Train Depot, I was a little bit hesitant about that moving into the bigger building. I was like, oh, it's getting too big. It's going to become commercial. I definitely had feelings about that.

Yeah, I wasn't one of the people that felt sad that we were leaving the old store because I felt like we were growing and we were going to serve more people. And so I focused on that. I think it was more the longtime members that didn't want to lose a certain feel. I'm sure there were some staff that felt that.

But I was gung-ho for growth from the start because I knew that it was going to help more people. It's funny, there's always a core group of people who are like, no, I want it to stay exactly as it is. As people, we don't have control when things change. And we lose something we love or if it changes, it's different, it's not the same. We want such a touchstone of nostalgia. When I first started working there, and then some years afterwards even, people would talk to me about the old days when it first started and it was just kind of like a buying club. And some people really missed that, and they would talk about, oh, the good old days, essentially. And other people would be like, what do you mean?

And I think there's certain people that really hold on to this idea of like, oh, we're not that small store that we used to be. And other people are quite excited to see it continuing to expand. What our members want now is not what our members wanted in 1976 exactly.

And there's always going to be that tension. There was a time after our expansion, both probably 94 and also 2004, where I literally had people come and kind of say, you know, you're not a co-op anymore. And when I kind of dug into that a little bit, it kind of came out like, because we're clean, we have nice lighting, and all this kind of stuff. Oh, you mean it's not dark and dingy and food's scattered on the floor, which is what people remembered in the 70s, those startup co-ops.

It was just funny, like, oh, you're not a co-op. You mean because we're clean?

And they meant because you're looking more like, you know, the other folks. But, yeah, pretty soon people would see past that.

And it's funny because you were saying, like in 1994, “You're going to knock down the wall.” You're like, “Oh no, don't do this. You're going to change everything.” But going back and reading one of the annual reports from 87, they were talking about getting ready to make a new back room, that they were going to expand and get a little space. And I was like, you can't change the co-op. We're going to get too big.

We're going to lose that sense of community. We're going to lose this. And it's always that refrain.

And they obviously did because the co-op is not the same as it was when we got it. But that next iteration of it, there was again, another fear, but don't mess up this magic. It gets so good. Don't mess it up. And then the changes. It's not the same as it was. And a lot of the times when people talk about change with the co-op, I always think, well, co-ops are 50 years old, right?

What 50 year old is the same that they were like 20 years ago or in the beginning? Like, if we weren't growing and evolving, what are we accomplishing? Like, how are we staying relevant? How are we welcoming these people in? And every year they have exponentially more members, it seems like, and have more community outreach, which means that there's more local food going to more of the community, which is amazing.

Really looking historically back, I realized that about every 10 years, the co-op had some kind of evolution, whether it was a physical expansion or a big change in the way things were done. And so it helped me realize that, you know, even though we think of the co-op as being this unchanging thing that's always there for us, it is always changing and growing and expanding and trying to meet community needs and community needs change.

And co-ops exist to meet the needs of their communities.