Connecting our community to fresh local produce is key to our mission at the Kitsap Community Food Co-op.  Recently our aging producer cooler broke - and we need your help to fund a new one!  A new produce cooler will allow us to continue to serve Kitsap County's small farms, connecting our community to the best produce Kitsap has to offer.  

Read on below for more details - or click the "contribute" button above to help us reach our goal.  

How You Can Help

1. Become a Member-Owner : If you are not yet a member - this is the best thing you can do to support our mission. For $200, you can become a part owner of our co-op! The fee can be paid in a lump sum, or in installments. Membership earns you special discounts in the store, and the ability to have a say in the future of the co-op. Most importantly it earns you the pride of being a co-op owner, knowing you're playing your part to help build a better food future for Kitsap.
   
2. Make a Contribution : Every dollar helps us reach our goal to fund essential upgrades and keep our store thriving while we plan our next steps.
   
3. Share the Campaign : Spread the word about Kitsap Community Food Co-op with friends, family, and neighbors who believe in local, sustainable food systems. Make sure to follow us on social media, and share our posts with a personal note, when one of them catches your eye.
   
4. Be part of the movement: Behind the co-op is a team of passionate volunteers - if you have time, talents and passion of your own to donate. Please reach out and we'll find a place for you in our growing movement!

Support Kitsap Community Food Co-op: Building a Better Food Future for Kitsap County

The Kitsap Community Food Co-op is on a mission to BEET the industrial food system.  Our most powerful tool in this fight is our downtown Bremerton store, an 800 square foot powerhouse of local food and community connection. At Kitsap Community Food Co-op, we source products as close to home as possible, providing a seven-day-a-week, year-round outlet for Kitsap County farms. By supporting local products, farmers and makers, we’re keeping your grocery dollars in our local economy—instead of funneling it up and out to the ever-growing grocery corporations.

Who We Are

We’re over 1500 member-owners who believe in the power of food to transform our bodies, our community, and our planet. Together, we’re working to make healthy food accessible and affordable for everyone, while strengthening our local food system.

In August, our member-owners elected a new, dynamic board of directors—ten committed individuals ready to carry our mission forward. With their guidance and your support, Kitsap Community Food Co-op continues to evolve and grow as a valuable community resource.

Our store is run by our manager Emily, with support from our amazing staff and volunteers. 

How We Got Here

In 2017, we launched a small but successful pop-up store in downtown Bremerton, a USDA-designated food desert. Even in a space under 200 square feet, we attracted hundreds of shoppers and recovered our initial expenses in less than three months, showing us that Bremerton was ready for a local, community-driven store. Thanks to the generosity of our member-owners, volunteers, and partners, we transformed our vision into a reality, moving into our permanent storefront in 2019.

Less than a year after opening, the pandemic hit.  We rallied to create a bare bones online ordering system that allowed our community to place orders from a safe distance, and our staff reconfigured the store to function as a local food distribution hub - packing orders for customers - and ensuring our community never lost access to locally grown, healthy foods.  We were amazed at the resilience of our community, and the commitment to shopping via the clunky ordering system we just barely managed to cobble together. It was a major speed bump for our tiny co-op in the earliest days, but though our mutually supportive relationship with our community - they support us, and we support them - we pulled through it and came out stronger on the other end. 

As the world returned to normal, so did our store. We’ve had our share of ups and downs along the way, as any small business does, but we have continued to make regular upgrades to keep the co-op running strong.  When our produce cooler went down a couple months ago, we applied for and received a $2,000 grant from our produce supplier, Organically Grown Company, to put toward a new one—essential for keeping fresh local produce on our shelves. Funds raised as part of this campaign will go toward funding the rest of that cooler. 

Our Impact

The co-op is more than a grocery store.  We exist to serve our community, and to serve as a connector between our members and our local farmers and food producers.  We're proud that in recent years, a full 32% of our sales have to been to small local vendors, much higher than the national average for grocery stores of 2% and higher even than the national co-op average of 21%.  

We are proud to have created the FLOWER program - Fresh, Local, Organic Within Everyone’s Reach. It is our commitment to making healthy food accessible to all income levels. Members-Owners that receive financial assistance from food subsidy programs are eligible to receive an additional 10% discount on regularly priced items all of the time. When the cashier asks if you'd like to round-up at the register, this is the program that those funds support.  We are proud to say we have 23 member owners taking advantage of this program.  

We looking forward to growing out impact even more as our store and our co-op continue to grow.  

Our Future 

The 800 sqft store you see today, as much as we love it, is not the ultimate dream for the Kitsap Community Food Co-op.  We hope that with the support of our community, we'll eventually be able to expand into a larger space.  One that will include a hot foods - a deli - a place to sit and eat - community gathering space.  All of it!  As a first step to get us there, we recently submitted a letter of interest for a Healthy Food Financing Initiative, Technical Assistance Grant to further explore expansion.  If we are invited to apply for that, it'll be a first step in a potential expansion down the road. 

Our Current Needs

While we plan for expansion and a new location down the road, we still need to maintain our Park Ave store. A couple months ago, our aging producer cooler broke, and we’re currently relying on a temporary unit provided by Bremerton Foodline. A generous member-owner has offered a $10,000 matching donation toward a new cooler, and we’re excited to invite you to help us reach our goal by contributing to this crowdfunding campaign.

A contribution of any size will directly support our mission to provide fresh, local, and sustainable foods for our community. 

Fundraising Goal - $32,000

• Refrigeration Replacement : $15,000
• Cost of Goods to stock fridge & other purchases : $7,000
• Equity Rebuilding / Rainy Day Fund : $10,000

If we exceed our goal of $32,000, we will use the additional funds to complete further shelving and lighting upgrades in the store, and we'll consider a marketing campaign to bring new customers in to the refreshed store. 

Thank you

Thank you for taking the time to learn more the Kitsap Community Food Co-op.  We hope you see the value we bring to our member-owners, partners, and overall community, and will help us in our mission to BEET the industrial food system!  

 Keep in touch on Facebook, Instagram, or you can always send us an email to info@kitsapfood.coop. 

Hurry, this campaign won't be open forever!