Community Food Co-op

Voted Bellingham's best grocery store. Full-service deli, hot bar, salad bar featuring organic, local, and natural foods. Everyone can shop, anyone can join. Co+op, stronger together.

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      • Community Food Co-op, Downtown Store, 1220 North Forest Street at Holly StreetDowntown Store
        1220 North Forest Street at Holly Street
        Bellingham, Washington
        8 am - 9 pm
        360-734-8158
      • Cordata Co-Op exteriorCordata Store
        315 Westerly Road at Cordata Parkway
        Bellingham, Washington
        8 am - 9 pm
        360-734-8158
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Pachamama Coffee Cooperative

by Laura Steiger, Outreach Team

(originally published in March 2016)
picking coffee beans at Pachamama Cooperative

Meet the Pachamama Coffee Cooperative farmer-owners!

Because the cooperative is farmer-owned, Pachamama’s coffee growers receive well beyond the average price paid to growers—proving the power of the cooperative business model.

The Co-op is the only store in Bellingham to carry premium coffee from Pachamama Coffee Cooperative.

Pachamama is a co-op that is 100% owned and governed by the farmers who grow the coffee.

Pachamama’s member-cooperatives represent thousands of families in Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, and Ethiopia. They grow single-origin Arabica coffee on small farms and harvest by hand.

This premium coffee is imported, roasted in small batches in California, and shipped to the Co-op fresh to order.

All profits are paid to Pachamama’s farmer-owners who received an average of more than $10 for every pound of coffee sold.

Pachamama Coffee Cooperative farmer owners
picking coffee beans at Pachamama Cooperative
pouring coffee beans at Pachamama Cooperative

Photos courtesy of Pachamama Coffee Cooperative.

The Co-op is the only store in Bellingham selling Pachamama’s coffee. Because of the special relationship between our bulk buyers and the Pachamama cooperative, we are able to offer a great selection in both of our stores.

Cozy up to a cup of this 100% organic premium coffee.

Learn More

Learn more about the cooperative, meet Pachamama’s farmers, and watch videos about coffee growing and production on the Pachamama website.

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BULK| SALES Co-op| coffee| cooperatives| pachamama

Welcome North Cascade Meats

by Melissa Arbiter, Meat Team

Enrique Barrau North Cascade Meats by grazing cows trees

We love doing business with other co-ops, and this new cooperative is bringing local, grass-fed beef to our stores. At left is Whatcom County farmer and cooperative member Enrique Barrau.

Local, grass-fed, and cooperatively owned—we're so happy it’s here!

Having lived in Whatcom County for the past eight years, I have developed a passion for learning where my food comes from. I prefer local over organic any day and, given the chance, I will take a drive out into the county to get a glimpse of where my food is grown. Before working for the Community Food Co-op and becoming the meat department manager at the Downtown store, I was always curious about how and where to get local beef. Driving around the county, I’ve seen many pastures dotted with happy cows, munching on grass.

The question for me has been: where can I buy the meat from these cattle?

Up until now, the Co-op has carried a small selection of frozen, local, grass-fed beef from Matheson Farms located near the Guide-Meridian on Smith Road. Having enough beef from one small, local farm to supply two busy stores is a stretch, which is why we mainly carry Country Natural Beef and Painted Hills Grass-Fed Beef. These are both excellent sources of delicious beef that satisfy our Meat Guarantee, but definitely not as local as I’d prefer.

Thankfully, we now have North Cascade Meats: A Farmer’s Cooperative. This farmer-owned-and-managed cooperative has begun work to establish a new USDA meat processing facility, in partnership with Del Fox Custom Meats in Stanwood, to service farmers in Island, Skagit, Snohomish, and Whatcom counties. They’ve already established the North Cascade Meats grass-fed brand in the region to provide their cooperative members with a marketing program offering an above-average return on their livestock. This means that those happy cows you see while enjoying pastoral views of the countryside may very well be what’s available on our shelves.

cows walking on grass by fence with mountains and trees in background

Barrau Farms offers lush pasture with a view that most any farmer (or cow) would envy.

