by Anya Firszt, General Manager
Hello dear Owners; Hello New Year!
January, the first month of 2023. The amount of daylight is growing each and every day since the Winter Solstice, yeah!
Find Your Wellness
The first Wellness Wednesday of the New Year is on January 4 and Owners receive 15% off your Wellness and Body Care purchases (instead of the usual 10%). Stock up and save an additional 5%!
North Customer Bathroom and Staff Break Room Renovation
In mid-January we will begin the project to remodel the Willy North customer bathrooms and staff break room. We expect the project to take 10-12 weeks. By improving both the bathrooms and break rooms at the same time, the project time frame is longer but we feel that one disruption is easier than two, and it reduces overall project costs compared to two separate projects. During that time the customer restrooms will be unavailable, but we will provide alternate temporary restroom facilities outside the store.
We are doing this remodel for three main reasons: to update old fixtures and equipment; to change our current two single-gender bathrooms to four gender-neutral bathrooms; and to create a more functional break space for staff to use.
There may be occasional loud noise, dust, or other disruptions throughout the course of this project, but we will be working with the contractors to minimize these disturbances through conscious scheduling and planning.
DEI Strategic Work Group update
If you are curious about how we are doing in our pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Willy Street Co-op and how we are measuring our progress toward them, you can find out more on our DEI dashboard webpage (willystreet.coop/pages/dei-dashboard). You can review individual goal metrics on this page, which we plan to update quarterly. We expect to add and change the metrics over time to better measure our progress.
FY22 Patronage
On January 16, patronage will be issued via a store credit to our 17,072 Owners who qualify and have purchased at least $510 worth of eligible goods from the Co-op in the last fiscal year. An email (if we have a valid email address for you) or a letter will be sent to you if you are to receive patronage. If you’ve moved or updated your email address, please make sure to stop by the Customer Service desk to update it or contact us via phone (East: 608-251-6776; West: 608-284-7800; North: 608-271-4422) or email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
For those who have purchased less than $510, your patronage refund would have resulted in a store credit of less than $2. The cost of distributing store credits below $2 would cost us more than the store credit amount itself!
Store credits are available (for Owners receiving one) at the registers starting on January 16 and must be used by June 18, 2023.
For details related to the patronage refund, check out www.willystreet.coop/patronage-refund.
Newly Seated Board Member
At their November 30 meeting, the Board appointed Isabel Spooner-Harvey to fill a vacancy on the Board. Isabel was the next in line of top vote getters in the recent Board election. The vacancy was due to Jeannine Bindl’s early resignation from her three-year term.
I would like to extend my thanks and gratitude to Jeannine for her five years of service on the Board since she was elected in 2017. Best to you, Jeannine, in your future endeavors.
STORE HOURS REMINDER
Stores are closed on January 1 and open at 10:00am Monday, January 2, 2023.
I hope you all have a wonderful beginning to 2023.