The Importance of Local
When you choose to shop local, what is your driving motivation? Is it to help keep money in the community? Is it to support local producers, growers, and craftsman? Is it because you care about where the products you buy come from? Or is it something else?
I’d like to propose another reason why shopping local might be important to you. That is, it provides meaningful work for those in your community. A lot of blue-collar jobs, like meat processing, have become increasingly mechanized over the last fifty years, and as a result, have been divorced from the meaning of the work itself. This is true of many other industries as well.
According to doctor and author Anna Lembke, monotonous, highly repetitive work fragments the sense of accomplishment and minimizes contact with the end product consumer, both of which are critical to worker motivation. The result of this kind of work is a “work-hard/play-hard” mentality in which compulsive overconsumption becomes the reward at the end of a day of drudgery. No wonder we have an endemic of destructive addictive behaviors in our country today. Is it possible that meaningful work could be the solution to mentally and physically healthier citizens/workforce and community? I think so.
At the butcher shop we try to provide meaningful work for our staff. Our employees understand the full process of delivering a product to our customers. They’ve met the farmers that raise the livestock. Our employees also actually create many of the products we sell. Most importantly, our staff is engaged with consumers in their decision making and ultimately their purchases. We are grateful for all of the positive feedback we have received from our customers via online reviews and even a few phone calls simply to tell us we are doing great. We always make sure to relay this feedback to our entire team!
The most critical work our employees do is ensuring the safety of the products we sell. It starts with monitoring our cooling systems. Each day we manually check and record the temperatures of our cooling systems and products. Our employees are also responsible for ensuring the appropriate use of controlled ingredients, such as the amount of curing salt we put in our jerky, snack sticks, bacon, etc. Whenever we create a ready to eat product like summer sausage or bologna, our employees have to make sure that the product is cooked and cooled to the appropriate temperatures in the appropriate amount of time in order to prevent harmful pathogens. We try to promote a culture at Old Station where it’s okay to ask fellow employees about their work (i.e., did you put the correct label on that product?). We don’t view this as second-guessing each other. Rather, we’re just watching each other’s back (much like a pitcher backing up the first-baseman on a double-play thrown from second).
As members of the Waukee community, we are invested in the future of our community. We care about our community. This Tuesday, August 9th, at 7pm there is an opportunity for Waukee community members to provide feedback on the future of the Waukee Historic downtown triangle. This is a great chance to help promote business growth in our community. Your voice is important. Community growth translates to more meaningful work for our citizens and ultimately a healthier Waukee. Here are the details:
The City of Waukee is gathering input from the community for an assessment of the Historic Triangle. Residents and stakeholders are invited to join a live session to share ideas and feedback on August 9 at the Waukee Community Center. Topics include:
• What businesses do you love or would like to see downtown?
• What public amenities are needed in the triangle district?
• Other thoughts to enhance the downtown area?
This input session kicks off the assessment, which includes a visit by five downtown revitalization specialists from the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Downtown Resource Center. The resulting report will help the downtown plan for the future.
Please let us know if you plan to come by selecting "Going" on the Facebook event, so we can have enough ice cream for all attendees.
We hope look forward to discussing the future of our community and hope to see you there.
-Nick Lenters, Owner
