by Ben Becker, Newsletter Writer
Can you taste the qualities of the upper Midwest when you bite into a breakfast sandwich? Do the currents of the Yahara River wash over you with every spoonful of hearty vegan chili? Is it possible for that cookie you’re eating to connect you with the unglaciated topography of the Driftless? Without a superhuman palate, it's unlikely you’d detect the characteristics of a meal that was made with local ingredients. However, at our Co-op, we strive through the dishes we make to celebrate both the character of our home state and the community of people who live here. So it should come as no surprise that our commitment to local products can be observed throughout our Production Kitchen along with our store shelves, hot bar, and bakery cases.
Cooperative Supply Chains
By engaging in the food supply chain, cooperative grocers bring the cooperative principles to bear on the exchange between farmers and consumers. Patronizing a cooperative grocery retailer also keeps your money in the community by providing jobs for your neighbors and supporting suppliers and services from down the street. It also means that profits are redistributed among Owners like yourself, rather than hoarded by distant corporations. While shopping in a retail setting does distribute some of the purchase price of local produce to the overhead and labor required to keep the Co-op open, it also creates increased market access to farmers that a direct-to-market model does not. Willy Street Co-op provides opportunities for small farmers and manufacturers in the community to get their products on retail shelves, making them more accessible to shoppers who might not include a trip to the farmers’ market or CSA as part of their daily routine. It also means that local food sales drive community building through programs like Double Dollars or our Access Discount, that make fresh local food more affordable.
Non-Retail Location
While many shoppers and Owners here in Dane County usually know about their nearest Co-op locations, they may not realize that in addition to our three retail stores, we have a substantial non-retail location where we prepare and produce products—our Production Kitchen. Our made-in-house offerings have long been supported by our Production Kitchen, where our team of bakers and cooks continue to hone our offerings while highlighting local ingredients. Production operations at our Kitchen churn out a number of offerings including an assortment of hot bar and prepared foods, packaged goods that combine convenience and value on our center store shelves, and quick breads, cookies, and even freshly made pie crusts from our Bakery.
Red Curry Tofu
Among these offerings is our Red Curry Tofu. This dish has an incredible plant based flavor featuring seasonings like tamari, curry powder, paprika, chili powder, and cayenne to pack a spicy punch. The central ingredient is the product of Simple Soyman, a Wisconsin specialty since 1983. Operating out of Milwaukee but serving the Madison area as well, The Simple Soyman’s proprietors have been producing tofu right in our state for decades.
Meadowlark Flour
If you are enjoying Willy Street Co-op’s Bakery selection, you’ll want to know about Meadowlark flour. Used by local bakers and brewers throughout the area, we are thrilled to carry Meadowlark flour in our stores and as an ingredient for our productions. Meadowlark Community Mill in Ridgeway has taken on a pivotal role in the regional grain system. As the spiritual successor to Lonesome Stone Milling (literally employing the same millstone), Meadowlark provides a market for eight different organic farmers in the nearby Driftless region. Not only does this create a market for farmers, but it also means midwest consumers have access to a greater variety of local grain. Whether buying for a bakery or home, Meadowlark boasts a higher quality of flour than can be found elsewhere.
Vitruvian Farms
Fresher fare also abounds in our prepared product mix. Such dishes feature vendors such as Vitruvian Farms. Just a short drive from Madison, Vitruvian Farms is dedicated to keeping your food dollars in the local economy. Beyond supporting the local economy and community, they also prioritize the environment and the healthy quality of their produce. As a certified organic grower, this producer is working to keep chemicals to a minimum and quality to a maximum. At the same time, they are mitigating their footprint by eliminating plastic waste where possible and looking at recyclable packaging.
Animal Welfare
While supporting local producers is good for our community and environment, it also provides for animal welfare. A prime case of this support is our vendor, Fox Heritage Farms, who provide us with locally sourced pork. Based out of Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, Fox Heritage Farms and their subsidiary brand, Willow Creek Farms, raises their pork in the belief that by keeping their product local and humanely raised, they can offer a higher quality experience to the consumer. It is with that belief that they provide their animals with a comfortable and more natural way of life, roaming freely in grass pastures. Using sustainable, natural farming practices and eschewing GMO feeds, Fox Heritage Farms also treat their Berkshire hogs with greater care and superior conditions. They do not use nose rings, nor concentrate their animals into cramped, unsanitary feedlots. Their hams, bacon, and other products are all custom processed right in Prairie du Sac. By keeping their operations local and humane, they create a better product.
