Thank You, Stranger: Northeast Minneapolis community rallies around vandalized food co-op

NINA MOINI: A Minnesota food co-op, was turned upside down by vandalism, but it's back on its feet thanks to community support. Here's Anne Gazzola, the manager of the Eastside Food Co-op in Northeast Minneapolis, for this week's Thank You, Stranger.

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ANNE GAZZOLA: Wednesday morning last week, I got a call at 5:00 in the morning as I was just waking up because we had a refrigeration alarm, which is not unusual, so I didn't think too much of it. I called the store people, checked it out. The cheese cooler was a little warm. An hour later, I get a call. We have seven more alarms. By the time I got there, 30 minutes later, there were 12 alarms.

And the tech got there and he went up on the roof and came down pretty quick. And told us that he had some bad news. That somebody had climbed up on the roof and broken our refrigeration system, tearing out pipes. I'm assuming there's value to the metals. It wasn't only copper piping that he took. So, I mean, he was only up there for about an hour. He did a lot of damage.

While we are no stranger to refrigeration issues or power outages that threaten our coolers, having it done to you is a different level that adds like an emotional toll to the extra work. It was a total shock. And I knew definitely at that moment, no matter how hopeful the nice tech that went up there was about being up and running in a few hours, that it definitely was going to take longer than that.

We have the mechanical damage that has a value. We also have all the product. So it's difficult when you're talking about cold product because there are a lot of rules around food safety and what holding temperatures you need to be at. And so it caused a lot of loss. We ended up having to throw out a lot of food because we weren't able to get it to refrigeration in time.

That was probably the biggest damage, both in dollars and in, I don't know, emotional agony. And for our staff who spend all of their time making sure that we put food into people's hands and into their bellies, having to put it into the dumpster instead was really tough. We have over 12,000 owners. We're a mainstay here in Northeast. And, this person, this guy who climbed up on our roof is enemy number one in Northeast Minneapolis. I'll tell you that. Because everybody is just so mad. How could you do that to the co-op?

We had somebody who offered pro bono grant writing in case we needed to request any funds to help get us back on our feet. City of Minneapolis reached out to ask how they could help get us back on our feet. Francis Burger Joint down the street, sent over lunch for staff. And one of our vendors gave all the staff free flowers just to brighten their day. We have member owners who called in and requested the ability to make donations to the co-op. Even though I assured them that we would be OK, they still just wanted to do something. The list goes on.

It was incredible. It continues to be incredible. And people are still reaching out. Things are looking really good. We definitely are still recovering in a few areas. South town refrigeration worked for three days straight to get us back up and running as fast as they could, and just were super fast and responsive and professional.

So we placed orders and on Saturday morning had a huge stocking party. I came in and stocked. My husband came in and stocked. We had some former managers who came in to help stock. Our rep from our big distributor at Unify came in to help us stock. And of course, all the staff who just two days earlier had taken it all off the shelves, spent the day putting it back on.

East side staff felt this so deeply, and still came to work every day, and did what they needed to do to keep us moving forward. I appreciate each one of them so much, and so does this community. And I think that's why we see such an outpouring, is because they know the quality of the place that East side is. They own East side as a cooperative.

But really, I just want to give a big shout out to the staff, as well as all the folks who called in to support us. What was one of the worst weeks in my grocery career ended up being one with the most warm fuzzies that I can recall. Because so many people just came out to support the store.

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NINA MOINI: That was Eastside food co-op manager Anne Gizzola. This episode of Thank You, Stranger was produced by Ellen Finn. Hey, do you have a story of kindness that made life a little better? We want to hear from you. Email us minnesotanow@mprnews.org.