POULSBO — A recent challenge from the Poulsbo Albertson’s to its customers resulted in a lot of bread being raised for Fishline — literally.
Hot, fresh French bread is a popular item at the local grocery store, which is known to announce new batches fresh out of the oven over its loud speakers. Whenever loaves are on sale, checkers are encouraged to mention it to each customer, however, in November and December of 2003 Manager Steve Stenberg hit on an idea with the item.
“The checkers would mention the item to as many people as they could and they also would say, ‘Or, if you don’t want to buy one for yourself, you can buy one for Fishline and we’ll deliver it for you.’ Sort of a you buy, we fly kind of thing,” Stenberg explained.
The response was so great that the store eventually decided to run the French bread for Fishline promotion for an entire week. The result was 469 loaves donated to the food bank in a seven-day period — an average of nearly 70 loaves donated each day.
“It was pretty awesome,” Stenberg said. “I’m absolutely delighted how wonderful our customers were with this. Just by posting notes on the doors and casually mentioning it, we got this response.”
Some of the donated bread was delivered to Fishline still frozen, so customers could take it home to bake. The rest of the loaves are being baked and delivered in manageable loads.
“We’re doing about 30 today and we’ll do about 30 more tomorrow,” Stenberg said Monday. “That way, they’ll have them fresh at their storefront.”
And while he said he’s happy about all that “dough” going to neighbors in need, Stenberg said the French bread donation is only going to be an occasional feature at the store.
The local grocer supports a number of other causes, such as the upcoming shamrocks for MDA and rootbeer floats for Children’s Hospital and Stenberg said he wants to give all the causes their fair chance.
“We’ll do it occasionally,” he commented. “Nothing scheduled. I don’t want to beat something like this into the ground … But of course I keep thinking ‘keep asking’ because people respond so generously and happily when they know there’s a need.”
