We are quickly nearing 100 Member-Owners of our Co-op! This is our first goal and milestone, at which we plan to start the work of electing our first Board of Directors.

If you are interested in running for our Board and being a part of anchoring Know Thy Food in the community and continuing to serve our members with local, farm direct foods and bulk pantry staples for a long time into the future, please consider applying for a position.

Interested members should review the qualities and responsibilities of Board members and complete the application.

If you have any questions about serving on the Co-op board please contact rebecca@knowthyfood.com. We look forward to connecting with you!

In 2013, we will be transitioning from a private club (sole proprietor LLC) to a cooperative. We want to become a Community Owned Cooperative Grocery, owned by our consumer-members and our hard working staff-members. The new co-op will be one entity that will own Warehouse Cafe & Market and Know Thy Food (our online ordering service).

What does Member-Ownership mean?

Member-Ownership gives you:

• part ownership of our co-op
• a vote in elections and on important issues
• the right to run for a position on our Board of Directors
• an opportunity to participate in our Volunteer Program (coming soon!)
• discounts in the market on Member-Owner Appreciation days
• Member-Owner benefits, such as access to Know Thy Food and other pre-ordering of food
• profit sharing in the form of Patronage Refunds
• the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping anchor this well-loved business deeply in our community for a long time to come! This business will not leave the community without the consent of the Member-Owners!

How do I become a Member-Owner of the co-op?

Becoming a Member-Owner is quick and easy, and you only pay one time! The cost of Membership Equity is $150 + $25 admin fee per household. A household is defined as one primary member, his/her spouse or partner, and all their children under the age of 21 living with them. Limited income households receive a 50% discount and may pay $75 + $25 admin fee. Limited income is defined as households receiving EBT (food stamps), unemployment benefits, living below 120% of fderal poverty level, or living on a small, limited income such as Social Security. Download our Co-op Membership Form and mail it or bring it in to our location (address below) with your payment.

Why do Member-Owners pay Membership equity?

Membership equity is an investment into the business that makes you an owner. Like all businesses, co-ops need start-up capital. Co-ops capitalize by selling Membership equity (also known as shares). These shares are not considered income to the co-op and are therefore not taxable as income to the co-op. They are meant to be refundable should Member-Owners choose leave the co-op.

NOTE: Membership equity is always at risk and potentially not available for refund. We are planning for sufficient cash flow from operations and new memberships to support potential requests for refunds after the store has been open at least two years.

How is Membership Equity different than Know Thy Food’s annual membership fee?

Know Thy Food is currently a private club with an annual membership fee of $30. Revenue from these club membership fees is considered income and is taxable to the current LLC. These fees do not make members into owners. The fees are also not refundable to club members. While we transition in 2013, you may choose to become a Club Member or a Co-op Member-Owner.

Can I help the co-op formation by joining now or should I join later?

We encourage you to join the co-op today! In fact, we are waiving the $25 admin fee for anyone who joins before the end of January 2013! Once we have 100 members, we will be electing a 12-member Board of Directors and taking legal steps to incorporate as a cooperative. Until then, your membership investment will be held safely in escrow, and will be refunded if we are unable to complete the transition in a timely manner. Joining later is fine, too, of course, but you can really make a difference by joining now.

When will the transition be complete?

Our intention is to complete the transition by the end of 2013 with 1,000 Member-Owners.

What will change once the business is a co-op?

Our cafe and market will always be open to the public, but once we become a co-op by the end of 2013 it is our intention to make our online food buying service, Know Thy Food, a Member-Owners-only benefit that will be run by members, for members. This is so we can continue serving our members with the same, low pricing structure. All Club Memberships will expire at the end of 2013 and will not be renewed. We will only accept co-op memberships once we are a cooperative.

Can I still shop online at knowthyfood.com/shop in 2013 even if I do not become a Member-Owner right now?

Yes!
Until the transition is completed, you can join (or renew) as a Know Thy Food club member with payment of the club membership fee of $30. As explained above, this club membership fee is different from the Membership Equity investment and will expire at the end of 2013 once we have completed the transition to a co-op.

WE WARMLY INVITE YOU TO JOIN OUR CO-OP AS A FOUNDING MEMBER! HELP MAKE OUR MARKET A SUCCESS!

Please become a member by registering for access to our online product catalog and shopping.

We did it!

Thanks to 280 Kickstarter backers and countless other supporters and friends, we met and exceeded our $25,000 goal by almost $6,000 extra! Amazing! I am still in awe, so thankful and happy, and just a little bit in disbelief that this is really happening! We are going to have a market!!

