Get it at Quabbin Harvest!
Challenge
A 15-week challenge to keep the store going (and a new tagline)
Here's the promised follow-up to our August newsletter where we shared the news that after flat sales for the past three years, we're at a moment of needing to kick things into gear if we're going to keep the store going.
The board has set week-by-week sales goals running up to Thanksgiving (see the chart below). Once we get to late November, we'll be able to make a decision about whether we're seeing enough commitment from shoppers and members to support going ahead into 2026.
If we're not... well, that will be a hard conversation, which we really, really hope we don't have to have!
Here's what we're doing in the meantime:
- keeping the store as well-stocked as we can, thanks to some generous contributions from donors (ice cream will be back soon, we promise!)
- sharing updates on how we're doing with the weekly goals (follow us on Facebook or Instagram for those, or keep an eye on the sign in the store)
- reaching out to members and friends through our various channels of communication (if you're a member, and if we have your current email address, you should have gotten a message from us about this in your email)
- making some short videos to give more of an inside picture of what's been happening at the store and how it fits into the bigger challenge of making change in the food syste
- Here's the first one, if you missed it in the August newsletter
- Here's the second one, about how we think about food prices at Quabbin Harvest and why it's not just about the numbers.
And we're debuting a new tagline, suggested by one of our members:
Get it at Quabbin Harvest
Be there for us so we can be there for you
We like how this message is about both shopping (hey, we hope you'll find a way to get at least some of your groceries at Quabbin Harvest!) and the reasons why our little store matters in that bigger scheme of things. (Get it?)
Like most food co-ops, we're a for-profit business. But co-ops put food, people, and community first, which often leads them to make business decisions driven by values rather than just numbers.
That's a challenge in an area like ours, which doesn't have the population density or wealth of a lot of places where food co-ops are located.
It's remarkable that we're stll here after 16 years, and we really hope we can keep going into the future. But it does take a village. That's where the second part of the tagline comes in.
We hope enough people will take it to heart over the next couple of months that we can continue to plan for the future of the store.
Posted: to News on Thu, Sep 4, 2025
Updated: Mon, Sep 15, 2025