Welcome to “Terri’s Take” and thank you to all the readers who wrote in with ideas for naming this column. As I wrote last month, I welcome input from readers about interesting bits of news that might not make it to the front page or into “Taking Stock,” but would interest our readers anyway. So, please write or call me at [email protected] or 410.428.1891.
I also wrote last month about wanting to create something similar to Dick Bestany’s “In & Around Food World” column, which he wrote from 1978 until 2016. Sadly, as you’ve no doubt read already, Dick passed away last month, just a few days before what would have been his 84th birthday.
For those of you who knew Dick personally, you’ll understand what a loss this is. For those of you who joined the industry after Dick retired and didn’t have the pleasure of getting to know him, let me tell you a little bit about him and how much he meant to me personally.
To say Dick was gregarious would be an understatement. He brightened any room he entered (barroom, restaurant, broker office or buying office – it didn’t matter). He was generous to a fault. He was a kind and loving family man – husband, dad and grandfather. And he was a master salesman – just ask those Eskimos who bought ice from him – more than once!
I came to work with Dick and Jeff during a time when I was “between jobs” – which really meant, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, having just moved back to Maryland. Who knew where that would lead me. Long story short, I got a part-time job at Best-Met doing some data entry, and slowly got to know the business and found myself doing more and more. Eventually, I ended up managing a division called Food World Information Services, which has since ceased to exist. That position technically involved selling the service, which was not anything I felt cut out to do. So, with Dick as the salesman and me handling the rest, we grew a pretty nice business. Dick would get the sales appointment, I would explain how the (usually) broker could benefit from using our products, and Dick would ask for the order. Along the way, I learned a lot from Dick about everything, especially how to talk to people and to socialize. Before working with him, I wasn’t too good at small talk, or engaging with lots of people I didn’t know well. But, with Dick as my teacher during sales calls, conventions, cocktail parties and the like, I learned to be pretty good at both. (I also ate out at some great restaurants – Boccaccio, The Prime Rib, 1789 and more – the man knew how to entertain customers, and I was happy to go along for the ride!)
Dick was also very kind and generous to my family, especially my brother Eddie, who did lots of parttime work for Best-Met while working his was through college, and my mom Donna and sister Kathleen. (O’s tickets were enjoyed by many people through Dick and Jeff’s largesse, and Eddie was often a beneficiary.)
Dick was a wonderful influence on my life in many ways, and I will never forget him.
Speaking of generosity, Giant Food recently donated $100,700 to the American Farmland Trust’s (AFT) Brighter Future Fund which supports local farmers located throughout the greater Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia region through a round-up-at-the-checkout campaign in April. The donation will be allocated to help local farmers improve farm viability, access, transfer or permanently protect farmland, or adopt regenerative agricultural practices.
Giant’s donation will support local farmers throughout the region with grants up to $10,000 per project to help farmers. Last year, the same program supported some interesting farms and practices. Sisters of the Soil Community Farm, part of a 10-acre Urban Farm Incubator at Watkins Regional Park in Upper Marlboro, MD where a group of three farmers manage half of an acre and produce vegetables, fruits, nuts and other herbs received a donation, as did Dodo Farms is, which is owned by husband-and-wife farmers from Nigeria. That Montgomery County, MD-based farm is used to grow a variety of vegetables.
So did La Botanica which, while operating on less than an acre in Fairfax, VA, produces naturally grown no-till flowers, Indigo and fresh Puerto Rican produce.
“As a business dedicated to supporting its local region, we’re proud to know this money will be used toward increasing the resiliency of farms within our communities,” Diane Couchman, VP of category management, non-perishables at Giant Food. “Partnering with our vendors like Tillamook and non-profit organizations such as AFT, allows us to help the hard-working farmers that supply our area with fresh, locally grown produce and flowers.”
AFT’s Brighter Future Fund launched in 2020 through a partnership with Tillamook County Creamery Association (TCCA), a farmer-owned co-op with one of the fastest growing dairy brands (Tillamook) in the country. The Fund was created to help farmers across the country start, grow and sustain farms in the face of challenges, including COVID-19, severe weather and shifting markets. This year, Giant Food was among the list of proud partners across the country dedicated to supporting the future of farming.
Farming is a vital link in our food chain, and local farmers are an important part of the Mid-Atlantic’s economy, so it’s great to see Giant supporting their great work with this donation.
Another thing I want to focus on in the column is the great work many retailers are doing to help our communities and businesses go green. So, I was thrilled to see the ad that MOM’s Organic Markets is running in this issue (see page 57) because, boy are they serious about doing everything they can to protect the environment! In fact, their stated purpose as a company is “To protect and restore the environment.” And they’ve been doing so for a long time. In fact, MOM’s eliminated plastic bags in 2005 and use only compostable bags in their produce section and paper bags at checkout – 2005!!! Three years after that, they introduced a 10 cents per bag credit for customers who used reusable bags. In 2010, they introduced what they called “Plastic Surgery” which was a comprehensive storewide effort to eliminate unnecessary plastic waste. The first step in that process was to ban bottled still water, replacing it with water machines and reusable water containers. In 2020, MOM’s said its customers prevented more than 2.6 million bags from being used by bringing in their own, which averaged to more than 7,000 bags per day.
Cutting way down on plastics isn’t the only thing MOM’s does to stay green. In 2013, rooftop solar panels were installed at the Rockville, MD-based retailer’s Waldorf, MD store and in 2016, they installed a 1.5-megawatt off-site solar project in Kingsville, MD. That solar farm generates about 25 percent of MOM’s total power needs at its 21 store locations.
Solar rooftop panels were added to the White Marsh MOM’s in 2017 and the College Park store in 2020. In 2021, the company began sponsoring a local community solar project in Yorkers, NY. In 2021 a rooftop solar array was added to the Abington, MD store and MOM’s sponsored a local community solar project in Cherry Hill, NJ.
For shoppers in the Frederick, MD, Woodbridge, VA and Abington, PA stores, MOM’s hosts free and fast car charging stations as well as free Level II charging stations at all of their other locations, except Bowie.
I could go on, but we’ve got a paper to put out, so I encourage you to check out the other terrific green things MOM’s is doing at https://momsorganicmarket.com/ourpurpose/.