Message from Bill Penzey at Penzey's Spices [View all]

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This message was posted on facebook by Bill Penzey. I took the liberty of posting the whole thing in its entirety as I couldn't find the message on their website and some folks here might not be subscribers to facebook.

Saturday before last we called out the president’s sudden shift from no crimes have been committed to it’s a crime to investigate my crimes—that day turned out to be far and away the biggest day for sales in the history of Penzeys. If you know of someone in charge of running a business, please let them know that if they are thinking of standing on the right side of history, now is the time.

It’s past time for Americans to stop pretending what is happening in our country is in any way normal. Through March the story has been that the President is not a criminal. This April the story has been changed to it’s illegal for the FBI to catch him in his crimes. Innocent people don’t do what this administration is doing. So many comments from all sides about the FBI’s raid on the offices of the president’s attorney, but in all those comments, no one is saying this is no big deal because the president has not committed impeachment-level crimes. No one.

Long ago we figured out cooking is kindness, that when we take the time to care for those around us, the world becomes a better place. A half-dozen years ago, when our home state of Wisconsin became the testing ground for how racism, intolerance, and hate can be used in politics to deliver a much greater share of the pie to the already wealthy, we realized kindness can't sit down simply because anger has stood up.

A while back we made the promise: “When we find the opportunity to have our offers possibly make a difference, we will try to have our offers make that difference.” At Penzeys, in our time speaking out, we’ve learned through experience that good messages are shared. When a good message is combined with something of value for free, it has even greater reach. And if you have a message that you wish would reach many-many people, combine it with something free of great value.

With the president declaring himself above the law, it seemed to be a time to try and reach as many as we could. And that we did. And even though we had a lot more of the Soul boxes ready than we had for any offer like this we’ve done before, somehow the combination of the message and the offer produced a wave unlike anything we ever experienced before. Out of caution, Saturday we started this as a two-day offer, but I really thought we would be able to extend it to a third. I was really wrong.

Bakers plan ahead, but Cooks tend to wait for deadlines. First days on our offers usually bring in only about a third of what final days bring. But even with just hours into making this offer, us trying to lower expectations by warning of rain checks in the stores and sizable waits for online orders, Saturday eclipsed every previous day in our history, more than doubling the previous sales record.

We are supposed to be a December business. April is our slowest month of the year. After doing this for 32 years I find this hard to fathom, but it sure looks like if we had been able to promote this as originally planned in the same way we’ve done for all our previous 3-day offers, the number of online orders we would have received in those three days would have equaled the number we received in the first five and a half months of last year.

You think you know your business, you think you know what’s possible, then the ceiling disappears. If you are in business, and if you are still not convinced the future of business in a social media world is in doing what is right, just keep repeating to yourself: five and a half months in 3 days; five and a half months in 3 days. The future of business rests in the hands of those who honestly care about humanity, and that’s a really good thing.

And for those of you who at times may think you are alone in your sense of loss at what America has become, please don’t. Our numbers show you are far from alone. But even more importantly they show that the America you love, the one that ever strives for ever-greater equality and ever-greater opportunity for all may have been knocked by a cheap shot, but it’s standing back up again, rolling up its great sleeves, and that America is determined to set things right. None of us can take our eyes off of the November 6 elections, but America is already being reborn, rededicated to the spirit of equality that made us the leader among nations.

So the good news is, both standing up for what is right is popular and our Soul boxes are popular, and combined they are really-really popular. So we have some catching up to do. Most of the promised Soul boxes have already been delivered, are in the mail right now, or will be in the next couple days. And next week some of the rain check boxes will start trickling into the stores, but our big issue is that your overwhelming response to this offer used up our supply of 1/4-cup jars. The next shipment of jars should be in at the end of next week, and once we get those filled and boxed we will have them quickly out the door to you.

While we are catching up, we are putting our previously planned promotions on a short delay. So today, instead of us offering you something we think you might like to try, we are giving you what you already want with the chance to get a free 1/2-cup jar of your choice, up to a $9.95 value, with any $5 purchase through Sunday . We also have an ending Sunday offer of a $6.95 value 1/2-cup of our popular Northwoods Seasoning with $5 purchase. Both offers can be combined with $10 spending (a $16.90 value).

To receive your in-store coupons for these two offers please click this link: http://spices.penzeys.com/Coupon-Sign-Up.html

Or visit us online at penzeys.com, and after spending $5, enter in the five digit number for the half-cup jar of your choice up to $9.95 followed by the letter "C" in the apply code box while checking out, i.e. 44455C for our really nice Granulated Garlic, or 43553C for Penzeys Cinnamon. It's easy. Once you reach $10 in spending you can also use the code 22150C to get your free Northwoods, too. No need to place the Northwoods in your basket, the coupon does that for you.

And thank you for your tremendous support. Sorry about the delay on the Soul boxes. We had “while supplies last” printed in the small text of the offer, but wherever it is possible, I would rather Penzeys use rain checks and back orders to honor offers instead of being a “minimum of 10 available in each store” type of business.

And we understand if you are kind of mad at us for not already having your free box to you; we deserve that. We get that cooking actually matters and lives in a place inside us where emotions are strong. You want these Seasonings to make tasty food for those you care about now not later. We are working to get them to you as soon as possible.

If you’ve received your Soul box and have already found some ways to use your new blends that those you cook for have enjoyed, please share your discoveries in the comments below. Cooking really does matter, it creates better futures by giving us the strength to stand up in times like these. The more we can all be a support group to all those starting out in trying to bring all the goodness of cooking into their lives, the better the future will be. Heal the World. Cook dinner tonight.

And please do what you can to support the message that in America no one is above the law. Maybe in the tapes of the president’s lawyer we will hear that the Russians, the Republican Party and Fox News did not all end up on the same page by coincidence. Maybe we won’t. But clearly those who do not have America’s best interests at heart got the best of us in the 2016 election. We can’t let that happen again this year.

Thanks for your support,

Bill Penzey

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And if you know of someone involved in steering a business, or just in need of some good new, please share this post with them. In this social media world, the future of business belongs to those who honestly care about humanity. Now is the time to stand up for what is right.