Dear Member-Owners and Friends of Allegany Harvest,

Thanks so much to all of you who made our tasting event this weekend a huge success. We gave away lots of great free samples, chatted with community members, and made a little money.

We have another busy weekend ahead. On Saturday, we’ll have a booth at the Houghton Community Yard Sales with natural snacks, sodas and juices. At the same time, we’ll have some great sales running here at the store to celebrate the holiday weekend. The entire bulk section will be ten percent off, and we’ll have other great prices throughout the store. On Monday, we’ll have some Member-Owners walking in the parade, pushing shopping carts and handing out some of our tasty organic lollipops, spreading the word about our great little store. Feel free to join us! Contact me for more information.

We have another change heading our way. This Sunday we’ll start our summer hours, which means we’ll be open from 12:00 to 4:00 on Sunday afternoons and closed on Mondays. Stop in and see when you’re getting your Sunday dinner ready to go.

For those of you who were big fans of the brick oven bread we had for the last few months, I wanted to let you know that we’ll have one last delivery on Friday. Our baker has been way too busy with planting and prepping for the summer growing season to bring us bread every week, but he consented to make one last batch this spring (and we’ll see what we can do in the fall).

Happy Memorial Day!

Thanks,
Miranda Hunter
Store Manager

Dear Member-Owners and Friends of Allegany Harvest,

How many towns with a population under 2000 people have opened independent grocery stores in the past year?  I know of only one.  The people in and around Houghton, New York decided that they wanted more healthy, convenient, and sustainable grocery options and their financial investment made the Allegany Harvest Cooperative Market possible. 

Northern Allegany County, with its small population base and struggling economy, is not the ideal location for a small-business start-up.  But sometimes, where another business might have trouble, a co-op can succeed.  The co-op model means that a dedicated base of shoppers invest in the store; their continued financial investment helps keep it strong.

With the store coming up on its one-year anniversary, it’s time to work again to expand our base of member-owners.  During the month of May we are launching a Member-Owner Drive.  We don’t want to have to spend the whole year thinking about member-ownership, so we’re going to focus on this important aspect of the co-op for just one month.

But we also need your help.  If you’re a co-op shopper who is not a member-owner, would you consider making an equity investment and joining those who have put their financial support behind the co-op?  If you’re already a member-owner, could you approach a friend or neighbor and ask about member-ownership?

Every month, the co-op is growing stronger as more people in northern Allegany County discover its healthy products, friendly service, and commitment to our local economy. But the co-op will only remain strong with the continuing investment of its shoppers.

I look forward to having conversations with many of you in the next month about member-ownership and how we can build our base of financial support to keep the co-op a flourishing enterprise in our community.

Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb

Member of the board of directors and the Member Owner Outreach (MOO) committee

To find out more about member-ownership click here

Dear Member-Owners and Friends of Allegany Harvest,

Come on down tomorrow and Saturday for some great sale prices! Our contractors arrive this weekend to refinish our floors, so we’re doing a pre-renovation-stock-up-and-move-out sale to get ready. We have to pack up the entire store, so it would be fabulous if we could move as much of our stock as possible from our shelves to yours. You should find some great prices on bulk, grocery and produce items, so don’t forget to stop in.

As I said in my last message, it’s time to put the cooperative nature of our venture to the test again. We need your help on Saturday at closing time (5:00) to pack up and move out everything in the store, again in the afternoon and evening on Tuesday to move it back in, and on Wednesday morning to re-stock the shelves. I am not certain exactly what time we can get in on Tuesday, but I will let you know as soon as I know. I have heard from several of you, but I could definitely use a whole lot more help. Please drop me an email at manager@alleganyharvest.coop to let me know if you are coming so that I know how much additional help I need to recruit.

Some of you have already tried the new granola in our bulk section, and it’s gotten rave reviews. If you haven’t, you should! It’s truly delicious, and it’s on sale this month. We have free samples available to try before you purchase. You can read about the producers here: http://spirithillfarm.com/

Hope to see many of you this weekend!

Miranda Hunter

Store Manager

Dear Member-Owners and Friends of Allegany Harvest,
Lots of great new products arrived today! We have some great Caribbean curry paste, more of that mint milk you seem to love so much, two kinds of cheese (raw goat mild cheddar and almond mozzarella), Sugar in the Raw, rosemary & olive oil potato chips, and much more. I managed to get more of those haddock and salmon filets that you folks snapped up lightning quick a few weeks ago. They’re a great deal at $4.39 a pound for the haddock and $6.99 a pound for the salmon, and they won’t last long.

You seemed to love the Cuba cheddar and cottage dill bread this week, so we’ll be getting more on Monday afternoon. We’ll also be premiering the new bacon cheddar bread, which sounds amazing to this bacon-lover! We’ll now have fresh bread twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays.

Spring is coming, and that means we’re starting to have lots more green things. This week’s delivery of greens (arrived Friday instead of Wednesday because of the grower’s schedule) was nearly twenty pounds, lots more than we’ve had in months. Very exciting!

Don’t forget to let me know if you’re interested in any products that you don’t see on the shelf. Sometimes I realize that you’ve hit on a great product that other people would love to buy, and I’ll add it the inventory. Other times it’s a bit more specialized, but I’m always glad to put in a special order for our Member-Owners. There’s even a 10% discount on special orders, so it’s a great way to save.

Stay tuned for some great new volunteer opportunities coming up in the next few weeks. Some of you have asked how you can help, and we’ll be sharing that information soon.

Keep shopping, folks! Remember that if you want us to still be here in a year, you need to keep supporting our efforts. Thanks so much!

