Change of Season, Change of Scenery

It’s no secret that I love autumn. My birthday often lands on the equinox. I look forward to the smells of wood smoke and drying leaves, the final barbecues, and getting out the sweaters and scarves. Autumn is harvest time, and time to prepare for the winter—a time for transition and change. And though that is always true of fall in the Produce Department, this one will be particularly transformative.

We will be receiving a brand new, top-of-the-line refrigerated produce case, with hopes of having it installed sometime in October. The case will be more energy efficient, of course, but it’s going to help us all out in a lot of ways. We will be able to keep our current bountiful look with a bit less lettuce and bunched greens on display at one time, meaning that fresh greens come out more often. It will feature a number of modular shelves, which will be wonderful for displaying the incredible number of specialty produce items that we carry—especially this time of year when our local farms are so prolific in their variety. It will be easy to clean with frequency, and it will have a number of bins with clear fronts, cold enough for us to bring back bulk salads. The new refrigerated case won’t have mirrors. Instead, it will be top to bottom produce, and with room to hold all the produce that needs to be kept cold.  It will have both dry and wet areas, and we’ll be able to move things like peppers, bagged carrots, and delicate fruit into it.

But wait, there’s more! That’s only phase one! A specialized firm in the Midwest is about to start building us a series of modular wooden fixtures, with lots of built in storage. We’ll be removing other existing produce tables and displays and replacing them with these beautiful brand-new fixtures, custom-built to accommodate our space and enhance the shopping experience.

This will be my twenty first autumn at the Co-op. That’s a lot of transition and change. Twenty years ago, the entrance to the store and the cash registers were where the Produce back room is now. There was a child’s play area on stilts just to your left as you came in, filled with well-loved books and toys, and a slide coming down. The Mercantile Department was in the corner blocking the Produce windows, where bananas and other fruits now live. Where the Deli is now there was a tile store. Since then, we’ve bought the building and undergone more changes than I can name.

I myself designed the current fixtures and layout in the produce department many years ago, though a couple of the pieces predate me, too. They’ve now long outlived their usefulness. It was a challenge to design a functional department that conformed to our space, and it wasn’t my area of expertise. I am grateful that this time I had help: Jeffrey, the National Co-op Grocers West Coast produce specialist and Tony, our new general manager, were both invaluable in putting this together. Again, I’m so appreciative of their support and expertise in this. It’s going to be a challenge taking the old equipment out and assembling the new fixtures (thank you for your patience as we make upgrades), but at the end of the day, I’m confident that it will be well worth the effort. I look forward to more efficiently providing my community with even more of the best, freshest organic produce that nature and our glorious local farms have to offer.

by Ben Goe