We’re delighted to introduce you to our brand new Community Partner in West Kelowna and Penticton . . .
Nature’s Fare Markets is an ethical grocery store bursting with the best handpicked organic, natural and local foods, vitamins and supplement they can find. Proudly BC- Family owned, they serve happy customers in Kelowna, Vernon, Kamloops, Penticton, West Kelowna and Langley. With a set of values strongly aligned to Skipper Otto’s’, we’re honoured that Nature’s fare has agreed to distribute CSF member shares in West Kelowna and Penticton beginning this year!
2016 will be our first season with member pick-ups available in West Kelowna, but it won’t be the first year we’ve come to the Okanagan. Skipper Otto Strobel lives in Penticton and was a highschool teacher there at Penticton High School for most of his career, fishing in summers, teaching in the school year, and working hard on his apple orchard in Summerland in between it all.
Ever since the first season of our CSF, in 2009, Otto and his son, Shaun, would fish all summer and then drive up to Penticton and then on to the rest of our western Canadian cities with a load of sustainable seafood for Otto’s friends and a growing community of CSF members. They would set up shop in Otto’s driveway and people would line up to get their fish. Members had to decide what they wanted on the spot, Shaun would weigh it all out and write it down, and members would head home with their seafood.
We really loved seeing everyone and there was something charming about the whole experience, but it also came with its challenges: it was challenging to predict when the fishing season would end and to plan the trip, and it came with a lot of additional costs, uncertainty, and headaches. We needed a better system.
In 2015, I had the idea that, if we could just find the right people who shared our vision and our beliefs to work as distribution partners in our member cities, we could hit upon a more flexible, more affordable distribution system that would make everyone happy. I reached out to members in Penticton and soon found myself with an introduction to Randy Irwin, Corporate Retail Operations Manager for Nature’s Fare in Kelowna. It was a strange request, but Randy and his team saw right away that we shared a vision and values around creating ethical, sustainable food systems. We were thrilled when they agreed to give it a try for 2016!
Our Community Partner distribution model has been working so well in our other cities and we’re eager to see it unfold in West Kelowna and Penticton at our first pick-ups at Nature’s Fare in fall!
Check our event calendar for details of all our BC pick-ups!
