Our Pledge to Our Community

 

We’re a small family owned business that cares about our community.  We always have tried to give in various ways to many different causes in an effort to give back to the community that has always supported our business. 

We’ve always felt supported by our community and our customers, but never more than during the year 2020.  At the time we were a brick and mortar retail store, with less than 5%  of our products on our website, and we had to close our doors for over 2 months. At the time we had to close, one of our kids was 3, and the other was just 3 months.   Facing such an uncertain future was scary. 

However, the thing that sustained us through those times, was overwhelming support of our community.  Whether it was customers greatly inconveniencing themselves to make any purchase they could, or just reaching out to check in and see how we were doing, all of it meant so much to us.

As a result of this, we decided to put more structure around the way we gave back to our community.  We wanted to make sure that we were contributing in a bigger way, and in a way that could give our business more purpose.  In May of 2021 we committed to helping make the fight against food insecurity part of our mission. Since then we have dedicated 1 weekend a month to donate 10% of our sales to various organizations that work to solve these issues in our state.  We’re proud to say that since then we’ve donated over $17,000 to these partner organizations.  We have also used our ever expanding social media platforms, and email lists to raise awareness about these organizations and their missions in an effort to further educate our community about the challenges of food insecurity.

Today, we’re excited to announce a change in our efforts to further help in the effort to eradicate hunger.  We will no longer have monthly donation campaign events.  Instead, we will donate 1% of ALL our sales to supporting organizations leading in the fight against food insecurity.  We make this shift for a few reasons, but the primary one is simple. We want to make sure that our commitment goes beyond 12 weekends a year. This change ensures that every item we sell is a part of this commitment. Every chef’s knife, every skillet, every piggy-shaped whisk is part of our goal to help fight food insecurity. This also ensures that as our business grows, so does our effort to combat hunger.  

As a Vermont based business, the majority of our sales (and thus our donations) are Vermont based and we look forward to continuing to support the partners we’ve been working with.  That said, we’ve come a long way since the early days of 2020 and we’ve seen our customer base grow outside of Vermont. For purchases made outside Vermont, those donations will be made to your state’s local food bank on an annual basis.

We believe that the “Kiss the Cook community”, wherever you’re located,  is one that cares about delicious food, quality cookware for their kitchen, and cares about their neighbors.

We will continue to use our platforms to try and educate about the realities of food insecurity, and what can be done to help.  And we will continue to look for new ways to grow and improve our commitment to our community.

Thank you for your time, and your ongoing support.

-Luke