

For three days during the last full week of January 2012, the NCGA’s Western Corridor will hold their quarterly meeting in Boise. These meetings usually rotate to various locations throughout the year where a host NCGA member is located. As one of the newest members of NCGA, it will give Boise Co-op an opportunity to get acquainted with our neighboring food co-ops in the Western states.

The 40 – 50 people attending the Western Corridor meeting will be comprised of Designated Representatives (DRs – mostly general managers of Western food co-ops) and NCGA staff. Part of the meeting will include a mini-audit of our Co-op. The auditors will include thirty DRs, six Boise Co-op staff leaders and six NCGA staff. The group will break into six teams that will focus on different aspects of our store’s operation. Our Co-op’s aisles will fill with these inquisitive co-op people who are not only willing to share their knowledge but also wanting to learn about what we do well and how we will react to the challenges we face. When the audit is complete, they will compare their observations with what are considered to be “best practices” and make recommendations where appropriate. Boise Co-op may then use some or all of these recommendations to make further improvements to our store.

Co-ops interacting with other co-ops and exchanging ideas is what makes us stronger as a group. George Bernard Shaw once said: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” That’s the basic recipe we are relying on to help us prepare for the future.

We are currently in a planning stage to unclutter our store so that there is room for new equipment and upgraded facilities. As we quickly move forward, look for more information about our progress in the store, on our websites and in our newsletters. We want to provide our customers with a better shopping experience so if there are ways we can do that for you please let us know. Share your ideas with us – who knows, before long they may show up at a distant food co-op as well at our own. Thank you for your support.

Ben Kuzma