Write Us!
We welcome your comments and give each one attention and serious consideration. Send them to customer.comments@willystreet.coop or fill out a Customer Comment form in the Owner Resources Area. Each month a small selection is printed in the Reader; publication does not necessarily indicate an endorsement of views stated in a customer’s original comment. Many more comments can be found in the Commons or in the binder near Customer Service. Thank you!
Chicken Pre-Order
Question for meat dept: May I order a large quantity of your B&E ground chicken for a big party to pick up May 24 or 25? I’m thinking 25-35 lbs but don’t know exactly yet. It could be in large bags or I could bring in containers.
Thank you for your recent email regarding a pre-order from our meat department. For an order of this size, we’d ask you call one week in advance and place the order directly from the store you’d like to pick it up from. They will package the product for you and have it ready to be picked up at the desired date and time. Thanks and have a great day! -Nick Heitman, Category Manager: Meat, Seafood, Beer, Wine & Spirits
Bike Benefits & Self-Checkouts
I would like to be able to use my bike benefits in the self check out line. Sometimes there is only 1 cashier and people with big orders go to cashier and I can’t use the self-service because I want to use bike benefits. I need to use them because I can’t afford the Co-op anyway and only buy very few things here and try to do bulk shopping at Woodmans – in other words, I wait in line to get the 25 cents discount for a reason so it would be nice to use self service.
Thanks for writing in and asking about bike benefits at our self checkouts. We are happy that you ride your bike to our stores! Currently it is a feature that our IT team is working on resolving. There have been some technological hurdles that are needing to be worked on. We will announce it to Owners when it becomes available. Best, Kristina Kuhaupt, Customer Experience Manager
Update as of May 27, 2024: We are now able to process bike benefits through our self checkout lanes at each store location. Please see more details in the GM Report. Thank you all for your feedback, and we hope this added feature continues to brighten your summer months as nice weather encourages biking to our stores!
House-Made Beverages
I would love to see the in-store beverages revived, even if less elaborate than before COVID. Grocery shopping was more of a fun adventure when I could look forward to Golden Milk or healthy smoothie while we shopped. I know if you don’t sell enough the personnel required is too costly… but I can say for us we bought more/more often when fun beverages were available. Thank you.
Thanks for taking the time to give us your input on made-to-order drinks and smoothies; we always appreciate knowing what our shoppers and owners are looking for!! We know the sentiment is shared by many. At this time we do not have plans to bring those offerings back, but we are certainly taking your feedback to heart as we look towards the future. Thanks, Liz Muñoz, Director of Purchasing
Kudos to Willy West
The service at West was exceptional today. Thank you!
Thank you for your kind words! I’m delighted to hear that you had an exceptional experience at West. Our team takes great pride in providing top-notch service, and your feedback means a lot to us. Best regards, Frantseska Kois, Store Director
Hot Bar Options
I’ve been a member for decades and am a Willie St. Coop supporter. I now live in Cherokee so shop in the northside store. Today I am writing to tell you that I find so little to eat on your buffet that I’m driving to Hilldale to buy from Whole Foods buffet since there are so many more choices of vegetables and low carb offerings. I am diabetic (as are a great many coop members) and cannot eat pasta, breaded, potato-like items that are all white foods that are high carbohydrates. Diabetics cannot eat Indian food and loads of carbs. We eat protein, colorful vegetables, berries, watermelon, etc. Willie St offers very little green, red or yellow vegetables on your buffet. I’ve written before maybe a year ago and I have seen little change. Please, someone go to Whole Foods and look at their buffet offerings. Buffets attract more customers that always buy more in the stores. Grab and Go items that are sugar free at the check out are not offered in Willie St. Why not! Hoping you will take my suggestions seriously
Thanks for writing to us to let us know what you’d like to see on the hot bar. It can be difficult to get the right mix of things that will be received well by the majority of shoppers, so it’s great to hear from folks to know what people want. We are looking at our hot bar menus and theme days to see where we have opportunities to add things like what you’re suggesting, but everything needs to be weighed carefully because anything we add means something will have to be removed. -Nicholas OConnor, Prepared Foods & Cheese Category Manager
Signature Sourdough
Madison Sourdough signature sourdough, you used to regularly stock the signature sourdough but for a quite a while it has been only MSD seed and grain. I would love to see that MSD signature back. Thanks.
