September 2025
Great Basin Community Food Cooperative is 20 Years Old!
It has been a wild ride that passed in the blink of an eye. We would like to thank all of our dedicated members and shoppers for their continued support over the years. We wouldn't be here without your "silent love," as my sister Nicole calls it. Thank you to the Moon and Back 🌙 ❤️
VOTE For Your New Co-op Leadership 🗳️
Read about the new board candidates below and then click on the link to cast your vote! Voting Ends 10.4.25
Cast Your Vote For Our New Board Members
Crystal Leon
A local business owner of Radish hotel, a gardener, wife, and mother of two young kiddos. I love to create and aim to foster an environment for creativity wherever I am. After studying nutrition, I spent a decade working with nonprofits, teaching cooking and gardening in partnership with The Edible Schoolyard, as well as managing the Seed to Mouth program with an organization called Community Grows. For as long as I can remember, food and sustainability have been the pillars around which I've built community. I grew up gardening with my grandmother and can still remember the pure magic of pulling my first carrot out of the ground and delivering produce to neighbors. When I was a child, my mom hosted a food pantry and community breakfast on Saturday mornings, helping to instill in me the idea that the health and livelihood of the community I lived in were, at least in part, my responsibility. To this day, it is where I experience the greatest meaning and sense of belonging.
What attracts me to the Great Basin Co-op is that they have made it their responsibility to protect the food, health, and sovereignty of this community. From their "Round Up" program to help expand food literacy and access, to their fierce support of the local farmers and producers in our region. They are also, of course, community-owned. Much of what the co-op stands for and seeks to elevate aligns with my own passions and ideologies around the health of a community. As a co-op member-owner, a faithful participant in the farmers market scene, and a producer of local goods, I believe I could offer a broad range of perspectives from these outposts. It would be an honor to join the board that governs on behalf of its members and helps to ensure the co-op's health going forward.
Jasmine Cividino
A proud Co-Op member since the days of the record store, she is passionate about supporting her community and the farmers who keep food healthy and local. Growing up in Louisiana, where everything grows with little effort, she sees the effort that Nevadans have to put into growing food in the high desert. Having owned a successful small business just down the street from the Co-op's current location, she knows all about grit and strong leadership. Her Hair Studio, Crush operated for over a decade while she was simultaneously raising a son as a single mother. Now that her son is in college and her newest business, Upside Tidying, is running smoothly, she wants to serve in a new way —one that aligns with her values. The Great Basin Community Food Co-Op is the right fit.
Rob Holley
As a life-long resident of the Great Basin, I am the 3rd generation to farm and ranch in Nevada's Dayton Valley. After 20 years as a Nevada State Park Ranger, and 15 devoted to conservation efforts on the Middle Carson River, I currently serve as Nevada’s Organic Transition Specialist with UNR’s Desert Farming Initiative and California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF). Alongside my lovely wife and our three children, we’ve operated Holley Family Farms for 15 years. Now with my wife and oldest son, we raise cattle, sheep, and pigs, grass hay and pasture, and we produce USDA Organic vegetables for local food outlets, including farmers markets, restaurants, and the Great Basin Community Food Co-op. I was raised on Tahoe's North Shore by parents who instilled in me a love of "all creatures great and small," large natural landscapes, the value of neighbors, the significance of history, the necessity and nobility of agriculture, and the pleasure of good food and delightful company.
Co-ops have long been a part of my life. My mom was a founding member of North Tahoe’s We the People Natural Foods Cooperative (1973). We’ve since frequented numerous co-ops in Montana, Wyoming, and throughout California, supporting local farmers and makers, local food, and the cooperatives that labor to provide local, organic food and products. Maintaining an ongoing supply of meat and produce to our co-op remains one of the key highlights of our farming operations. To know that people are nourished by and enjoy the fruits of our labor is satisfying beyond measure! I hope for the opportunity to serve the co-op and its members, and help further the community that’s been built between producers, small businesses, and consumers throughout our beautiful foodshed.
David Funk
I am a Nevada native, born and raised in Reno. Several of the buildings around the Co-op were the homes of my relatives. A couple of the law offices on Arlington and Court Street were where my aunts lived as well as the building that now houses the Reno Fly Shop. My wife and I live in the Old Southwest in the house that my Grandma and Grandpa designed and lived in. Spending my entire life here, I have seen many changes in “The Biggest Little City”. I feel there are so many wonderful qualities of our town. We have quick access to the mountains, lakes and wilderness areas and there are many great events centered around the arts. I am very excited about our food scene, with an incredible energy being focused on sustainability and sourcing local. Many restaurant owners are supporting, promoting and even carrying each others’ products.
Thirty years ago I decided to become vegetarian and later took on a solely plant based diet. With this came a passion about growing much of our own food as well as helping others do the same. Each year I take part in the Co-op Seedling Sale, growing for the community, over 1000 plants to place in their own gardens. I am currently in the process of developing a business to grow sustainable, local food year around.
