By Pete Woltz, IFC Board President
A big THANKS to all who shopped and provided product at the Coop in January. It appears we are on track, once again, to meet our projections! Sometimes I ask myself, how is this modest success possible in this world of ever increasing competition for our member’s food dollar?
Here is why we shop. Each weekday morning my wife, Cindy, and I wake up to news reports describing chaos in the world. We hear warnings, criticisms, and insults from local news shows, CNN, MSNBC , and the like. On Saturday mornings, however, we wake up to a different view of the world. We watch Bob Ross reruns of “The Joy of Painting” on PBS.
Bob passed away in 1995 but his unique style of painting and “therapy for the weary” lives on through reruns. He describes the world he creates on canvas while he paints:
- “You can do anything you want to do. This is your world”
- “We don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents”
- “You can put as many or as few as you want in your world”
- “There’s nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend”
- “Talk to the tree, make friends with it”
- “Maybe in our world there lives a happy little tree over there”
Why is this relevant? It is because “The Joy of Painting” reruns give Cindy and I the same sensation that we get from shopping at the Coop. In this world of breaking news, convenience stores, and 140 word tweets, shopping the Coop is our food gathering therapy. Shopping the Coop allows us to calmly plan our meals, on our own time, from the hundreds of listed Coop products. We enjoy reading about the “happy worlds” of those who produced our meals. In our world, this sure beats grabbing a quick meal from the deli!
The Coop is “Slow Shopping” at its best. What are your reasons for shopping the Coop?
Now we all have the opportunity to share our “Coop” experience with more kindred souls in our community. Kelly Tagtow, Lisa Bean, Loulou Dickey, and Gary Huber have developed a program which offers free 90 day trial memberships to people belonging to selected clubs, businesses, or organizations. We could use your assistance by helping us to identify qualifying groups then distributing our literature. Help us spread “The Joy of Shopping”. Comment on this blog or email Gary at gary@iowafood.coop with your ideas for Trial Membership groups.