Come, See Behind the Curtain:
Creating More Sustainability

We had a meeting with John this weekend, and he asked us to pull back the curtain between the Bee Wild team and our customers and readers so that you can see how we develop our business to more closely meet our customers’ needs.

Staying in the Question

One of the more unique ways we operate as the Bee Wild team is that we are willing to stay “in the question”  longer than most companies. We don’t rush to conclusions. We don’t push against the natural tide of the business. We ask questions and continue to ask questions until responses to our questions bubble up naturally. This might seem a bit woo-woo to you, but this is the process the Bee Wild team has used to take this company from concept to a growing, successful business. Let me give you an example of what we do.

Foundation

When you work with bees as Nature intended, sustainability often pops up as an issue. In Northern Georgia, one of the only places on Earth where Sourwood Honey is produced naturally by the bees, a rainy spring/summer can damage sourwood blossoms. With no sourwood blossoms, there is no Sourwood Honey. In fact, many of our longstanding customers may remember a few years ago when we had no Sourwood Honey crop one year.

Too, as Bee Colony Collapse Disorder becomes more and more of an issue for beekeepers and continually fighting with pesticide companies and the government produce very few wins for the bees and other pollinators, continued honey production isn’t guaranteed.

Here, at Bee Wild, we realize that some of the factors involved in producing raw, wild-crafted honey are beyond our control. So, we do what we can – for example we donate 1% of our gross sales to the Center for Food Safety through One Percent for the Planet, to help them continue to fight for bees in the courts. Then, we go into the question. Let me share what it looks like.

Our Weekend Meeting

We had our first planning meeting for 2018 this weekend. Since a great focus for our brand is sustainability, we again brought up this question, “How can we move into more sustainability as a company, as a team, as part of the real food community?” “What would it take for us to offer our customers an even more sustainable product?” “How can we contribute to the sustainability of the Atlanta real food community?” As we posed those questions, we didn’t try to answer them immediately. We just continued to stream out as many “How to” and “What Would It Take” questions as we could, having faith in the questioning process, knowing that a direction would present itself.

Stay Tuned

In our next post we are going to continue this piece by letting you help us develop one of the ideas that came from our planning session. See you then!