Spice It Up!
In this fun, hands on workshop we will explore the origins of spice blends from all over the world and how to use them in your kitchen. We’ll discuss the cost savings you can achieve from making your own blends and how making house blends can give your food service department and home kitchen the upper hand. Then we’ll create our own spice blends tailored specifically to personal tastes, noses and color preferences. Participants will take home their own blends [Read More]
Retaining Your Best People
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Organic Essential Oils, Far More than Just Pretty Aroma!: How to Harness the Power of Phytochemicals for their Positive Physiological Effects
Nourishing diet, adequate physical activity, healthy sleep levels, stress management and minimizing our toxic burden are all key facets of a healthy existence. Although, making/maintaining healthy dietary and lifestyle choices can be challenging or come with certain unpleasant circumstances. Among other potential scenarios, stressful events may play a role in sabotaging our best intentions while exercise programs may result in muscle and joint discomfort. Enter organic essential oils. Due to the array of naturally-occurring fragrant-yet-functional chemicals within, essential oils can [Read More]
Raising the Bar: Dismantling Dysfunction in our Organizations
Taking inspiration from YWCA’s Racial Justice summit and offering this curriculum to my Cooperative, this work shop will referenceTekum Okun’s white supremacy culture document, we will look into various habits and characteristic our culture has developed to honor certain types of work and dishonor others. We will be taking a deeper look into Perfectionism, Sense of Urgency, Defensiveness, Quantity over Quality, Worship of the Written Word, Either/Or thinking, Only One Right Way, Paternalism, Power Hoarding, Fear of Open Conflict, Individualism, [Read More]
Roots and Relationships: the story of food, fun and leading the market again!
Differentiating yourself from the crowd isn’t easy in this changing market. Where once you were the only one offering organic, fair trade or local/farmer-direct products, you may now be challenged to compete, often relying on margin loss to draw in customers. While this is one approach, there are other options! People are looking for connection and experience, everyone wants to belong to something— you can create an experience in your store or business that draws people in and brings them [Read More]
Building Meaningful Relationships in your Community
Ever wonder if the work your doing is positively impacting your community? Does your organization donate or sponsor things blindly without any strategy in mind? If you answered yes to both these questions, this workshop is for you! Learn how to define an effective outreach and giving strategy that will best align your community outreach marketing strategies with your organization’s values and mission.
What do we do with Regenerative Agriculture?
Key elements of presentation: • Framing “Regenerative” e.g. conventional, no spray, organic etc. • What are regenerative practices in standard good old organic? • Is something missing from organic to make it fully regenerative? If so what? • Success of movements, what are the components? • Examples like the Non-GMO Project? • ROC Pilot in Saskatchewan, -what we’re learning • Deal with tillage issue • Studies comparing conventional no-till and organic • Everything is a balance • Messaging to consumers [Read More]
Systems Thinking Just-In-Time
Whether at home or at work, we all to often succumb to doing things before we need to. We take our valuable time to work on something that can wait only to find out later that the parameters have changed. We buy materials for something we plan to do in the future but plans change. We analyze the per-piece cost and buy in bulk to save money. However, when you apply systems thinking and account for branching effects (i.e., one [Read More]
Supply Chain Solidarity: How Retailers, Manufacturers, and Consumers Can Help Small-Farmers Fight Climate Change
The current climate crisis feels both urgent & intimidating. Regenerative farming techniques are getting a lot of attention for their potential to both feed the world and cool the planet. Small-scale farmers around the world are marrying traditional skills and new innovations to transform farming – and create a vision for a future that we all need. That’s the big picture. This workshop with Fair World Project offers ways for companies to get involved and make real connections between the [Read More]
Story Marketing In The Digital Age
Learn how to use story arc to engage audiences and tell the story of your brand or organization. Grounded in the importance of understanding STORY and focusing on accessible technologies such as iPads and iPhones, this hands-on workshop will cover everything from composition, to music choice, to mobile editing pointers. We will show real-world examples of story marketing with impact and begin to understand the arc and flow of effective visual communication. Come ready to learn and be prepared to [Read More]
“Distinguishing Characteristics” – The Power of Differentiation
Your business is unique and growing! How can we stay true to our mission even as we evolve? Staying relevant in a competitive and changing retail landscape can be a challenging task. We will examine the power of embracing transparency and promoting the real attributes of your organization, program, and products. Accentuate the uniqueness of your business and differentiate your brand by cultivating an authentic approach to customer service, nurturing knowledgeable staff, and offering the added value of a one-of-a-kind [Read More]
Herbal Medicine and Biodynamic Farming
A lively discussion explaining the history of biodynamic farming methods. Helping people to understand our close relationship with the plants, soil, and water. Explaining how we can help restore and replace the organic matter in the soil, which in turn builds humus helping to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We’ll discuss the parallels of biodynamic farming and traditional herbal medicine, prep making and application and building compost piles in your own backyard. You will get seeds and an explanation of [Read More]
The Millennial Manager
We’ll be investigating some of the challenges associated with being a millennial in management. This workshop focuses on younger managers, and managers looking for a new perspective. We’ll cover tips for holding space and confidence in a Management team with well tenured peers, and managing a team with tenured employees. We’ll also explore and share creative management techniques.
Continuing the Conversation on Harnessing the Power of an OPEN Mind
Join keynote speaker Margi Simmons in continuing the conversation for powering your best, most productive self. In this session, you will flex your leadership, communication and collaboration muscles. Through experiential exercises and facilitated conversation, she encourages you to build small shifts into every-day behavior to help quiet the inner critic and foster habits of gratitude, authenticity, and trust. In this compelling workshop, Margi will inspire you to focus your mental and emotional energy intentionally and choose to actively co-create the [Read More]
The FOUR P’s – Quadruple Bottom Line Business
The Community Food Co-op in Bellingham is adding a 4th “P” to their triple bottom line! We’re now considering ourselves a quadruple bottom line business – People, Planet, Profit, and Purpose. We’ll review the commonly known three “P”‘s and how businesses can easily track data in these areas and share our journey to adding Purpose to our bottom line.