Friday, January 25, 2013

B.Y.O.B.!

Our guess is that, by now, most have you have started getting into the habit of shopping with your own reusable bags, now that Alameda County has placed a ban on the use of plastic bags in grocery stores or other retail establishments that handle food (ie. Target, CVS).

As a Certified Green Business, it has always been GROVE STREET kids' policy to only use recycled bags, be them paper or plastic, but mostly plastic as the sheer quantity has been more readily available to us. For some time, however, our customers, who are naturally inclined toward recycling and protecting the environment, have rarely taken bags from us if they didn't already have their own.

That said, when it rains, or the amount of items a customer purchases requires it, those bags have come in awful handy. But now that the grocery stores are no longer providing the plastic bags, and paper ones are costing customers 10¢ apiece, when GROVE STREET kids runs out of our own supply, we will be requesting that our customers B.Y.O.B.... Bring Your Own Bag!

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Happy New Year

Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right. ~Oprah Winfrey

We could not have said it better ourselves! 2012 brought about a lot of change for us at GROVE STREET kids – new location, new hours, new systems. But some of those changes won't stay, as we figure out what worked best for us and where we still need to make improvements to better serve our customers in 2013!

When we moved to Shattuck Avenue, we extended our business hours on Wednesday and Thursday to coincide with Off The Grid and the North Berkeley Farmers' Market, respectively. The city of Berkeley decided not to renew their contract with the Off The Grid powers that be and will be our neighbor no more. So with that, when we reopen on the 8th, we will go back to closing at 6 pm on Wednesdays, (and possibly Thursdays, at least during the winter).

One of our biggest changes for 2013 will be converting our entire inventory to a computerized system. This has been and, continues to be, a daunting task but we hope that you will find it makes our system more streamlined between our resale, consignment and vendor inventory, not to mention keeping track of everyone's trade balances and purchases! But it is a process, and we are still learning as well, so we hope you will bear with us through this change and opportunity to get it right!

For more updates or just to be reminded of what's happening over at the shop, be sure to visit our website, "like us" on Facebook or follow us on Instagram!

So, with that, we hoped you enjoyed your holidays, and appreciate your patience while we were closed to do the aforementioned inventory and to spend time with our families. GROVE STREET kids looks forward to seeing you in 2013!