Whole Foods on board!

Whole Foods on board!05/04/2012   Back from my meeting at Whole Foods. Am brim-filled with excitement to share the story!                                           Adventures in Whole Foods I just got back home from my meeting with Melissa, the Marketing Team Leader at the Whole Foods Market in Capitola, Ca. The meeting was absolutely the establishment of an blossoming partnership between Dreem Reality and Whole Foods. But before I go into all of the exciting details, let me back up a bit. A week ago I wrote to Melissa to see if Whole Foods would be interested in donating food for our weekly DreemGarden events.  I talked to her of our blossoming non-profit and projects we are activating. My hopes were high, I felt confident that we would be able to get some food donated to us for our events since the Whole Foods in Berekely California was happy to do the same. My hopes, however, were unprepared for the amount of enthusiasm expressed back from my letter. Melissa wrote back the next day with a short and sweet message saying, “This looks very interesting! Do you have anytime to meet in person this week? Let me know, I would love to talk more about this.” Not what I was expecting! What I expected was the traditional “Well first you will need to fill out a donation request letter, give us your 501(c) 3 ID number and we will see what we can do.” No, this was different, this was an opening of doors and potentials. Let’s fast forward to the meeting with Melissa. We introduce ourselves to each other and share our excitement of meeting to communicate more. She asks of our organization and DreemGardens and I share with her the quick development that we have incurred since Earth Week April 16-21st. We move forward quickly throwing out ideas and potentials for growth with one another. She asks for a breakdown of our projects and budget, and lucky for me that I have a well organized Wife and Vice President of Dreem Reality, I had the paperwork for her immediately. She exclaimed, “Wow, look at you!”. After that she says we will need to fill out a donation request form, and I am also able to hand it over to her and receive another approving exclamation.  From there we talked about the big potentials together. Melissa says she thinks we would be great for their “Nickels for Non-profits” program that runs for 2 months at a time. This program gives a five-cent donation every time someone brings in a reusable bag, and for every bag that they bring. The customer then has a choice between two non-profit organizations to give their nickel(s) to. She recommended us funding our DreemTV project with this program. I asked about having an info card at the registers about DreemTV for the customers, she agreed that having some sort of pamphlet or card up there would be a good thing. She asked about our educational videos and if they would cost anything. It felt so good to resoundingly answer, “They will be absolutely free to the public”. She was very happy about that and thinks the project will progress forward well. I put out there that it would be great to set up a booth once a week at the Whole Foods site to talk to customers about us being there as a non-profit and what we are doing and providing for the public. We want to see about either making our own bike powered blender, or using People Powers blender to make some free smoothies for our patrons who stop by to say hi to our booth. I think this will be a hit. Then we talked about other Dreem ideas. We want to create a DreemCollective and establish our own currency of sorts amongst our Dreemers. We will be creating DreemCards for those who are working with our non-profit in different ways. These cards will have the Dreemers name and will say “I am a Dreemer”. They will then be able to go into a local business and receive a discount on goods. Whole Foods went a step further and put out there that they can give free coffee for our Dreemers with their cards! Yes!! Dreem Reality is currently in its first Spring FUNdraiser and I asked for reusable bags to be able to give to our donors for small donations.  We decided that 20 per week would be good and doable for them. Hooray for gifts for our donors! I shared more information on our DreemGardens project and inquired for the potentials of receiving food for our weekly events. She said that they could do snack type foods and goods for us. Yeah! While talking about DreemGardens we talked about the potential of creating an edible landscape outside of their building.  They are selling plant starts there now and we both thought it would be great to have some growing in their edible landscape to entice others to do the same. The only thing about this is that the landscape would need a daily up keep. This seemed initially as a problem, but on the way home I thought of how it could actually lead to many solutions! It would 1) Empower the community to create their own edible landscapes. 2) Which would lead them to purchasing some plant starts which are sold from Whole Foods. 3) It would help the economy by opening up a new job niche with them to hire a new Team Member for the upkeep of their edible garden. Perhaps even for one of our very own DreemGardeners! On that topic she mentioned in passing that they have to have their compost hauled away. I jumped on that thought and put out there that DreemGardens can come pick it up and disseminate it to our DreemGarden locations to proliferate the growing goods! Melissa shared with me a few schools who are starting gardens and that there is potentials there. One is Soquel Elementary and the other is Soquel High. This would be a great way for Dreem Reality to get into schools. She invited us to the Birthday Bash event on July 22nd. There will be lots of community and vendors there and she wants us to be one of them! We are very excited about this, as it will be another great way to get involved with our community and get more Dreemers on board for our growing projects. So, I am currently glowing with an overflowing energy of abundance and potential. Feeling very blessed to have been so well received by Melissa and Whole Foods, and am very much looking forward to the future collaboration and partnership that is rapidly blossoming. To cap off the event nicely, a man named Jon was sitting nearby as we were wrapping up the meeting and when I stayed behind to fill out the new paperwork for the “Nickels for Non-profits”. Jon told me that he said a prayer for me and our non-profits mission, that he feels that we will be successful. He recognized that I was wearing a turtle charm on my necklace and left me with a quote that his grandfather would share with him. “Like a turtle, you never get anywhere unless you stick your neck out.” Here’s to sticking my neck out, and getting somewhere filled with potential. Thanks Jon. Thanks Melissa. Thank you Whole Foods, and Thank You Life!! Dreems manifesting into Reality!