And now, an important message from the GM
Hello! My name is Amber Sallaberry. I’m our co-op’s General Manager and one of the co-founders. Over the next few months, I’m going to be the project coordinator for our long-awaited upstairs cafe and eatery. In order to best meet the dietary and flavor needs of our members, I am requesting your help and input.
Request #1: Our team is currently working on the new offerings from the co-op kitchen, cafe, and juice bar. My goal is to get this menu as local, organic, and nutrient dense as possible…while also incorporating every dietary type of comfort food into the mix. Based on the co-op kitchen's current offerings - please tell me what you love, what you hate, and what you’d like to see offered. What do think of our signature Kale Salad, yeah or ne? Our Breakfast Burritos, love em or leave em? The spring rolls, paleo blondies, fudge torte, daily soup? Please share your comments and thoughts with me via email: amber@greatbasinfood.coop
2. Request #2: Help your co-op get the upstairs cafe open this winter! To finally finish this big project that started 5 years ago, you can most easily contribute financially in two ways:
A - If you are able, come into the store and invest your full membership equity! (you get a free "I Own A Grocery Store With My Friends" T-Shirt when you pay off your membership equity)
B - Give the co-op a loan (with 0-3% interest, $1K minimum and $50K max, you choose). Co-op's are traditionally funded by member loans. We have already had great success in paying back the majority of our last round of over $700,000 in member loans and I can guarantee you that this is a good investment to make ...being that we are one of the fastest growing co-ops in the nation! Please email me for more details, amber@greatbasinfood.coop
With so many exciting changes for GBCFC on the horizon, I will do my best to keep everyone abreast as things come to fruition.
Thank You,
Amber Sallaberry
Onjae, our newest juicer, demonstrates the power of BEETS! These magical tubers are versatile, sweet or savory, juiceable or cookable, and pack a potent punch of healthy anthocyanins. Our topped red beets are coming from in Nevada City. Oh, and did we mention they're especially jugglable?
Check out this recent op-ed in the Reno Gazette-Journal for a take on local food, the value of sustainability, and lessons to be learned from Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico. This introspective look at our food system comes courtesy of Christine Rosakranse, local Reno farmer from , a certified organic farm in Reno. Who else remembers the storm in Reno in 1985 that emptied grocery shelves in a hurry?
Lisa, one of our longest standing and sweetest employees, highlights the new Bolivian finger puppets in our wellness department. Photographs of this amazing lady are rare: as one of her co-workers put it, "Seeing Lisa pop up in my Instagram feed is magical. I think this is what seeing a unicorn in the wild would feel like. 🦄☄🦄☄🦄
local organic baby ginger is here!
This is one of the most special local harvests of the year - if you're used to peeling ginger and chopping away at a tough, fibrous mess, just wait until you try fresh baby ginger - no skins, and the best texture and flavor you'll get outside of Hawaii.
Avanzino and Lattin Farms
have an abundance of winter squash available by the case!
There are Jack-o-lantern, Jarrahdale, Porcelain Doll, Sugar Pie, and White Pumpkins, as well as Spaghetti, Acorn, Kabocha, Butternut, and Futsu Squash!
Order in bulk through DROPP today!
FAIR TRADE ORGANIC BANANAS are $.99 cents a pound for the entire month of October!! What is fair trade you ask? From production to purchase, Fair Trade was created to be a model of sustainable, ethical trade that puts people and planet first…and while it is much better than its organic or conventional counterparts, it’s often the case that farmers are underpaid for their time and services. It's for reasons like this that OneVillage, a pioneering UK retailer of artisan-made items, shuns the term fair trade altogether. According to founder Roy Scott: "There remains an enormous discrepancy between pay, conditions, and opportunity that Europeans would regard as acceptable, compared with those of the producers of most products being bought. Claims of 'fair trade' are therefore inaccurate and misleading. To say 'This is fair trade' to such workers whose pay is insufficient to enjoy an adequate quality of life—or is grossly out of step with those of the owners of the businesses in which they work, or those of the buyers—to claim and say 'This is fair' is shocking and in itself a great injustice."
On the other hand, fair trade as an independent third party certifier has been besieged by multinational corporations that want to make their own, cheaper labels. The labor rights policy advisor at Oxfam had this to say: “We don’t want to see standards watered down, and neither do we want customers to be faced by a bewildering proliferation of different certification schemes.”
Well, it's probably a little too late for the "bewildering" array of certifications (look at your eggs and see if you can sort through the labels organic, free-range, pastured, animal welfare approved, cage free, vegetarian fed, etc.) Now, companies have seen that fair trade is successful from a business perspective, and to some degree, a human perspective, and they want the business without treating laborers fairer. And Fair Trade is leading the charge to keep standards from being watered down by massive multinational corporations like Unilever and Mondelez.
At GBCFC we put in a lot of time and energy getting to know our producers and better understand their local practices. However, when it comes to foods grown in other regions, especially foods grown close to the equator, we rely on organizations like Fair Trade Certified to help bridge the financial gap that farmers are paid. As always, we recommend that you buy local from Nevada farmers as we can absolutely guarantee fair prices…and as soon as someone figures out how to create a microclimate for bananas in the high desert, buy from them!
Fair trade, at it’s very best, is a step in the right direction but we will be the first to say that it’s not the final step.
Here at the Great Basin Community Food Co-op, we love Halloween. We're just not big fans of giant bags of mass-produced processed high fructose corn syrup where the non-recyclable plastic packaging weighs as much as the food imitation hidden inside. Which is why this year, instead of offering Halloween candy for sale, we've decided to share a great Halloween recipe with you all so you can enjoy a homemade scary Halloween without the rampant consumerism :)
Meet our newest Fallon farmer, Tim of . He is growing a diversity of crops with plans to really meet some unexpected needs next year: organic pastured chicken, organic heritage wheat to mill into LOCAL flour, heritage pastured pigs, and an abundance of other vegetables. He is an avid learner who will talk passionately about the importance of a regenerative farm movement, but is just as likely to get his hands in the dirt and get stuff done. In his first year he has already made his way into eight farmers' markets a week and planted a no-till cover crop to improve his soil quality, all while learning from the best minds in farming (, , and Allan Savory, to name a few we've heard him mention). We're excited to have First Fruit around and can't wait for next year!
EVERYONE IS WELCOME! Open every day from 8am-9pm
Our mailing address is:
240 Court St Reno, NV 89501
775.324.6133
info@greatbasinfood.coop
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