Friday, March 22, 2013

Two New Stores!

-Posted by Isaac

Here's a photo from yesterday, 7 am. There was still more snow to come!
March 21st, 18 degrees ... Whiskey Tango Foxtrot??
 In spite of this mean nasty cold Spring, I've been busy getting ready. It makes me feel good to do something, even though the bees are still huddled, trying to stay alive.
Normally, hauling empty supers is done with a trailer attached. Unthinking as usual, I left my trailer in Holmes county about three weeks ago. Hummm... problem.
I think I've made seven trips with just the truck in the last three days.

On the honey selling front, last week was a good week-- a record nine drop-offs in one day! Among those were two new stores: Whole Foods on Lane Ave and the new Hills Market Downtown.
I delivered the honey and then driving home, it hit me that I should take some pictures of these beauties.
Today's drop-offs were more moderate (five deliveries), and I remembered the pictures.
As many of you know, there already was a Whole Foods on Lane, but now it has moved a little and is new, shiny, huge and awesome.


I strolled inside and the first thing I encountered was this friendly coffee house/bar with a fireplace burning in the center of the seating area. Many craft beers on tap just in case you need a little more than coffee for your morning ritual.

And of course, to satisfy my narcissism,  I took the trip back to the honey aisle.
For two weeks in a row this is what I found: empty! 
We love you too, Whole Foods... but the cupboard is bare!
Thank you, Columbus, for loving local honey!

Downtown you can now find the new Hills Market. This beautiful store on Grant St. is an expansion of the original in Worthington, catering to people looking for healthy local food.

Inside was this unique end-display featuring mead from Brothers Drake and Ohio Honey t-shirts made by local artist Dara Schwartz. Jayne and I proudly wear ours to market. Thanks, Dara!
Get your OHIO Honey / Wine / Microbrew T's!

The maples are just about ready to bloom (three weeks behind) and it's still cold. I wish I could report an end in sight but it doesn't look good. Snow in the forecast this weekend.

Looks like it will be at least a few more days before the bees can start acting like bees and find this pollen. Two weeks from now the willow trees will be abuzz... fingers crossed. 

2 comments:

  1. Does an empty shelf equate to sold out and maybe you need to make more deliveries?

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    1. Hi Diana!
      Yes! We usually make deliveries within 2-3 days of receiving an order from the store. We would like them to order more honey each time they place an order, so we don't have to make deliveries more than once a week! But sometimes it is hard for them to guage how much they will sell- so it just needs more fine tuning to figure out how much they need to order each time.

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