This brings us to the Co-op. They are all about local and sustainable. They are about community. They are like family. It is their passion, and that is why I love the Co-op. I am so excited to be a part of that, and I hope to be able to help make this amazing, community-owned grocery store even better.
Cast Your Vote For Our New Board Members
Living our Purpose - Maximizing Local Food!
Have you read our Purpose and Ends page on our website recently? In begins with “Our purpose is to promote our local food system and to serve as a sustainable cooperative model for access to wholesome food.” How do we live into that purpose? By buying as much local produce, meat, and other products, and making them available to you, our customers, while making sure the local producers are providing wholesome food.
When we say “local,” we have two specific terms that fall under the umbrella of local, which are included on our Buying Guidelines page.
Local: Products produced within our foodshed. We define our foodshed as the watershed (or drainage basin) of the Truckee, Carson, and Walker Rivers.
Regional Direct: Products as those grown or produced from our neighboring watershed out to a 200-mile radius. Regional Direct means that we have a direct relationship with the producers, and we do not go through a wholesale middleman.
We are constantly on the lookout for new local producers and have recently launched a new “Sell to Us” web page that streamlines the application process. Those applications are forwarded to our Nutritional and Education Director or the department leaders for produce, grocery, and prepared foods to determine if we have additional needs for the local products. This evaluation process also ensures that each local producer meets or exceeds our buying guidelines.
Once a producer is onboarded, our next step with farmers and ranchers is our annual “GAPS” Planning to compare what each area of the store (grocery, prepared foods, or produce) needs and what GAPS exist between the customer demand and what our ranchers and farmers can produce. This allows us to commit to purchasing a certain amount of produce or meat at an agreed-upon price and allows the ranchers and farmers to plan ahead for their products. Other products not included in the annual planning (such as non-perishable products) are included in our “order boards” to make sure they are ordered on a regular basis.
As scheduled in our GAPS planning process or requested through our regular ordering process, we receive the planned amounts of produce or meat in the store when available, and year-round for some products, to ensure our shelves are stocked and ready for our customers. In some cases, we get more local than planned - for example hundreds of pounds of additional tomatoes! This is where the excitement begins! We pull together to figure out how we can still get the extra out to our customers. Maybe a sale in produce? Or create a new special dish for the cafe or case? Or roast off the tomatoes for future use? We go to some lengths to make sure that the produce and meat grown in Nevada do not go to waste.
And of course, you, as our loyal customers, play a big part! Please make it a priority to buy local first so we can live into our purpose together. Try out new recipes and share with others how much you enjoy eating wholesome local food grown with love! With your help, as reported in our annual report, we purchased $715,841 of local products in 2024, representing a 22% increase over the prior year.
No article about our local food system would be complete without acknowledging that we are fighting headwinds in our efforts to support our local food system. It has become harder and harder for farmers and ranchers to make ends meet here in Northern Nevada. Please look forward to some upcoming interviews with our local farmers that will provide a frank assessment of these headwinds and what we need to do as a community to better support our farmers and ranchers to promote our local food system.
Philip Moore
GBCFC Local Food & Sustainability Director
15% OFF All Organic & Non-GMO Sliced Deli Meats
Stock up during this Back to School Savings on True Story Meats, Nuna, Diestel Ranch, and Creminelli Salamis - Deli Meat Freezes well 😎
Sale Cycle Dates 9.17.25 - 10.14.25
Fair Trade Organic Bananas $.99/lb
Sale Cycle Dates 9.17.25 - 10.14.25
Organic Honeycrisp Apples $2.99/lb ($1 OFF)
Sale Cycle Dates 9.17.25 - 10.14.25
15% OFF All Tallow Balms & Allafia Shea Butter
Sale Cycle Dates 9.17.25 - 10.14.25
$1 OFF Local Shishito Pepper Salads 🌶️ 🥗
Local Shishito Sesame Salad (Vegan, GF, Local) & Local Shishito Lemon Feta Salad (GF & Local)
Sale Cycle Dates 9.17.25 - 10.14.25
Pancake Stacks With Our Housemade Strawberry Syrup & Creme Fraiche Drizzle - $1 OFF
Choose from traditional organic gluten rich comfort to gluten-free & vegan options. Check out the build your own options below 😋
Sale Cycle Dates 9.17.25 - 10.14.25
Article by Michelle Nash
Nutrition Education Director (NED)
Certified NTP & MScN
The Great Basin Community Food Co-op
Tallow isn’t just for cooking- it is a prominent option for topical skin care too! So, what are the benefits of using tallow balms as a natural moisturizer?
Tallow is the rendered fat from cattle and sheep and is used as the primary ingredient in tallow balm. It contains many nutrients, including fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, and a variety of fatty acids, minerals, and antioxidants. In fact, its molecular structure is very similar to that of human skin, and the fatty acid profile is similar to the skin’s natural barrier, making it a very biocompatible and nourishing moisturizer. Tallow is the main ingredient in most balms, leaving little room for toxic chemical ingredients found in many skincare products. Due to its high fat content, tallow balm can clog pores for some skin types and is best suited for dry skin, which can be beneficial for many in the high desert climate of Northern Nevada.
