Good evening,
My name is Carol Ann, one of the new owners of Bryn Mawr Market, and I wanted to share some of our news and updates with you.
tl;dr: we have more produce and local brands, come check us out, please reach out to two neighbors and let them know about some of our new products, especially more produce
For those with a little more time:
We have a lot more produce than before (some is on display in the front, some are in the cooler in the back near the milk), including:
ORGANIC: Lemons, Limes, Oranges, Ginger, Cilantro, Parsley, Mint, Boxed greens & salad mixes, Cauliflower, Celery, Strawberries, Fair Trade Bananas, Blueberries, Bell Peppers, Cucumbers, Apples, Tomatoes, Fair Trade Avocados, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Onions, and Garlic.
We have a lot more local products, including;
- Baker’s Field Bread and Flours–milled in NE Minneapolis, Wednesday and Saturday deliveries
- Bogart’s Donuts: every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday
- Breadsmith breads and pastries, Monday and Friday deliveries (not new, continuing to carry, but a few new products like challah bread)
- Northern Soda Company (fun flavors!)
- Northstar Kombucha
- Big Watt Coldbrew Coffee
- Earth Dance Farm Community Shared Agriculture pick up site (year-round vegetable and egg share options, pick up your share at the store)
We also have a few not-as-local-but-we-are-proud-of-products including:
- Blueland (less plastic, refill is the new recycle, tablets and powders where you add the water)
- Wyoming Beef Sticks (no nitrates, cows are raised and butchered in same area, grass-fed)
- Tillamook ice cream and cheese (a B-Corporation company)
- More vegan and gluten-free candies and snacks through a local BIPOC supplier
We also recently raised our employees’ wages to $20 an hour and introduced a profit-share ownership. We are working toward an employee-owned company.
We decided to no longer host the lottery. It was a mixture of hassle and ethics.
We use many of the same vendors Wedge Co-Op uses, including UNFI and Co-Op Partners. If there are specific items you want, we can likely find them.
Read Steve’s treatise on us reducing single-use plastic in the store.
Barb and Doug (the previous store owners) still own the building (from Bryn Mawr Market through Digital Native), so we are navigating updating different parts of the store, including the floors and walls. Thank you for your patience during our “upgrade” phase. One of our employees, Lee, is an artist and we commissioned them to paint a mural above the back wall cooler. Stay tuned for that fun change.
How can you help, you ask? Please talk to your neighbors and encourage them to check out the changes in the market and to come shop, especially for our much larger selection of produce! More fresh produce is one of our bigger changes (we’re not just a treat store anymore), because fruits and veggies are the least “shelf stable,” so we need help getting that word out. We can order as much as you’ll want, but we hate to see it go to waste!
What other questions do you have for us? What other feedback do you have?
Thank you for your support, encouragement, and patience during this transition and as we keep figuring this out. We really love being part of the community and are happy to keep this a market so we all have increased walkability and food access.
Sincerely,
Carol Ann & Steve
P.S. A little about us. We have lived on Queen Ave -just down the street from the market- for two years, and have two kiddos. Steve was hating his online job (bored and disillusioned lawyer) and when he heard through neighbors that the Bryn Mawr Market owners were retiring, he was very interested. Carol Ann was very hesitant (see note before about small children) and we both work full-time (I work for Hennepin County).
P.P.S. We are both from Idaho and went to school in Utah (where cars unfortunately rule), but we didn’t meet until much later…. Steve foolishly served in the U.S. Marine Corps for over a decade before attending law school and then moving to Massachusetts to study public international law (the kind that doesn’t work well with American foreign policy). Carol Ann is a recovering school teacher, who taught in hippie charter schools (boo!), and in Boston Public Schools (yay, public schools!). We met each other while living in Cambridge, Massachusetts where we each earned our second graduate degrees.
P.P.P.S. We moved here from Cambridge, MA and loved the walk and bike-ability there, and were so happy to discover Bryn Mawr’s closeness to downtown, its natural wonders, and our cute little business section. We came here because we appreciate the lakes, parks, nature, slightly-more-affordable housing, and less-bad politics of the Twin Cities!
P.P.P.P.S. The thought of the market not staying a market gave us the final push we needed to jump into this adventure. We are so grateful for the Bryn Mawr Market employees and their hard work and patience it takes to keep the store running; we couldn’t do this without them or without you. Thank you again.