To celebrate our success — and it really is our collective success — we are planning a soft opening and a celebration on Sunday, November 18th. The market will be open from 8 am to 8 pm, with the main festivities and activities from 2 – 6 pm.

Please stop by, say hi, enjoy some local food and drink, and get some holiday shopping done. Many of our wonderful vendors will be direct selling at the event; we will have samples and drinks; and we will unveil our new checkout stand made from local reclaimed lumber. Bring a friend. Meet a new friend. Enjoy our take on Happy Hour: “Buy a stranger a drink, enjoy yours for half off!” (good on all liquids we sell from 2-6 pm on the18th)

SAVE THE DATE! Hope to see you there!

I have been chomping at the bit all day, wanting to write (but holding babies instead) this “Hurray! We did it!” update and thank you all for your support, encouragement and for believing that this would and should happen. Thanks to all of you, together, we have reached our funding goal, and we’re going to have enough funds to pay for the basic infrastructure needed to open our awesome, new daily market!

Check out this screen shot of the graph Kickstarter generates. That last “bump” that put us over our goal came in really fast this morning. What a huge sigh of relief I breathed! I’m sure you all heard it echo all over Portland!

So….. we still have 6 days left. Let’s see how far we can stretch! What kinds of awesome things could we accomplish with more funds?

With extra funds, once the market is open, we could have weekly cooking demos or little workshops to help people learn new food preparation and preservation skills. I know we have so many skilled members in our community; how great would it be to develop a skill sharing program, and be able to offer the instructor an honorarium as thanks for sharing their skills with others!

Another idea I’d love to see materialize is outfitting our kitchen with an oven. So far our menu has been limited by the lack of an oven. Being able to bake our own cookies and pies, and adding healthy warm dishes like quiche and frittata to our menu would be so wonderful!

As always, I am interested in what YOU, our primary community, wants to see happen, so leave me comments! Typically, stretch goals help the entire community benefit from bringing in more pledges. Invite friends, get in on an add-on, or bump up your pledge, and we will be able to make the market experience better for everyone. Let’s make it really thrive!

ADD-ONS FOR ALL LEVELS

•  I Love KTF organic t-shirt – Add $25 ($35 shipped in US)

ADD-ONS FOR LEVELS THAT INCLUDE A BAG

• Extra bag refills – Add $25 for each refill

ADD-ONS FOR LEVELS THAT INCLUDE A KLEAN KANTEEN

• 10 drink refills – Add $20
• café cap – Add $5

Thank you again, truly, from the bottom of my heart!
This is all possible thanks to YOU!

It’s probably been a good 15-20 years since the last time I ate red or white meat (with the exception of a slice of bacon here and there), so I have to admit the idea of eating meat has been a bit weird. Regardless, I have come to believe that I need to include more protein in my diet, and the sound of Pemmican — a Native American “energy bar” of sorts — appealed to me.

Ingredients

Ground beef, buffalo or turkey (grass fed)
Berries (cranberries, blueberries, cherries etc)
Coconut oil
Honey (optional)

Preparation

1. Form the raw ground meat into meatballs, flatten as thin as possible and dehydrate at 115F degrees till bone dry.
2. Puree berries and spread out to a thin layer. Dehydrate till dry.
3. Using a blender or food processor, process dried meat and berries till they form a powder.
4. In a bowl, add melted coconut oil and honey till moist.
5. Transfer to muffin tins. Pack down well.
6. Refrigerate.

This post is part of GAPS Friendly Friday over at The Liberated Kitchen.

This month, we are in fundraising mode. We have launched our Kickstarter campaign (did you see it? did you pledge yet?) to help us launch a store front market at our location.

Megan Sottile, one of our members and supporters, is also a talented photographer and the owner of Owls Eye Photography. She is offering an amazing gift: the next 6 people who pledge to our Kickstarter campaign at the $60 level and INCREASE their pledge to $300 will receive a free one hour long Family/Couple/Individual photo session on-location in the Portland area including digital copies of your images with full printing rights (must be redeemed between Jan-Aug 2013) + everything at the $60 level.

You can check out Megan’s beautiful work at owlseyephotography.blogspot.com. Then head on over to Kickstarter and be a part of bringing a new store front market that focuses on safe, healthy and whole foods to the SE Portland Brooklyn neighborhood.

We did it!

We launched our Kickstarter campain to help us raise funds for our store front market.