Cates Family Farm
In a similar vein, one of our beef vendors, Cates Family Farm, embodies their homegrown values to create an environment where any herd would be happy to grow up. Primary among their principles is conservation, and the results speak for themselves. Notable among the farm’s accolades is the Leopold Conservation Award from the Sand County Foundation. While large centralized farming operations pollute the land, water, air, foods with petrochemicals, manure lagoons, and dangerous pathogens, the Cates family is demonstrating how farming can create a positive impact on our landscape. The commitment to their animals means caring for the environment on which they graze, and this stewardship is easy to observe. How many other cattle operations can boast of a healthy trout stream running through their fields?
Diverse Menu
If the high quality of local vendors has proven tantalizing to your appetite, our diverse menu of offerings produced in the stores and our Production Kitchen will prove irresistible. This month, keep a look out for promotions and new offerings of dishes like hearty vegan chili, potato latkes, quesadillas, and parfaits. You will also enjoy the breakfast options we prepare in-house such as sandwiches and quiches. If you are a fan of our hot bar, you’ve likely enjoyed the Indian specialties we prepare including chickpea salad. In addition to our line of vegan dips, we will be rolling out similar offerings using non-vegan ingredients. You’ll be astounded by the level of variety our kitchen can create, with nineteen soup varieties to choose from. The Kitchen is even looking at launching miniature pies!
Eat Local Month
September in Wisconsin is the prime time to celebrate local foods and those who work hard to bring them to our table, whether it's fresh produce or prepared foods from our kitchen. For our state, its climate, and its food system, the month represents a unique moment for the harvest of a diverse cornucopia. This is why September has been chosen as Eat Local Month at Willy Street Co-op. This time of year there is a broad swath of products available for eating fresh or cooking. It is the time of year when you can have the most variety Wisconsin growers have to offer, and each year those offerings will differ. September produces some very special and singular types of produce for local eaters to enjoy: over the course of the month, we witness the transition from summer to autumn, during which the seasonality of many products will overlap. When the month starts you might be thinking of heirloom tomatoes, but by the end find yourself cutting into a pie made with local apples. This is both the best time to see local products featured in our prepared dishes while choosing from the almost two hundred fresh local items we offer.
Owners’ Power
As much as Eat Local Month allows us to focus and promote local farmers, vendors, producers and products, it is also about our shoppers as well. Without owners and customers investing in their local food economy, we would not be able to do the work we do here at the Willy Street Co-op. Owners may not realize just how much power and influence they have on the Co-op’s offerings, not to mention the vendors that supply them. Locally grown, produced, or manufactured products benefit our regional food economy overall. To keep our local food economy a reality requires consumer participation, because if you want us to keep carrying it and for those vendors to be successful you have to actively buy it. Sometimes that could mean paying a little more instead of opting for the non-local option, but when you buy that local product it has a big impact and even though you can’t see it, you create a real connection by helping those vendors keep their products on our shelf and keeping them in business. When you consider the shortened supply chain involved it is easy to observe how much further your dollar goes to creating a more fair and just economic model and society. Many of us love to purchase produce from the farmers’ market because you can interface directly with the growers, ask questions about their products and how they were grown and get clear, straightforward answers. This experience also allows us to put a face to those who work hard to grow our food. Food that travels fewer than 150 miles to our stores (and to you) tends to be fresher than what comes from across the country or overseas. When you compare these supply chains you can also see a clear distinction in where your money goes. When buying directly from the farmer, 100% of the purchase price goes directly to them (although they may have the unseen costs for bringing their goods to market). When you expand the supply chain across multiple states, countries or oceans, the transaction through which you the consumer actually buys the product hides the many hands that have handled your food and taken a bite out of the purchase price. The number of middlemen involved in buying from big chains absorb most of the sticker price you pay, with money going to transporters, distributors and marketing costs and only a small percent of the money making its way back to the farmer. While these intermediary industries can benefit from the oversized economies of scale they work to create, those growing the food often see either a smaller portion of proceeds in this system, or consumers enjoy a loss of flavor in the quest for shelf stability superior concern. The centralization of both distribution and processing facilities across large supply chains also create risks to the security of our food systems. When supply chains become increasingly centralized, they become more vulnerable to interruptions.cFor food supply chains in particular, this sensitivity is amplified by the risk of contamination. When large meat processing facilities or salad packaging plants fall victim to foodborne illness outbreaks such as salmonella, they become ground zero for the catastrophic spread and infection impacting consumers on a massive, widespread scale. Building local food infrastructure as an alternative to the conventional big box model helps to build resiliency that is far less vulnerable to cataclysmic system changes.
Celebrate
By celebrating Eat Local Month, your cooperative highlights the relationship and dependence between consumers, retailers, processors, and producers. So keep in mind that the ingredients we bake or cook with in our kitchens are grown on family farms run by real people who depend on our business. Our local producers and economy depend on you, So remember this Eat Local Month that you can make our local food system happen, not just in September, but all year round!