Small Business Thank You
Announcing our December partner & last month's donation matches
Good morning bread friends!
I hope you all had a restful weekend. Iβm so thankful to all of you who got bread from me last week and may have enjoyed it as part of your Thanksgiving meal. What was your highlight of the weekend? Was it food-related, or family-related? My friend Paul dropped off a small Tupperware of stuffing that he made with our sourdough. That was one of the highlights of my weekend because I love stuffing, and this βharvest stuffingβ recipe made for a sweet and savory dish with a uniquely good flavor combination that Iβve never had before.
I did a little shopping this weekend with local small businesses and later remarked to my wife Melissa how great it was to see them so busy. This also caused me to reflect on how wonderful it is that weβre routinely sold out of bread each week. Iβm immensely grateful to every one of you who supports our little bakery. I know that it is easier, cheaper, and more convenient to get a loaf of bread from the store. When you shop locally you are investing locally and that can make all the difference for the vitality of the places you know and love. Supporting your local businesses and food makers means you are supporting your community.
Another thing that is cool about supporting local businesses, is that your dollars often have a small-business-multiplier-effect in your community. That is possible because local businesses tend to support other local businesses. In our case, when I have bakery equipment needs I turn first to locally-owned shops like Wisconsin Cutlery & Kitchen Store or Kavanaugh Restaurant Supply. And many of you know that I get (almost) all of my flour from Meadowlark Organics, which is a small family-owned farm and flour mill nearby in Ridgeway, Wisconsin.
So this is all to say thank you for supporting small businesses and thank you for going out of your way to buy bread from Bread & Justice. Not only do we try to support local businesses when we have hard costs, and then donate 100% of our profits to social justice nonprofits, but as you can see from the pictureβ¦ my kids really get a huge kick out of getting to put out bread for βthe bread peopleβ. So thank you for putting a smile on the face of my children each week :)
Recent Giving Match
After today, Iβll be tallying our end-of-month contributions to the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance for November. In the meantime, I want to report on and celebrate the matching contributions from last month. As I mentioned a few weeks ago β for the month of October, Bread & Justice was able to donate $368 to Centro Hispano of Dane County. Thanks to the generous matching contributions of Britt & Adam Ryan, as well as Gracie & AndrewΒ Foxwell, this community contributed a total of $1,104 to Centro Hispano. Iβm just constantly amazed that we all get to partner together to support so many good organizations each month. Thank you.
December Partner
Speaking of great organizations to support, Iβm excited to share our partner for the month of December. This month, weβll be donating 100% of our profits to The Rainbow Project here in Madison. The Rainbow Project is a trauma resource center that provides restorative healing and hope for young children and their families who have experienced trauma, helping them build a foundation for the mastery of life-sustaining skills. They provide individualized and responsive services including short- and long-term counseling, prevention and early intervention services for families. Disproportionate to our communityβs overall demographics, 65% of the children and families that The Rainbow Project serves are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC).
As Melissa and I were discussing what organization to support this month, she pointed out how very difficult it would be to be a child dealing with trauma or instability in their lives during the holiday. We count ourselves blessed to be able to provide a safe and stable home for our two kids, and weβre looking forward to contributing in this small way to try to see more kids in our community have a similar blessing.
Thank you all for being a part of this community, and believing in the merits of good bread & real justice. And to those of you who are looking to get bread this Thursday⦠the store is open for pre-order right now :)
Cheers,
Mo
your baker friend