This Thanksgiving season, I have been meditating on gratitude and the idea of living a grateful life. Grateful living -- or choosing to be mindful of the abundance around us --  has a way of positively impacting our personal lives, our community, and the world. Grateful living is the act of looking around at all we have and everything we are and thinking, “This is enough. I am enough.” When we realize that we have enough and we are enough, we can turn our attention outside of ourselves and connect with others. Through these connections, powerful things can happen. 

Over the past three years of working to develop a cooperative grocery store in our small Wisconsin town, I have had many moments of deep gratitude for connections with others. People I only knew by face or name have become close colleagues and trusted partners. Strangers have become friends. Bonds have been forged between businesses, people, schools, and organizations. Without connecting, cooperation would be nonexistent. And it’s only through cooperation that we can experience the power of being greater than the sum of our parts.

"Being married into a farming family, I look to support our local farmers and makers whenever possible."

This is Owner #171, Karen McCulloch, owner of KMA Jewelry and one of the owners of The Book Teller! We sat down to learn a little about her and find out her thoughts on becoming an Owner.

Whitewater Grocery Co.
President’s Report September 23, 2019

Dear GroCo Owners and Board Members,

I respectfully submit the following report to you, updating you on the progress of the GroCo and the hard work being done by our many volunteers. It has been a busy summer in Whitewater and we are only getting busier as the school year is getting underway. I want to take this time to give a giant THANK YOU to all of the volunteers who have continued to work hard to propel us forward. You give so much of your time when there is so little time available and it does not go unnoticed. Thank you.

We are gearing up for our Annual Meeting on October 10 and are very excited to update our Owners on our progress while we look ahead to what’s next. Your Board, along with super-volunteer Vicki, met on a recent Sunday evening to plan our presentation. We have a lot to share and we’re looking forward to an exciting night. The evening will kick off with delicious food, followed by a book talk by Jon Steinman, author of Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants. Then we will deliver your annual update and conduct board business. I am anticipating an exciting evening with a lot of Owners present! 

Hitting 800 by the end of the year means we can begin our search for a General Manager, get closer to nailing down a site for the store, and do a final market study to ensure what we're building works best for our Owners and the community. 

Our sixth vendor for our Local Vendor Spotlights isWood Street Bakery out of Whitewater. If you frequent the Whitewater City Market, you've undoubtedly had their delicious baked goods. Thanks for these wonderful answers, Therese McKenzie and @JimMcKenzie!

Since Whitewater Grocery Co. is all about bringing healthy food options to our community, it seems only natural to involve our members in creating a cookbook!

Our fifth local vendor spotlight is Sunny Brook Farm out of Whitewater. Here's Karl's As to our Qs:

Our March local vendor spotlight is the delicious honey maker Kettle Moraine Honey. Here's a few of their As to our Qs:

We're excited to announce the beginning of local vendor spotlights! Our first vendor is local farmer/soap maker from Palmyra ABCDfarmhouse. Here's a few of Ashley's As to our Qs:

Our second vendor for our Local Vendor Spotlights is BeefnBeaks Farm out of Waterloo. Kris got so excited in her first answer (that we loved so much not only for its passion, but its insight) that we decided to share that answer and her answer to other questions.

There is a lot of work behind-the-scenes to build any business up from scratch. In every industry, there is a set of best practices and luckily, in the food co-op industry, we have access to those practices.