Announcements
We had our first successful online order and pickup at St. John’s Episcopal Church on March 6th! We sold over $400 in pre-orders and over $100 in additional products at the popup market. Thank you to everyone who participated and thank you for your patience as we figure out the best way to get you everything you want and need.
We are eager to add more items. We have several local producers we’re getting onboarded and we’re taking requests for all types of grocery items. Please send us an email to info@redbudfood.coop with your grocery list and we’ll get it all added as soon as we can!
We’ve slightly adjusted the schedule of our popup markets to align with the times people are most likely to come. Our next popup market is at the 2nd Friday Art Walk in front of Re:Supply from 6pm to 8pm. Please check our Google Calendar to see upcoming order windows and popup market times.
We have a sad announcement to make. April Harrington, who was an integral part of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative and founder of Earth Elements passed away on February 25th.
She did so much for local farmers, food processors, and entrepreneurs, her loss is a huge loss for all of us.
Her memorial service is scheduled for March 14th, but we don’t have the details yet. We’ll publish another blog post when we find out the details and tell you more about April and how important she was to the local food movement in Oklahoma.
Producer Highlight: CHC Sauce and Spice
CHC Sauce and Spice is Paula C. and Wesley H., research scientists who happen to love delicious food (PhD Ecology and Evolution, 2025 and PhD Chemistry, 2017, respectively). They focus on making real delicious, real food. Starting from whole ingredients, they transform them into small batches of prep-free and fermented foods. Their hummus uses no seed oils or preservatives and incorporates homegrown ingredients like tomatoes and cilantro. They partner directly with local farmers for unsold produce and are proud to enhance the local food chain by reducing food waste.
CHC Sauce and Spice also combine ancient methods with modern tools in their scientific repertoire, like using titration, microscopy, etc. to monitor wild yeast fermentation in addition to standard food safety techniques like pH testing, ensuring access to safe, raw foodstuffs. Not many folks know that the secret to smooth hummus is acid/base chemistry!
The CHC flavor team have been combining their passion for experimentation and taste for years before they started selling to customers. Many of their processes take much longer than the average person would be willing to work on their food. Few souls want to spend a year making soy sauce, let alone three weeks to make sauerkraut. When their fermentation projects started getting out of hand, they decided to start selling to the public. After all, what else could you do with 10 gallons of delicious soy sauce? Seeing the interest in their initial products, they started offering other foods they had made for years in their home kitchen. Today, CHC Sauce and Spice are thrilled to share their culinary experiences with their Oklahoma neighbors.
We are currently carrying four varieties of their hummus, their kimchi and sauerkraut, and yaupon holly tea. Yaupon holly is the only locally native plant that contains caffeine. You can learn more by visiting their website: chcsauceandspice.com.
Cooperative Education Corner
On March 1st we met with other cooperative enthusiasts and leaders at the worker-owned food cooperative, Flora Bodega, in the Paseo District in OKC. Bridget Burns gave a presentation on where we’re at and what we plan to achieve with Redbud. Then, Jacki Saorsail gave a presentation on what cooperatives are and why they’re important, why we should work together to further the cooperative movement, and how we could do that through forming a cooperative federation. There was a lot of excitement in the room and we have begun talking about next steps. Jacki converted her presentation into a blog post. Click the preview below to read it and get involved!
Starting a Cooperative Federation in Oklahoma
What is a cooperative?
I have talked to many business lawyers, CPAs and MBAs who could not answer that question. They say something like “isn’t that some kind of a non-profit?” No, cooperatives are not non-profits. The fact that so many “experts” in business cannot define an entire category of businesses is a real crisis facing the cooperative movement, and I would argue society as a whole. It’s as bad as doctors not taking a single class in nutrition or farmers not knowing anything about soil science.
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