Celebrations: Four examples of local giving

A chef who specialized in preparing meals for home delivery, Cathryn Couch received a call in 2006 that ended up changing thousands of lives. A friend asked her if there was a cooking job for her teenage daughter, Megan. Couch didn’t have an opening, but the friend was so persistent that Couch brought in Megan and they made dinners for a homeless shelter.

That led to preparing nutritious meals for three people with cancer. The epiphany for Couch came when the husband of a woman who was battling cancer came to pick up food for his family. Couch noticed how Megan beamed as they described what they’d cooked.

“I glanced over at Megan, and the kid looked 6 inches taller. It was a moment,” Couch said. “Three weeks later, I woke up at 6:30 in the morning and I could see the whole thing. These families are going to get meals, and these kids are going to learn how to cook and have this experience of their capacity to make a difference. It was an instant download.”

Many Sonoma food and beverage producers care about more than just the bottom line, giving back to their communities in different ways. They’ve found that being generous neighbors is ultimately good for business.

The region is blessed with numerous conscientious companies and nonprofit groups. Here are four that underscore the profound impact of local entities committed to public service.

Ceres Community Project

Named for the Roman goddess who symbolized nurturing, Ceres was founded by Couch in 2007 and had 21 volunteers that year who prepared and delivered 4,500 meals to people with cancer. By the end of 2014, Couch said she expects to have 500 youth volunteers who learn to cook and make healthier dietary choices, and will provide 85,000 meals to approximately 600 families.

But it’s not just the recipients who are grateful. “People say to me, ‘Thank you so much for starting this. I wanted to be more involved in the community. I wanted a way to help, but I didn’t know how to do it,’” Couch said of her volunteers. “People are longing to be more connected, to be more engaged, and Ceres is a vehicle for that.”

Her mindset is to say yes whenever possible. “People would show up and say. ‘I want to teach a class,’ and we would say, ‘OK.’ We need to open ourselves to what wants to flow through.”

Couch also wanted to help young people make better life choices. Ceres’ teen volunteers are “learning how to cook and eat kale,” but that’s just the beginning, Couch said. “They have the capacity to be a contributing member of the community.” And that helps teens feel better about themselves, enhancings all aspects of their lives.

ceresproject.org

Guayaki Yerba Mate

The co-founder of Guayaki Yerba Mate, a tea company in Sebastopol, cites a triple bottom line: The product, grown in South America, is renewable, David Karr said. Second, “We work with people in the rainforests. And (third), it’s fair trade.”

Started by 1996 by two recent college graduatess looking for a way to fund their surfing habit and prove that a company can be profitable while operating sustainably, Guayaki’s goal has been “market-driven conservation,” Karr said. “It wasn’t enough just to conserve land. We wanted to restore land where we work (forests in Brazil and Argentina).”

When Karr and Alex Pryor began Guayaki, few North Americans knew about yerba mate (pronounced MAH-tay), but they and their partners, including Karr’s brother, Steven, were determined to change that. They drove their RV throughout the U.S., evangelists for the stimulating brew, traditionally steeped in gourds, that has invigorated South Americans for centuries.

The beverage, which Guayaki describes as having the “strength of coffee, the health benefits of tea and the euphoria of chocolate,” is fair trade and organic, made from the leaves of South American rainforest holly trees. David Karr said sometimes these standards don’t go far enough. “We have our own standards,” he said. “That’s really at the soul of our company and how we operate.”

6782 Sebastopol Ave., Sebastopol, 707-824-6644, guayaki.com

Lagunitas Brewing Co.

Visit Lagunitas’ website and you’ll see this message: “Donations: Turning beer into money for your cause.” The Petaluma brewery (there’s also one in Chicago) isn’t just willing to offer beer for fundraisers, it’s eager.

Nonprofits receive “less and less help all the time from the traditional sources,” said Lagunitas’ “Beer Weasel” (spokesman), Ron Lindenbusch. “We realized you could turn beer into money for a good cause. It’s good for us: We make new friends while helping to support the community that supports us so vibrantly.”

There are also free concerts in the LaguMiniAmphitheaterette, created during the brewery’s expansion a few years ago.

Owner Tony Magee noticed a big pile of excavated dirt and thought it’d be a fine idea to use it to create a slope for an outdoor concert venue. Lagunitas hosts about a dozen concerts a year in the LaguMini and has music five nights a week in its Tap Room.

All performances are free.

On Mondays and Tuesdays, the Tap Room is available, free of charge, to nonprofit groups to host benefits.

“I realized we had a cool little space, and we might as well give it away,” Lindenbusch said. “We started doing it and saw how much of a difference it makes, so we never stopped.”

1280 N. McDowell Blvd., Petaluma, 707-769-4495, lagunitas.com

Taylor Maid Coffee

For Taylor Maid Coffee, little things make a big impact. Founded in 1991 on a farm in Occidental, the company insisted on using organic beans before chemical-free coffee became fashionable. Taylor Maid partnered with growers in Central America and Africa to help them gain certification, expanding the supply of organic coffee.

In 2001, Taylor Maid began offering a $1-a-pound discount for customers who brought back their coffee cans for refills. This year, it has donated more than $5,000 in coffee and tea to worthy organizations.

Taylor Maid, now located in Sebastopol’s The Barlow center, also works with local school groups, according to its marketing director, Louie Poore. For example, donating $1 from sales of each bag of Maiden 1993 coffee helped Analy High students pay for service trips to Central America, sponsored by the Sebastopol-based group Global Student Embassy.

Most important is ensuring that the people who harvest Taylor Maid’s coffee beans earn a fair wage, Poore said. The fair-trade minimum is $1.40, but Taylor Maid typically pays $2 to $3 or more per pound of beans. “Every cent we spend over that $1.40 fair-trade minimum is certainly impacting the communities that receive it,” Poore said.

6790 McKinley St., #170, The Barlow, Sebastopol, 707-824-9110, taylormaidfarms.com