Author: Alli Floroff-Interim General Manager/Assistant General Manager

Dear Members: 

I hope you’re all doing well. I don’t know about you, but I’m eagerly awaiting the warmer spring weather and the sense of transition and change that is ultimately in the air. For the staff here at the co-op, spring has come a bit early with the return of our General Manager, Talia McGuire. As some of you might know, Talia has been on personal leave since the beginning of June 2021. Talia started back a few weeks ago part-time and will be gradually returning to full-time capacity by the end of March. We’re so excited to have Talia back in the fold, especially as we begin our work with co-op consultant, Jeanie Wells, around creating an operational plan for the co-op. Talia’s experience, skills, and institutional knowledge will be incredibly valuable to this process.

For those of you who have been shopping in the last week or so, you’ll have no doubt noticed the very different layout of the produce section. This change comes from the hard work of our Purchase Producer, Emma, with the generous support of Karma member, Grant McKinnon. Grant used to work at Pfennings, one of our regular organic produce suppliers, so he was a natural choice. Thank you both, Emma and Grant! We’re really excited to have this spruce, especially as we were fortunate to have BlogTO visit the co-op last week to do a profile on us. Thank you also to Sondra Vandervaart for making that connection. BlogTO’s social media post featuring the co-op will be published on the week of February 28th. So if you’re on Facebook or Instagram, be sure to check us out at @Karma.Coop (FB) or @karmacooptoronto (Instagram), like, comment, and share the post. 

Coming down the line, we are looking to open up more member labour shifts, that’s still in discussion, and appreciate your patience. Stay tuned to the Chronicle and our social media platforms for more information about that. And don’t forget, there are committee opportunities for those of you who would prefer not to work in the store.  You can find out more about committee opportunities on our site. 

With the world opening up, we’ll also be experimenting with changing our store capacity limits in the coming month. We will keep you in the loop about these changes as they unfold. If you have any questions or concerns about our capacity measures, please feel free to reach out to the management team at manager@karmacoop.org.

Take care,

Alli Floroff

Interim General Manager/Assistant General Manager