A Quarterly Update from Co-op Leadership

Dear PCC member-owner,

As we embark on a new year, I want to pause for a moment of reflection and gratitude. Your continued trust, engagement and belief in our co-op make all our work possible, and I am honored to share some highlights of what we accomplished together in 2025.

In a shifting and often turbulent economic landscape marked by unexpected national supply chain disruptions, I am incredibly proud of how our co-op teams met these challenges head-on. We reimagined how PCC serves the downtown community with our new Corner Market store; relocated our office in a manner that showcased our co-op’s values; refreshed our cooking classes program; and continued to innovate our freshly prepared and deli food offerings based on staff and member feedback.

Member Month in October was a true celebration of cooperative ownership, and we are now excited to count more than 122,000 active member-owners. This milestone reflects a shared commitment to purpose-driven food access and community connection in the Pacific Northwest. Together, we’ve built something remarkable over the past 70+ years: the largest food co-op in the country!

Cooperation and partnerships continued to be a cornerstone of our work in 2025. For a second year, we joined more than 160 food co-ops nationwide to support Indigenous-led food systems; raised over $716,000 for Growing for Good; and celebrated the 25th anniversary of Washington Farmland Trust—a vital organization that began as the PCC Farmland Fund and has since grown into a thriving, independent nonprofit.

As the year ended, we were further reminded that the power of cooperation has the ability to show up for the community in a way few others can. In response to the food insecurity crisis in our region resulting from the government shutdown and other long-standing factors, PCC established a $50,000 seed fund with a call to action for co-ops and industry partners to join us. Together, including a generous $50,000 match from the BECU Foundation (a fellow co-op), we were able to raise nearly $600,000 in cash and donated goods, supporting over 100 hunger relief agencies and community organizations across Snohomish, Pierce and King counties. This effort made a tangible difference for our neighbors facing food insecurity, especially during the holiday season. Thank you to all our partners, our staff and every member whose support helped turn rapid response into real impact.

I also want to take this moment to share that I am taking a planned leave — for personal reasons — from February 9 to April 27. During this period, Amy Chow, our CFO, will step in as Acting CEO, ably assisted by our Leadership Team (who guide the day-to-day activities of the co-op), and with the usual oversight and guidance from our Board of Trustees. Our plans and priorities remain on track, and I have complete confidence in our board, LT, and all staff members to keep things moving smoothly during my leave.

Looking ahead into 2026, I feel optimism for what we can achieve together. The coming year is rich with opportunities to nurture our local organic food system, deepen our connections with the farmers and partners who sustain it and celebrate our bountiful region. At the same time, we remain on a multi-year journey toward sustained triple bottom line health, in an economic environment that still offers more questions than answers. This is a journey that will require focus, patience and collective effort and will not always be easy — and we are committed to transparency in what we do and why.

Recent tragic events in Minnesota and across the country also remind us that political and social challenges are likely to be perennial fixtures in the landscape in which we live and work, and this underscores the importance of community, empathy and integrity as core foundational elements of democratic values. As a cooperative with local roots, we exist because people — like you all — chose to come together around shared principles that include caring for one another, showing up for our communities and acting with compassion. Those principles have always mattered to us but are especially important in times like this.

Thank you for being part of this cooperative movement with us.

With gratitude,

Krish