kevin mullins: Nate, what's the competition in the area?

Nate Clifford: Well that's part of why we moved here. Our whole mission has been to get real whole healthy food, not processed food, to people who don't have access to it. People in Northampton have access to it. It's a little bit of a diluted area. I mean I especially after the second co op opened. So no shade to them, but we were sort of taken for granted maybe not consciously, but it in Northampton. So down here in Holyoke, there's nothing like this.

kevin mullins: Mm-hmm.

Nate Clifford: The closest thing is the co op that's six, seven miles away.

Musk: in East Hampton, the other co-op, ⁓

Nate Clifford: Yeah, yeah. So we were almost gonna open in East Hampton. But it was the same kind of thing. It was like is this really meeting our mission? Whereas down here in Holyoke, this community just can't believe that we would put our money this into this. And they they're so they're they're thrilled. I mean everybody every day comes in and it's just I can't believe we have one of we have one of these kind of stores here now. So I it feels really good to have done that and

kevin mullins: Well, that's great. Yeah.

Nate Clifford: We're just trying to find the balance between what products to carry to make sure that somebody who comes from Northampton who's been shopping with us for forty six years sees the things that they want to see, but then when the community this immediate community comes in they see they see things that make them feel like we actually care and want to be a store for them as well. So it's been interesting striking that balance.

kevin mullins: know what, when I I have a, I have family up in, in Whitingham in Vermont. And we go over to Brattleboro all the time and we go to the co-op up there. And what I notice is the people that go to shop there. Number one, they're healthy people. Number two, they, they like what they see in the store. ⁓

philip: Yeah.

Nate Clifford: Yeah.

kevin mullins: They sell a lot of bulk where you can bring your own containers and, and do that. I mean, it's great. I buy ⁓ lot of my spices and stuff like that there.

Nate Clifford: Yeah, yeah. So we do bulk spices, medicinal herbs, bulk, we do all the bulk stuff and we you can bring your own container. That was all of my Puerto Rican friends from Lawrence when I moved to North Andover, I made a bunch of like, you know, Spanish speaking younger guys my age. Guatemalan Mexican, Puerto Rican, and they are like dude, the older people in our communities are all into medicinal healing, especially that like bulk herb stuff. So

philip: I would

kevin mullins: Yep. Yep.

Nate Clifford: That's I I direct when I have somebody come in seventy, eighty years old that's Puerto Rican, I direct them right to that and they get it right away. And that that's that's a thing that's resonating for sure.

kevin mullins: Yep.

philip: Yeah.