Miranda Hunter

Store Manager

Greetings, Member-Owners and Friends of Allegany Harvest,
It might not be spring yet, but we are all springing forward, both with the time change this weekend and with our store. While we have been a bit delayed in our renovation project, but we aren’t letting our ugly floors hold us back in the meantime. We are fully stocked and ready to meet your needs in any way we can.

I’d love to give you an update on where we stand with the renovation project, but we’re in a bit of a holding pattern. Anyone who has ever worked with insurance companies and busy contractors knows that projects never happen quite as quickly as we would hope. We don’t have a date yet for a brief closure to install new flooring, but we’ll keep you posted.

All Member-Owners should have received a letter from our former Board president, Peter Meilaender, last month. If you didn’t get one, it is likely because you either aren’t a Member-Owner (and isn’t it time to remedy that?!) or possibly because we don’t have your current address in the system. Please email me at manager@alleganyharvest.coop if you didn’t receive a letter so that we can check your address and send you a copy electronically.

In Peter’s letter, he asked that you all step up and try to do just a bit more shopping here at the store. I need to say thank you to the people who did just that. We had our best month ever last month, finally cracking five digits for our monthly sales. That being said, we have a long way to go, folks, so keep shopping!

Anyone who has been in the store recently will have noticed that we’ve had a variety of Member-Owner only sale prices. Because our renovation project has made it much more difficult to host regular events, I decided it might be nice to extend some savings to Member-Owners on a regular basis, and that is something we hope to continue going forward.

As many of you know, we’ve continued to have delicious fresh-baked bread arriving on Thursday mornings and local certified naturally grown greens arriving on Wednesday. In addition, on Mondays, we’ll now have locally-made cookies and bread arriving.

I know some of you have discovered that we have Byrne Dairy’s special St. Patty’s Day mint milk. It’s a crazy bright green color, but we’ve been getting some great feedback. I hear it’s pretty amazing served hot with our fair-trade organic hot cocoa!

Come see us very soon!

Miranda Hunter

Store Manager

Dear Member-Owners and Friends of Allegany Harvest,

Good news (followed by a little bit of bad news)! We’ve added a whole lot of new inventory over the last week or two in response to the feedback we received from you, our valuable Member-Owners and customers. Much of the new inventory is conventional, rather than organic, and is lower in price. We’ve had a great response already from some of you who have been in this week. You’ll have to come in and check it out very soon!

The bad news is that you shouldn’t try to check it out on Monday, January 21st, because we will be busy tearing out the damaged wood floors that any regular shoppers have likely noticed over the last few months. As you probably know, we’ve been beset with floor-related difficulties since the very beginning, and we’re taking steps to ensure that we’re fixing them once and for all. Over the past week, the mold mitigation experts have been making a general cacophony behind the barrier they installed in December to keep us safe. They’re nearly finished pulling out all the moldy drywall and flooring and cleaning, and by the end of next week, they should have the go ahead to remove the barrier and give us full access to our building. In the meantime, we’ll be removing the wood flooring on the other end of the building on Monday, which means we will have to close the store. All things being equal, we will reopen at noon on Tuesday, or as soon thereafter as we can possibly manage. I recommend calling before you come down on Tuesday to be sure that we’re open. We will be working very, very hard to put things back together quickly and get the doors open on time, but it seems entirely possible that there will be a bit of a delay.

Hopefully you can be patient with us over the next few weeks as we work through this project. We’re going to be closed one to two days for this next phase of the project, and you’ll have to deal with ugly floors for a bit until we can get the new ones laid. We will be closed for a couple days at some point soon to install the new flooring, but the exact timing is dependent on insurance companies and contractors and the like. I’ll let you know as soon as I know.

Thanks for your patience,

Miranda Hunter

Store Manager

Dear Member-Owners and Friends of Allegany Harvest,

Dear Member-Owners and Friends of Allegany Harvest,

Saturday’s cookie exchange is canceled.  The store is fresh and sweet and clean, but it has a huge, ugly plastic wall that keeps us safe but eats up most of the space.   We’re scrambling like crazy to put everything back together from the latest crisis, and we’re open for business like usual, but unfortunately the cookie exchange is the casualty of the latest crisis. Please, please spread the word!

Many apologies,

Miranda Hunter
Store Manager

Don’t forget to come down on Saturday for our Chili Cook Off and first ever Member-Owner Only sale day. Chili should arrive before noon, and small servings of the full array will be available between noon and 1:30, when the votes will be tallied and the winners announced. We’ll have chili, bread, hot mulled cider, and samples of our new line of local hot sauces, now available for sale at our store.

We have a wealth of new products this week, as we gear up for the holidays. We are now carrying, among other things, pre-made pie crusts, break ‘n bake cookies, cranberry sauce, stuffing mix, a variety of new spices and baking supplies, bulk hot cocoa, bulk pasta, some new less expensive natural sodas, and a variety of new health and beauty products. As usual, we have fresh bread, local organic eggs, and kale, beet greens, and lettuce.

Coming soon: hot, fresh coffee, tea or cocoa, prepared right here in our store! Bring your own mug or pay a 25 cent deposit on one of ours (or you can have yours in a paper cup, if you so desire). Supplies and equipment have been ordered, and it should be up and running within the next week or two.

Don’t forget to come check out our Member-Only Sales on Saturday, running all day long. More than 25 products will be on sale, including 10% off of all bulk flours. It’s a great time to stock up!

Hope to see as many of you tomorrow as possible.

Thanks,

Miranda Hunter
Store Manager