A Tiny Big Announcement

If your eye didn’t catch it there is a slight change to our header this week- three little letters that mean good things for Market at Dothan.

As of today, July 1, 2017, Market at Dothan is now Market at Dothan LLC, a fully legal entity complete with it’s own business license and checking account! Incorporating the Market’s business structure was no small decision and was not made without input from a lot of wise people. If you’re reading this and helped out, THANK YOU, especially to JD and the staff at Dothan Nurseries who have made the Market possible. Let me encourage you to sign up for their monthly newsletter on their website. You won’t be disappointed!

The biggest factors considered in making the change were creating room to grow for our vendors, and providing a legal structure that would protect them from liability. Market at Dothan has absolutely the best growers in the Wiregrass and they deserve that! At one point we considered creating a non-profit, but after some serious research it became obvious that the extra work and expense to create one was not worth the benefits of going that route. So with the legal help of our customer Chris L, we created an LLC that’s pretty much run like a non profit. . . . pretty much like it’s always been.

As of now there are no plans to make any changes in the way Market at Dothan LLC conducts business and plans are in the works to do some extra and some special things that we couldn’t do before. The biggest change for you, our customers is that now we have a real business account to make your checks out to! We are more than happy to abide by the “no mingling of funds” advice from Chris!

Reusable Bag Update

With the change in business structure it seemed like a good time to re-visit one of our existing Market policies. As you know we encourage customers to provide reusable bags for your Market foods to go home in and some of you have multiple bags you rotate from week to week. Please know we respect your investment and make sure your bags are stored safely (and alphabetically!) between orders.

While reusable bags do help our landfills, a downside to them is that they need to be cleaned once in a while. Like everything else they collect dust, pollens, bacteria etc. Fabric bags are a simple fix as they go through the washer and dryer quite easily. The polypropylene type bags listed on the Market website require only a wipe with a disinfectant. Let me encourage you to do one or the other with yours as a health and safety precaution. This GREAT article explains the importance of keeping your reusables clean!

There’s a LOT of good information out there in cyberspace about the pros and cons of reusable bags, everything from statistics about how many trees you can save switching to reusable, to how long it takes a cotton bag to decompose as opposed to various plastics. If you want to know more feel free to check out some of the links below; if not, that’s a-ok. And if you’re getting your Market order in a “Thank You” Plastic bag, we respect that choice too and will continue to use the ones that have been donated till they run out.

Reusethisbag.com lists 25 reasons to go reusable. Their minimum quantity for an order is 200 bags.

National Public Radio did an excellent series called “How Green Is It?”. This section examines the claims made by companies like the one listed above.

You can always make your own! This Youtube tutorial shows two different ways to make no sew bags from tee shirts. If you go this route check out some of the other bag tutorials before breaking out the scissors because you may find something you like even better. A word of caution – if you expect to carry a lot of weight in your bags we really recommend tying or stitching the bottom.

The internet if FULL of bag patterns and tutorials if you want to go the extra mile to make a custom one.

Lastly, we found ourselves gawking last week when Sarah S. pulled one of these pretty little things out of her purse and proceeded to put her very large Market order in it.

Footnotes

We would love to hear from you! If you have a favorite recipe, want to write a product review, have an idea or request for an article or information, let us know! You can reply to this newsletter or write marketatdothan@gmail.com.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!