New Day Cooperative Distribution
Remember what it was like to shop in March and April? No toilet paper, no pasta, no dried beans. No bread so we started baking, and then no yeast so we nurtured and named our sourdough starters.
Restaurants and farmers markets closed. Food producers reeled, and then started to adapt with pickup and home delivery options. Third-party delivery services thrived and also took a heartbreakingly large slice of the pie.
Against this backdrop, a group of Seattle-area food entrepreneurs hatched a new venture: a grocery home delivery service owned by its vendors. New Day Cooperative Distribution launched at the beginning of June with a small amount of startup capital and a big vision: to rethink the way we buy groceries.
We imagined a model based on goodness: for our producers, our customers, and our staff. We pared back the trappings and the mind-bending selection you find in most mainstream grocery stores so we could focus on what really matters: a healthy food system that starts with producers who love their work and earn an ample living.
New Day is growing. We have over twenty-five member businesses, and we’re steadily adding like-minded producers and building out our offerings. We’re ready to take our enterprise to the next level. Since we launched, we’ve been subletting space from different member-businesses. Now we’re ready to lease and outfit a location of our own.
We’ve found a spot in the Maple Leaf neighborhood. It’s part of a small enclave of commercial spaces in a mostly residential area, and the location is both reasonably quiet and centrally located for both producer deliveries and customer pickups. Its nothing fancy, just a place where we can spread out, become part of a neighborhood, and open some limited hours for retail.
We’re raising capital and asking for your support. We need to pay for electrical upgrades, refrigeration, shelving, and signage. We’re working with an impact investor (someone who funds businesses with an eye towards bigger picture change). But we also want our funding to come from a broader mix of people because New Day is working to solve a problem that affects us all: how do we meet our daily food needs in equitable and sustainable ways?
What We Need & What You Get
Our goal is to raise $10,000. The money from this crowdfunding campaign will specifically go towards setting up a small retail area in our packing space, which will include:
- Cleaning up this rough gem of a space
- Retail shelving
- Lighting
- Signage
We're excited to offer lots of perks donated by our member businesses: locally grown and locally made products we love, and that we know you'll love too.
If we don't meet our entire goal, the money will go towards making the space operational. Every little bit gets us closer to being able to open our doors to the community!
We're excited to build a community-facing part into our operation, and we can't wait to see your smiling (masked) faces when you come to pick up an order or shop for some groceries. A giant thanks to our producers, staff, and all of our customers who've supported us on this journey! We look forward to growing and building New Day together.
Risks & Challenges
New Day grew out of a specific moment in time and while we look forward to this moment being behind us, we know that it’s entirely possible that the need for grocery home delivery will lessen once it feels safer to shop in person.
A post-COVID world will certainly be a shift, but the landscape for home delivery has been changing regularly throughout this crisis. After enthusiasm for supporting the producers who had lost their sales channels, we saw quarantine fatigue and a need for pampering. Now it seems customers have built new routines, and New Day has become a staple for many households - we love packing orders for the same customers week after week!
We’ve understood this challenge of the shifting landscape since the day we launched, and we’ve worked hard to read our customers’ (and potential customers’) needs. There are ever increasing choices about where and how to eat, so we’ve focused on growing our selections by inviting new producers to the cooperative and offering a more comprehensive grocery experience. And, that’s why we believe building a storefront in our new space will be so important for our long term viability. We look forward to the day when we’re a neighborhood hub for good food and community.
We can’t anticipate and plan for every possible change in the grocery industry landscape. But we can keep our eyes, ears, and hearts open, and adapt as we go.
Other Ways You Can Help
Times are hard and we know many people aren't in the position to donate money at the moment. You can still help in a few ways!
- Please share our campaign with your community! Help us get the word out and make some noise about our campaign. Check out Indiegogo's share tools.
- Buy your groceries through New Day, and continue to share our service with friends and family. We often hear from customers that they found us via word of mouth, so your recommendations make a difference!
- Like, comment on, and save our social media posts. Interaction helps us gain visibility.
- Have a photo of your New Day order or something you delicious you cooked with it? Please share and tag us!