North Cascade Meats is currently providing us with pasture-raised, grass-fed beef from two local farms: Forest Cattle Company in Skagit County and Barrau Farms in Whatcom County. As more farms join the North Cascade Meats cooperative, we’ll have more beef available. For the time being, what we have on our shelves from week to week will vary depending on how many cattle are processed from each farm.

So far the meat that has arrived is gorgeous and is competitively priced. Each cut is labeled with a “local” and “grass-fed” green sticker as well as a sticker noting which farm that particular cut came from. Looking for a particular cut? Just ask us at the meat counter!

Learn more at northcascademeats.com and forestcattle.com.

Grass-fed Beef

In general, grass-fed beef has a deeper, “beefier” flavor than its grain-finished counterparts. Nutritionally, it contains less saturated fat but more of those healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Typically, you’ll want to cook grass-fed meat less as it tends to be quite lean.

My favorite way to enjoy grass-fed steak? A nice ribeye, brought up to around room temp, seasoned liberally with salt and pepper, and placed in a rocket-hot cast iron pan with some fat (bacon grease, ghee, or coconut oil are all good choices). Sear both sides and when it’s about 10 degrees away from the desired doneness pull off the heat to rest, covered, for at least 8 minutes (this allows it to finish cooking and ensures all those tasty juices stay in the meat).

As always, your meat department experts love what they do and are more than willing to share cooking tips and ideas … just ask us!

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raw steak with rosemary whole peppercorns garlic cloves salt

MEAT & SEAFOOD Co-op| farmer's cooperative| grass fed| washington

Front and Center

by Steve Faucher, Downtown Front End Department

Lacee Henifin community food co-op clerk cashier

Lacee Henifin, Cordata Front End Team

“My sister was shopping at your Cordata location recently, and realized as she was checking out that she had forgotten her wallet. Lacee, ‘a cute red-headed cashier’ (her words), paid for her lunch, and set off a flurry of pay-it-forwards since. Awesome job making ‘community’ such an important part of the Community Co-op!”

—submitted via our online customer comment system

One of the first and last people you probably see when you visit the Co-op is someone who works on the team that we call the Front End. We are the team of folks who work at the checkstands, diligently ringing up our member-owners and customers while striving for a high level of precision with a big focus on service. The Front End also handles most elements of membership, operates the Service Desk that is the informational hub of all things Co-op, and always has a Supervisor on duty who, in addition to assisting our cashiers with any issues or hang-ups, is the catch-all person for anything out of the ordinary that might come up throughout the store.

With a team of 30 staff Downtown and 17 at our Cordata store, we ring up around 3,400 customers a day. That adds up to 102,000 customers in a month, so in only two months we have rung up as many transactions as there are people in Whatcom County!

Holly Turri, Cordata shopper and Co-op member-owner

Holly Turri says, “I love the Co-op!” Soon after moving to Bellingham in June 2013, she visited the Cordata store for the first time. Being new to the Co-op, she and her assistance dog, Sarah, went a bit astray and mistakenly ended up at the loading dock door. Nate Wright, Cordata front end assistant manager, kindly walked her to the front door and thus began her relationship with the front end team. Holly said: “They always go above and beyond. And though it may sound a bit cliché, they are like family. They shop with me, and they educate me.” Holly and her husband James are looking forward to hosting Marc (pictured at left) at their house so he and James can share their mutual interest in making music.

Holly Turri with dog in garden

At the register our cashiers are responsible for a dizzying array of details. Every team member has hundreds of numbers tucked away in their heads in an effort to more quickly and efficiently ring up our patrons. What shoppers may not know is that beyond all of the daily transactions at the registers, we serve many people in a myriad of other ways. This brings us to the role played by our Service Desk.

At the Service Desk our member-owners can expect to get information and assistance of all kinds. We can let you know if we have a specific product, show you where it is located in the store, and in most cases give you details about the ingredients, the company that makes it, how to use it, and alternative products that you might want to consider. While you can make a return at any register, many returns are handled by Desk staff. We also sell tickets for community events, help people register for our Healthy Connections classes, and sell ad space for our newsletter and this magazine. Another in-demand service at the Desk is preparing special orders—a very popular money-saving benefit for member-owners to receive a discount of up to 25 percent off the shelf price by prepaying for case quantities of almost any item we sell.

