Staff Picks
Alaffia Skin and Hair Care
Our friends at Alaffia started with a simple idea—that the tradition of cultivating West African shea butter could empower people and lift them out of poverty. Today, Alaffia is a global leader in socioeconomic justice. Founded by Olowo-n’djo Tchala (pictured above) in 2003 as a shea butter cooperative, Alaffia handcrafts sustainable skin and hair care products using fair trade ingredients with no animal testing, ever. They also partner with The Global Alliance for Community Empowerment to invest in fair trade, maternal care, and child education.
Global Village Foods Samosas
It’s true, a lot of foodies shop our stores, but we also have plenty of loyal shoppers whose kitchen skills peaked at “I didn’t burn the toast last week” status. For this mighty and intrepid band of kitchen adventurers, people who can push buttons on a microwave with the best of them, our Merchandising and Operations teams have a great staff pick just for you.
Based in Quechee, Vt., our friends at Global Village Foods have re-imagined traditional African flavors and the results are some of the best take-home meals out there. Founders Mel and Damaris Hall started with a dream of bringing Kenyan flavors to Vermont. The idea caught on quick, and now their meals are a customer favorite. Just heat up a samosa or two, plate it fancy, and feel like a chef while you support a great local business focused on the idea of global community. Your microwave has been waiting for a purpose this noble. Don’t let it down!
New Local Product! Goodman’s American Pie Frozen Pizza
Because apparently, good pizza has to impress people from New Jersey.
Listen, we know your freezer is currently a desolate graveyard of vast, unidentified leftovers and a single, frost-bitten pea. You deserve better. You deserve Goodman’s American Pie!
FEATURES
The Local Pedigree: Handmade with love in small batches by great people in Vermont. So local you can actually taste the lack of “Big Pizza” corporate bureaucracy.
Dough with Gravitas: A crust that actually has the strength, taste, and texture of a great pizza crust. In fact, someone on our staff said it was so good that it even tasted like pizza in New Jersey. Yes, she’s from New Jersey. (We get it, Erika. The Parkway has really great pizza.)
The 0% Science Fiction Label: Made with real ingredients you can actually pronounce, sourced locally whenever possible. (No AI-developed, lab-grown chemicals here.) It’s basically a salad, if you squint and ignore the delicious, bubbling cheese.
Co-op Staff Approved: Rigorously tested by our team during “break times” that definitely lasted longer than 15 minutes. We’ve done the heavy lifting so you don’t have to.
Find it in Lebanon and WRJ and tell us what you think!
Woodland Fairy Bagels
Based out of Quechee, Vermont, Woodland Fairy is a bakery that specializes in handcrafted bagels, NY style, boiled and baked and frankly, adored. If you want to take a drive out to their lovely store in Quechee, you’ll also find breakfast sandwiches, cinnamon rolls, and cider donuts, too. Woot!
The Bagel Breakdown
- The Store: 130 Quechee Gorge Village Dr., Quechee, VT. Go there. Find bliss.
- The Method: Hand-rolled, boiled, baked New York Style bagels. No shortcuts. (No AI bagels here.)
- Varieties: Classics, Everything, and Cheddar Jalapeño (for when you want your breakfast to fight back a little).
- GF Delights: They also have Gluten-Free bagels that actually taste like delicious bagels. Plain, Everything, Cinnamon Sugar.
- The Lore: They leveled up from a home-based operation to a full-blown storefront. A local success story!
Our Pick for Cold Winter Mornings
Somebody, at some point, looked at oats and thought, “These would be better if they were a little flatter.” We thank that person every morning.
These rolled oats from our friends at Bob’s Red Mill cook up into a bowl that feels like it knows what it’s doing. Add fruit, nuts, honey, even yesterday’s jam experiment. If your morning needs something reliable, comforting, and unlikely to judge you for hitting snooze twice, this is a great place to start!
Find it in our Grocery Departments.