Hope your week is going well! Thanks for your comments! I will reach out to Madison Sourdough and ask them if they can bring their signature sourdough back to our stores. I am sorry it has been absent lately. Have a great day!! -Dean Kallas,
Grocery Category Manager
Bike Benefits on the Weekends
Please extend bike benefits to include weekends- car parking is at a premium any day. Encourage people bike and save money.
Thank you for writing! We are not able to extend the benefit to cover seven days per week, unfortunately. Grocery sales are a penny game, as they say, and even more so for a consumer-owned grocery cooperative–we budget to make less than a penny of profit for every dollar of products sold. And that’s if everything goes very well! Given how many customers bike to our stores–particularly Willy East–it wouldn’t be sustainable for us to broaden the benefit beyond what it is currently. In fact, the benefit currently costs us more than the benefit brings in in terms of extra purchases, but we support the idea of customers biking to our stores if they are able. We will likely be reviewing our Bicycle Benefits incentive in our new fiscal year, and we may make some changes, but we likely won’t be able to expand it. Thanks again for writing and have a nice weekend! -Brendon Smith, Marketing & Communications Director
Produce Lacking Freshness
Love the co-op, but West’s produce of late is lacking in freshness. I and others have found mildew on some produce. This can only happen because 1) Produce workers fail to carefully examine produce *before* they buy it and/or 2) Once bought, the produce stays too long in the back. Ideally it should be put out for sale on same day it comes in, or at the very most no longer than one day in the back. (Ok, it could also stay out on display shelves too long, but don’t think that’s the reason here.) Also, do not like the change in packaged spinach. New company’s spinach not as good and packaging not as good. Will only buy local bulk spinach in summer, as winter’s
local spinach is mostly hydroponically grown, which is *not*organic, despite the coop labeling it so. Finally, why oh why do you put hemp seeds in a bulk container? They will become rancid in no time. There’s a reason their packages are tightly sealed, thick, and dark in color and why they say to refrigerate after opening the package. (Once informed about rancidity, people who want a lesser amount than in packages will learn to accept buying the whole package and storing leftover hemp in fridge.)
Thank you for taking the time to write to us with your concerns. I followed up with a few different folks to make sure we got to the bottom of these issues! Here’s what I heard from our Produce Category Manager, Andy, regarding the produce selection and quality at our West location: “The produce departments have been purchasing local, organic 8oz spinach from Scenic Ridge in Mt. Hope, and Harmony Valley Farm in Viroqua. Neither is hydroponically grown, and only products from growers who can supply a copy of their organic certification are labelled as organic.Our first shipment of Harmony Valley Farm 8oz and 1lb local organic spinach unfortunately had issues the farm and our receivers did not catch. The product arrived looking pristine, however, began to deteriorate shortly after we received it. We removed the product from our shelves, and notified Harmony Valley of the quality concern so they could make the necessary changes on their end to resolve the problem. I apologize for the inconvenience! I know it can be frustrating to purchase a product only to get home and discover it is unusable. It happened with this spinach at my house! Any time you are unsatisfied with your purchase, please feel free to request a refund at our Customer Service desk the next time you are in the store.”
Regarding the hemp seeds in bulk, I checked in with our Grocery Category Manager, Dean, who let me know that we have not received any other complaints about hemp seeds sold in the bulk containers, and we don’t plan to change our method at this time. We do carry a few different pre-packaged hemp seeds which are always an option for anyone who might prefer to purchase them in that format! Thanks, Liz Muñoz, Director of Purchasing