If you have questions, Service Desk staff will strive to find an answer even if it is not directly related to the Co-op—we can help you look up a list of local homeopathic doctors, give you directions to their offices, and then sell you a bus pass to get there! Basically, the Service Desk is staffed by very knowledgeable, jack-of-all-trade Front Enders who try very hard to meet our customers’ needs.

Mike Straus community food co-op clerk

Mike Straus, Downtown Front End Team

Mike Straus can’t quite remember how his friendship with Dorothy Beach started; perhaps it was their mutual connection to Texas. Dorothy was a regular shopper at the Downtown store and after a few falls left her less mobile, Mike started to shop for her and deliver her groceries on his way home. They would share tea and cookies, and talk about the news and their kids and grandkids. “Dorothy was a great lady, and I enjoyed spending time with her. The tea and cookies were just icing on the cake,” said Mike. When Dorothy moved into a care facility Mike visited her with one of his grandkids, and he still keeps in touch with one of Dorothy’s children who lives nearby. Their regular visits extended over a period of 4 to 5 years. “I miss Dorothy,” Mike said in closing.

Offering an umbrella of support for customers and cashiers alike is the store Supervisor. “Supers” are super-capable know-it-alls—in the best possible way! They know the ins and outs of Front End procedures and policies, so they can keep the whole operation flowing. They know how to troubleshoot our finicky Point of Sale system. They know what to do and who to call if something is on the fritz. They are on-site theft patrol. But most of all, they know how to get our member-owners what they need. If there is something a customer wants and we can get it, the Super will make it happen.

Of course, as proud as I am of the Front End team, there wouldn’t be much need for it without our customers. One of the best things about working on this team is YOU—the great people that we have been privileged to serve over the years.

Our community-owned grocery store is truly a work of the community. There are member-owners who have shopped here regularly for 40 years. Some of the relationships and genuine acts of kindness that have occurred here over the years are rather wonderful. It’s not uncommon for a Front Ender to drop off a member’s groceries on the way home from work—purely out of the goodness of her own heart and without need for acknowledgment. One of our own might check in with a regular shopper we haven’t seen for while, just to make sure things are OK. And the outpouring of support from you, our customers, when something unfortunate befalls the Co-op or one of its employees is equally inspirational to me.

It’s really a collection of all these little things that add up to make our beloved cooperative not just for the profit of any one group or person, but to increase the general good for all involved. It’s a collective effort of our community, and it results in the realization of a truly special place.

Thank you!

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THE CO-OP DIFFERENCE Co-op| customer service| local

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a heart made with an image of fresh produce that says 50 years in the center

Celebrating Our 50th Anniversary!

The Co-op is celebrating our 50th anniversary. Visit our anniversary page and watch a fun video, shop for 50th anniversary Co-op T-shirts and hoodies, and see a timeline of our history.

The barn at Mariposa Farm under construction with support from a Community Food Co-op Farm Fund grant.

Appreciation for the Co-op Farm Fund. Donate today!

Thank you for donating to the Co-op Farm Fund! Farmers share their appreciation for the ways in which the Farm Fund has helped their organic, sustainable farms.

co-op curbside

Co-op Curbside

Co-op Curbside is easy and convenient! Shop our store online and schedule to pick up your groceries at the Cordata store or the Holly Street building across the street from our Downtown store!

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HIGH RISK PRIORITY SHOPPING HOUR • 8 am to 9 am daily • both stores
DOWNTOWN STORE & DELI
• map • 360-734-8158 •  8 am – 9 pm; deli service counter closes at 7 pm
CORDATA STORE & DELI • map • 360-734-8158 • 8 am – 9 pm; deli service counter closes at 7 pm
CO-OP BAKERY CAFÉ and CONNECTIONS BUILDING CLASSROOM • map • 360-734-8158 • temporarily closed

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