All in all – a banner year! Why? Because of you … ALL of you who love our Baker Food Co-op – our members and shoppers who give of their time, talents and treasure. We ended the year with an 11+% increase in sales and added 83 new members to our Co-op family!

Thank you to:

• Our working members who gave a whopping 2480 hours of their time as cashiers, cleaning crew, produce handlers, receiving freight, stocking shelves and …
• Our devoted Department Heads who, week after week, give of their talents ordering and managing their respective product lines for us to buy and enjoy!
• Our wonderful Paid staff: Amy, Teresa, Chris, JoAnn and MaryAnn [our new grab-n-go chef] for keeping the doors open, helping our customers and our working members, answering questions, managing the inventory and a huge array of details, way too many to list even if I had a whole ream of paper! A special thank you to Amy for ravenously searching for local producers and vendors to supply our store with the best that Eastern Oregon has to offer.
• Our Board of Directors who stepped up into being a working Board in the absence of a general manager.
• Every one of us who give of our treasures – our grocery money – to support the financial stability of our Co-operative.

While we still face challenges ahead, we can also celebrate several triumphs that occurred in the year of 2023:

• We received grant funding to begin the repair of the horrendous sidewalk on the east side of our building. Special thanks to Ashgrove Cement for this funding; Sarah, our grant writer and the Oregon Trail Preservation Trust for partnering with us. Stay tuned for more about this splendid partnership.
• We have ordered our new cooler that is more energy efficient and shopper friendly. It is due to arrive in late February. An enormous thank you to those who so generously donated the funds to make this purchase. And hats off to JoAnn for her energetic fundraising raffles, currently one of her handmade and utterly beautiful quilts.
• We have added unique beers and ciders for you to take home and enjoy, some are even non-alcoholic and all are quite delicious. We have and hope to continue to participate in the BCD Wine Walk events as they occur throughout the year. We’ll keep you posted.
• Our Board of Directors went from 4 struggling members back to 7 strong and capable individuals with a wide array of skills and talents to enhance our current and future success… see the list below.
• Secured a grant from Baker City Downtown Association to begin a facelift of our front entryway – Thank you to BCD and the Festival of Trees!
• We are participating in the Downtown First Friday events, featuring local artists, many of whom are our co-op members. Thank you to Chris for coordinating this for us. You are all of course, invited to come and see.

Our most immediate challenge is to find two individuals to fill 2 vacating Board positions. The election occurs in April and it is critical that we continue to strongly represent our members in the Boardroom. Please please please consider serving our Co-op in this capacity.

This bears repeating: Thank you to every one of us who give of our time, talents and treasures to support the stability of our Co-operative. My, what a long way we’ve come in just one year: from surviving to thriving!

Most sincerely, your Board of Directors:

Cheri Smith, President; Cori Callahan, Vice President; Carolyn Kulog, Secretary; Dave Jensen, Doug Lewis, Janet Jensen, and Meghan Moore; members at large.