LANGLEY — When The Goose Community Grocer opened in Langley in September, it opened with a bigger goal than just selling the fixings for breakfast, lunch and dinner to south Whidbey Island residents.
The supermarket takes the revenue from cereal and lettuce and all the other things on its shelves and reinvests it into the island community.
Not-for-profit businesses are far from unprecedented — Goodwill has operated one of the best-known for decades. But a nonprofit grocery store is less common.
And maybe even more surprising is the fact that the store was a last resort in an attempt to revitalize an empty storefront.
“We did this out of a real absolute necessity,” said Chris Hurley, chief executive of Goosefoot Community Fund, the nonprofit that opened the store this fall. “Goosefoot had no intention of owning the grocery store.”
Goosefoot is a 10-year-old community action group dedicated to enhancing the rural character and economic viability of south Whidbey Island. The group buys and helps develop real estate, but the former site of Casey’s Red Apple market at 14485 Highway 525 changed things for the organization.
Goosefoot bought the shopping center five years ago from the Myers Group, a Clinton-based grocery operator. But Hurley said finding a tenant for the aging building was difficult, so she kept in touch with Myers Group President Tyler Myers.
Finally, the solution came to Myers one night while he was falling asleep: Goosefoot could retain ownership as a nonprofit 501(c)(3), but the Myers group could run the store.
“We knew we had to be a different kind of store than the others,” Hurley said. “If Goosefoot owns this store, it needs to be a store that reflects something about what Goosefoot is.”
So before the store takes any profits to reinvest in the store, it’s putting money into the community, most likely as soon as February of next year. Affordable housing has long been a main focus of the group, but the specifics haven’t been identified for the first Goose-funded project.
The store is cultivating relationships with Whidbey Island farmers, who can sell their harvest to the store seasonally.
The Goose has a full-service deli, a bakery operated by Langley Bakery, and a cafe.
“Whether you eat white bread or 12-grain sprouted, you’ll want to shop here,” said Myers, whose company operates several other stores in the Northwest, including the Snoqualmie Ridge Grocery Store and the downtown Seattle Kress IGA Supermarket.
In a statement, he said: “We’ve paid close attention to how each square foot of the store can be maximized to meet the diverse needs of the South Whidbey community.”
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