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No spud! staff were harmed in the taking of this photo Did you know that doing your grocery shopping with spud! saves you an average of 81 minutes per week? The average family spends 90 minutes a week grocery shopping whereas the average spud! customer spends less than 9 minutes a week ordering their groceries through spud!. Shopping with spud! . . . → Read More: CONTEST: With 81 Extra Minutes A Week, What Would You Do? In recognition of Valentine’s Day, I thought I would pass along some advice about love that I found on the internet from a group of kids aged 4 to 8. I think you’ll agree that they are wise beyond their years. “When my grandma got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toe nails anymore. So . . . → Read More: Kids dispense sage advice about love on Valentine's Day The David against Monsanto's Goliath
Last Saturday, spud! proudly sponsored a food event in support of a 79 year old farmer named Percy Schmeiser who has spent more than a decade fighting to protect his rights and the rights of all farmers to own their own seed. Over 120 people attended the event and we were all eager . . . → Read More: Feisty farmer fights for farmer's rights A few weeks ago, Caitlin Flanagan published an article in The Atlantic about how programs like Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard are damaging the most vulnerable students in the US school systems. I’m not going to write my own rebuttal of the piece here, but I do like a lot of what was written at the Serious Eater’s website. I bristle a bit at articles that try to explain the negative impacts of local food education (especially curriculums that integrate exploration in a school garden with the set subjects for a grade) because I credit Alice Waters with my wanderings into the local and sustainable food movement. When I was a freshman at Yale University, a close friend and suitemate of mine was part of the team that first acquired the grant money and land in New Haven to start Yale’s very own on-campus farm. Our dining halls started serving local and organic greens and meat. We had lectures and seminars on campus with agriculture rock stars like Joel Salatin and Kelly Brownell. I’d never heard of organic agriculture or most of the issues involved in food production before making my way to university. I even remember a discussion in a supermarket near my dorm room that started like this:
Firstly, the book contained a great deal of information that I had never come across before and, secondly, the book’s author, Jeff Rubin, is actually the chief economist at an investment bank called CIBC World Markets. You’d think that a guy who is focused on world markets would hardly be a candidate to write a book about how the world will soon become small and local. However, as I read the book, I began to understand why Jeff wrote it. You see, one of his jobs as an economist was to predict future oil prices. He had compiled data for over a decade to back up his predictions and they increasingly led him to the conclusion that oil prices were going to rise dramatically in the near future due to dwindling supplies and increasing demand. In fact, he was almost laughed off the stage at a national petroleum club meeting in 2000 when he predicted that oil would reach $50 per barrel within five years. However, five years later when he returned to give a new forecast, no one was snickering any more because the price of West Texas crude had just crossed the $50 mark. Jeff then proceeded to once again expose himself to ridicule and derision by making an even more audacious prediction: that oil prices would rise to $100 within 2 years. Once again history proved him correct and, in fact, in 2008, they actually surpassed $140 per barrel. This past week was particularly challenging at spud!. Even at the best of times, our business model is not for the faint of heart. We pack our groceries at no extra cost to the customer, deliver them at no extra cost above a very low order threshold, and set our prices at no extra cost compared . . . → Read More: Looking for inspiration? Meet William Kamkwamba We did a quick poll in the right hand column of this blog regarding topics you’d like to read about and the highest votes were for articles on our food system. We are happy to oblige and will include a variety of articles on food policy and the food system this year. You’d think that something as . . . → Read More: Food security finally getting government focus
1) Simplify and reduce stress- Imagine being able to reduce a weekly task from 90 minutes to 9 minutes -and not having it cost any extra. Well, that is exactly whatwhat happens every time our customers buy their groceries from spud! and avoid a grocery shopping trip. The average family of four spends 90 minutes doing grocery shopping whereas our customers spend less than 9 minutes. That’s 81 extra minutes each week to relax, enjoy a cup of coffee (from spud!), read a book, have a meaningful conversation with a family member or friend… – you get the picture. 2) Eat healthier - Our wide range of organic produce encourages our customers to eat more fruits and vegetables, which is often described as the single most effective way to improve one’s health. Our full selection of organic and natural groceries also makes it easier to eat healthy on their entire diet. Did you know that we carefully select every product to make sure that it doesn’t contain any “funky” ingredients? This gives customers the peace of mind that every item we sell meets a good standard of health. Continue reading spud! Your new year's resolution support team
Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus Musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of Saint Nicholas. The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof. An experience related to our rewards points program last week really put our corporate values to the test – and we almost failed it. As many of you know, we give our customers rewards points that can be redeemed for free groceries if their grocery order size is above a certain level. We even offer double and triple points for very large orders because it costs us the same to deliver a small order or a large order. Last Thursday I received an email from a staff member indicating that our computer system had somehow given some of our Portland customers hundreds of thousands of extra rewards points back in July! It was also reported that those customers were, quite naturally, redeeming those unauthorized points and dramatically reducing their grocery order revenues. I was initially skeptical that this could be true because our rewards points program had been working flawlessly for over seven years. I was even more skeptical that such an error could have gone unnoticed for over four months. However, when I asked our programming staff to look into it they confirmed that a freak computer crash in July caused the computer to somehow give 244 Portland customers 10,000 times the number of points that they were supposed to get. There was one customer who routinely placed large orders that had been allocated 1.7 million points! As every 1000 points is worth $10 in free groceries, this customer had the potential to get $17,000 in free groceries! |
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