Now we need YOUR help to get ready for opening day and fill our shelves, coolers and cases with amazing mouth watering local and organic goodies. Please join us at the forefront of the food revolution and help make this dream a reality! Tell your friends and family; support, share, inspire, give!

Share our projects URL far and wide: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/knowthyfood/know-thy-food-lets-open-a-local-and-organic-food-m

Thank you, from the bottoms of our hearts and the depths of our beings, for giving generously and supporting local food.

Know Thy Food was featured on Cooking Up a Story. Thank you, Rebecca & Fred, for making us look so good.

I stopped blogging regularly when I took on The Warehouse. Leasing a commercial space and moving our food buying club out of my home was a giant leap of faith, but after having operated out of my home for about two years, the City of Portland informed me that I could not continue in a residential area. I was faced with the decision of shutting down or relocating to a commercial location that allows food distribution activities.

I chose to move so I could continue doing what I was doing. I wanted to keep getting good food for my family. I also really believe that people have the right to decide for themselves what they eat and how they go about obtaining it. Who says we have to shop in big chain grocery stores and super markets? I choose to believe we can make empowered decisions and become active participants in the food economy (vote with our forks!) instead of passively just accept the standard fare that’s being sold in supermarkets.

In May 2012, I signed a 5 year lease on an old building in the Brooklyn neighborhood in SE Portland. The vision was to build upon the food buying club’s popularity and create a shared space that would serve to connect, support, nourish and empower growing families who want to live sustainably and in community. The space I found was large and had many of the features I wanted for the food buying club, including a loading dock and a huge walk-in cooler. It also had a retail store front and offices that I thought could accommodate many different community oriented ventures. My friend Allison wanted to open a children’s and maternity resale shop, and I figured I could also operate a small coffee shop/community space.

To that end, I opened Warehouse Café, a coffee shop that serves high quality, direct trade coffee and local organic goodies. The plan was for the café to make enough money to support the space the food buying club takes up. However, things don’t always go according to plan.

The space came with its own set of challenges. It is not a coincidence that the space was so quickly dubbed “The Warehouse.” It came with a great deal of functional and cosmetic issues and had the look and feel of an old neglected warehouse when we moved in. There was exposed insulation hanging down, peeling paint, ugly office carpet glued down on top on ugly tile on top of painted concrete floors…. The place was a mess, but had tons of potential, I thought.

Because of limited funds, there was never a proper build-out of the space, but instead we have been working to improve the functionality and aesthetics of the space on an ongoing basis, as we’ve been able. It has very much been a DIY project that has slowly, but surely transformed the space and given it new life. However, one obvious thing that is left to do is the main entrance. This part of the space, which is the first thing that people see from the street is in desperate need of a face lift. Despite large store front glass windows, the interior gets next to no natural light. A narrow corridor leads from the front into the main dining area, which is unfortunately completely obstructed by awkwardly designed, outdated offices in the front. Many people who have since mustered up the courage to enter have told me they walked by many weeks before finally checking us out. The impression from the street is that the building houses offices and is private. This is definitely not the impression I wanted my new café to make!

The time has finally come for the front to be redone! This is very exciting! I want to widen that narrow corridor, so that light can enter and brighten up the space, and passers by will be able to see what a wonderful community resource has been created within and feel welcome to enter and partake in it all. I feel it is important to make the space beautiful and comfortable as well as functional. Our members and customers (who are mostly families with young children), and our hard working staff spend so much time in there. I have always envisioned a place that people would love to spend time in, want to come to with friends to hang out, stay to work, and enjoy food and drink.

I have already consulted with a contractor about the scope of the work, and have made plans for the renovations to begin this month. The contractor will work to widen the narrow corridor by appx 11 feet and remove a significant section of one of the front offices in order to open up the space. The ceiling height as you enter the main café area will go from a mere 7.5 feet in height to over 12 feet! Within the space, new “living room” style nooks will create cozy areas for families to spend time in. To conserve resources and create a unique look that echoes our DIY ethos, many salvaged and reclaimed materials, including reclaimed wood from bowling ball alleys, shipping pallets, mason jars and more, will be used. I also want to add life in the form of edible herb gardens and other potted plants.

Of course this all costs money, and our funds are still limited. Know Thy Food’s financial goals have always been to just break even, and the café has not yet become profitable. This is why I am asking for financial help with this project. I have created a Chip In page (and there is a widget on the right hand side bar) that documets the project and also lets supporters send donations immediately through PayPal. Any money raised will help to create a better environment and more comfortable atmosphere at The Warehouse that I hope will be enjoyed by many families for many many years to come.

Thank you very much for considering this project and for supporting local foods!