Vegan Products
I shop at your store every week and generally find your selection excellent. I have, however, stopped buy chips and crackers at your store. Many of them contain Dairy products. It is extremely tedious to read through the ingredients of your chips to find ones without dairy. As I cannot spend hours reading through all the ingredients, I have given up altogether. I realize that you might not want to have a separate section for Vegan chips.But, I would like to know that shopping for chips at your store (and also crackers and other snacks) can be quite frustrating… so I have given up altogether. This amounts to an expenditure of about $20 per week, $1080 per year not spent at your store. I have not substituted these purchase with other items at your store. Instead, I am ordering dairy free snacks online. Using the keyword “Vegan” online is much faster than
trying to read through the tiny print ingredients at your store.
Thank you for being an Owner and loyal Willy Street Co-op shopper! I appreciate you taking the time to write us and let us know that you have stopped buying chips, snacks, and crackers at Willy East, because of their tendency to contain dairy ingredients. Most chips and snacks do not contain any dairy ingredients, but occasionally some brands use them. It would take a lot of staff time to separate products out by their ingredients and we do not have the resources to do so. Manufacturers will often change ingredients, so it gets tricky to track them. Even our distributor’s product ingredients lists online are not always accurate. The only way to be certain of what is included in the package is to read the ingredients labels. Allergens are usually listed in larger bold font to call them out. I appreciate you reaching out and sharing your thoughts with us!! It is always good to know what folks are looking for in our stores. Have an awesome day! –Dean Kallas, Grocery Category Manager
Editor note: You could also go to our online store – shop.willystreet.coop – go to the applicable category, and choose “vegan.” A search for vegan crackers brought up 31 options! This is not a comprehensive list and this product list is tied to Willy North specifically, but it’s a helpful tool. If you were shopping at Willy East or Willy West, it would be worth a call to confirm that that store also carries a specific product you find.
Water Refill Stations
Water refill stations are very messy. 1) The faucets are unfocused, lean to one side and drip alot. 2) Stop buttons are not immediate 3) 1 gallon buttons may keep on going after 1 gallon is done. Fix them.
Thank you for writing in with your concern. We recently asked Total Water (the company that we rent the reverse osmosis water filtration and dispensing systems from) to send a technician to all 3 of our stores to confirm the functioning of the stop buttons, to check the calibration of the water metering controls and that the dispensing nozzles are properly aligned. The tech did find that the stop buttons were working correctly on all the dispensers, that they were all dispensing 1, 3, or 5 gallons (depending on which amount was chosen) and that the nozzles at West were issuing a straight, clean flow after he cleaned the aerator screens and nozzles on both dispensers.
The tech checked each individual dispenser to make sure that the calibration for the amount of water being dispensed is correct. Due to water pressure, water will appear to overflow ever so slightly at the end of the full dispensing cycle but the water level in the jug will settle at the appropriate 1, 3, or 5 gallon mark when the cycle is completed.
A potential cause of the issue that you and other customers have reported about the stop buttons not working is that people may be pressing the stop button before their jug overflows but before a full dispensing cycle has been completed. Then, when they see their jug is not at a full gallon, they press the dispense button to “top off” the jug and then quickly hit the stop button again. The tech explained that when the dispense button is quickly followed by the stop button there is a bit of a delay in the water flow actually stopping. This has to do with how the machine works. Water needs to flow past the UV sanitizing light as the final stage in the dispensing process so there will be a good amount of metered water that comes out between the off button being pressed and the water flow stopping at the nozzle. In other words, the precision in the stop button is not as instantaneous as a sink faucet and the delay could be making people think the stop button is not responding. I hope this information helps for potential future refills, and we are sorry that you had an unpleasant experience that day. –Jim Jirous, Facilities Director
Emailed Receipt
I received an emailed electronic receipt for a purchase dated 10-20-2024 that I did not make. It was a $66.00 signed VISA charge at the Willy North site Lane 023. How could this happen? (When I shop at Willy East, I am always asked for my name on my account.) Do I need to worry about identity theft?
Thank you for reaching out with your question! Lane 023 is a self checkout lane, so there is no cashier there to verify names. Likely what happened is that the customer made a mistake when entering their Owner # and accidentally entered yours. I want to assure you that your personal information (including your name) has not been compromised by this happening. That said, if this continues to happen please let me know and I would be happy to issue you a new Owner number. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. Have a great day! –Rosalyn Murphy, Board Executive Assistant/Owner Records Administrator
Curbside Pickup at West
Provide curbside pickup to Willy West! (age 82) from online ordering.
We are, unfortunately, unable to provide pick up service at our Willy West and East locations at this time. As you may be aware, we switched over to a new online ordering platform earlier this year. With this transition we are no longer delivering our own orders, and thus, we’re not able to offer pick up from Willy West or East since we do our online shopping specifically out of our Willy North location. We might look into offering Pick Up at West or East sometime in the future, but probably not for a while. We do offer a delivery service to areas around the West store; when you put in your address on the website to place an order, it will let you know if you’re within the delivery radius. We apologize for the inconvenience; let us know if you have any further questions, thanks! –Laura Shorey Montgomery, Front End Assistant Manager-E-Commerce
Fermentation Classes
Do you ever offer classes in fermentation, like kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut?
We have had fermentation classes in the past, and I’ll ask our instructors to bring some of these back! We should be able to get them on the calendar sometime in the springtime. We do have a sourdough class coming up this winter. You’ll get to make your own starter and leave the class with a loaf of bread to rise and bake at home. Thanks for the suggestions! –Liz Hawley, Education and Outreach Coordinator
Cool Mural
Really cool mural- great community project, great concept. Thank you.
Thanks for your positive feedback about our new East Mural project! We are excited how Sylvia has captured our Vision Statement with her artistry which our Owners voted on!! –Kristina Kuhaupt, Customer Experience Manager
Bag Credits
I usually bring my own shopping bag to shop in order to save on bags and environment and to build credit for shoppers using Double dollars program. My cloth bag is large enough to hold up to 4 good bags of groceries. Number of bags credit should be based on number of bags I didn’t use from the Co-op rather than just having 1 bag credit for Double Dollars food share program.
Thanks for reaching out and also supporting our Double Dollars program through bringing your own bag when shopping for groceries! As you mentioned, there are reusable bags that are all different sizes that our shoppers use. We have chosen to designate donations on the number of bags shoppers use for a particular transaction and not necessarily the size of the bag as to help with consistency for recording purposes for our cashiers. Your feedback will be taken into consideration for future decisions concerning the Double Dollars program at our stores. –Kristina Kuhaupt, Customer Experience Manager
Old Customer Comments
Thank you for including the old customer comments in the latest newsletter. It was fun to see how much things change and yet stay the same, Also, that Bananas entry has lived rent-free in my head for the past (almost) 10 years so it was as joy to see it again! lol
Thanks for writing in. I had a lot of fun adding in old customer comments, ads, and articles in our 50th Anniversary newsletter, and am happy to hear that you enjoyed them too. I plan to include more over the next year as we continue to celebrate our 50th, so keep your eyes peeled 🙂 –Caitlyn Tompkins, Content Specialist