Like many animals, cows store toxins in their fat; therefore, it is imperative to ensure that the tallow used for balms is of high quality. We vet the sourcing of our producers to ensure it meets our quality standards. Not only is it important that the cows are primarily grass-fed, but that the feed is not Round Up-ready alfalfa, in which case the grass feed would be laden with glyphosate.
Our newest tallow balm is from Marrow and Tallow. We currently carry three varieties of their tallow balm as well as the Methylene Blue Collagen Cream. This unique cream is made with bone marrow (which is rich in collagen and stem cells that are easily recognized by the body and integrated into the skin) and methylene blue (an antioxidant and anti-aging compound that aids in reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles).
All tallow balms, including Marrow and Tallow and the locally produced Mountain Song tallow balms, are 15% off from September 17 to October 14.
And for those looking for plant-based moisturizers, we have Manifest Wellness’s Magnesium Body Butter (Ingredients: Organic Shea Butter, Organic Coconut Oil, Magnesium Chloride) and Alaffia Shea Butter, also 15% off from September 17 to October 14.
Keep your Eyes Peeled for Locally Grown Potatoes!
If you’ve been a regular of the Great Basin Co-op, you know that every Autumn we receive all sorts of local winter squashes, onions, and potatoes. Todd Rissone, otherwise known as Farmer Todd, has some spectacular tater varieties coming into the Co-op in the next few weeks. There is the wee tiny speck-tater, the very bossy dic-tater, the always healing rehabili-tater, and the oh so grounded medi-tater…..All Tater Tales aside, Farmer Todd grows his potatoes here in Reno, just off Mill Street in partnership with Avanzino Farms who leases the land from Washoe County near the river. If you happen to catch him when he’s delivering his spuds, you’ll see they come in burlap sacks with labels that he types up himself on his vintage typewriter.
It’s always an exciting time when we get local produce as it’s amazing how much food can come from a few acres here in town and from within our local foodshed. Farmer Todd is just one of the local farmers we will be receiving local potatoes from this season. In the coming weeks and through the winter check out where our other local potatoes are coming from! Sterling Farms and Prema Farm are both cultivating Red Norland Potatoes. Jim Davenport of Jim’s Garlic & Produce, has some awesome Yukon Golds that will be ready to harvest soon. Farmers can be elegant communi-taters!
Remember to keep your eyes peeled for these locally grown tater varieties this fall at your very own food co-op:
Red Norland Potato – early-maturing potatoes that are often served boiled or in potato salads
Red Chieftain Potato – prized for its smooth red skin and firm white flesh; versatile in recipes like salads, steamed or mashed potatoes
German Butterball Potato – golden-yellow flesh that melts in your mouth; a russet-style potato with a soft buttery taste
Gold Rush Russet Potato – a potato with significantly less moisture which allows them to get fluffy when baked and crispy when fried; great for mashing, baking, and french fries; our farmer likes to grow these because they’re an early potato and are ready to harvest in 80 - 90 days.
Yukon Gold Potato – thin skinned, low starch content, buttery flavor, and silky texture; great roasted, mashed potatoes
Purple Majesty – an heirloom potato, these potatoes keep their rich color when cooked; the flesh is moist and firm when cooked and are great whichever way they get cooked.
Cosmic Gold Potato – similar to the popular Yukon Gold, these are smooth skinned and versatile; these hold their shape well when cooked.
Kennebec Potato – Our local farmer is growing this variety as an experiment to see how he likes it. Known for their smooth skin and white flesh, they are excellent for French fries or homemade potato chips.
Ruby Red Potato – another experiment for our local potato farmer, he’s checking to see if the skin of these look nicer than the Red Norland Potato; these are great roasted or for potato salad as they have a thin skin.
Carola Yellow Potato – our local farmer was told these are “exceptional potatoes” by another farmer so he’s trying them out for the first time this year; these are a German potato with a beautiful smooth yellow skin and has a smooth, creamy texture and outstanding flavor.
Co-op Construction Woes 😭
August was a really tricky month to get to the co-op, we know! At one point, we were gridlocked entirely, with only one access point in the entire neighborhood. 😱
The good news is that all of the summertime construction, road closures, and festivals are now complete, and you can access us from any of the roads shown on the map below. The only major road closed nearby is the Arlington Bridge. 🎉 🎉
Member-Owner's Buying Club Website - Save $$ Buy in Bulk
Anyone can shop, everyone can join!
Grocery Store Open everyday from 7:30am – 9pm
Foodshed Cafe (upstairs) Open everyday from 7:30am – 3pm
Great Basin Community Food Co-op
240 Court St Reno, NV 89501
775.324.6133
info@greatbasinfood.coop
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