The Prescott family, HGC owner number 139, is helping to support the Hudson Grocery Cooperative. As a Nutritional Services Manager for the Hudson High School, Tracy (pictured right) is taking an active role in transforming student lunches by providing healthier options to the students. They understand the importance of healthy, local food and they are excited to help bring a co-op to Hudson!

Thank you for your continued support of the Hudson Grocery Cooperative! The Board and I are very excited about the great things in store for 2017. To kick off the year, we invited Stuart Reid from Food Cooperative Initiative to meet with the board and review our plans. Our primary goal will continue to be the recruitment of additional owners. We all agree that this is the right approach, as we can’t move forward with our site selection until we are somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 to 750 owners.
 
So what does this mean for our current and prospective owners in 2017? It means that we are going to scratch anything that didn’t work for us in the previous years—and we are going to take some risks in terms of how we approach getting the word out. We recognize that many in the community are still unaware of what the Hudson Grocery Cooperative is—or even what a co-op is. We need to change that—right now.
 
Rest assured, the planning is underway and we will begin sharing more information about our upcoming events in the next few weeks. In the meantime, you can help us out in a number of ways. First and most importantly, if you are not an owner, please become one. If you are an owner, consider volunteering on our Marketing or Ownership & Volunteer committees. Check out our website, like us on Facebook and tell your friends about us. Thank you again for your dedication to the Hudson Grocery Cooperative—we wish you the absolute best in 2017!

The Hot Air Affair, Hudson’s annual winter festival and hot air balloon rally, is set for this weekend (Feb 3-5). Grocery Co-op volunteers will be joining the St. Croix County 4-H & Fair volunteers for the popular veggie races on Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m. Stop in for this fun event—kids can be creative using vegetables to make and race soap box derby cars.
 
There is still room for a couple more volunteers. Please contact Jacki Bradham at rbradham@pressenter.com or 715-386-3826 if you are interested in volunteering.  

HGC is seeking a volunteer with Marketing and/or Sales expertise to help us enhance our marketing strategy. This includes revising our PowerPoint presentation, and recommending marketing tactics for community outreach with an ultimate goal of increasing our owner base. This is a request for assistance as needed on specific projects, and not an ongoing committee responsibility. However, we always need more volunteers so joining a committee is an option! If you can help us with these efforts, or know someone who can, please contact us at hudsongrocerycoop@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you!