Where customers, employees, farmers and community come together By Jillian Chandler | Photo Courtesy of The Pilgrims Market
Since 1999, Joe Hamilton had been investing in his local community—and their health.
Since day one, Joe has stayed true to his unwavering goal to build a financially sustainable and principled company to serve, empower and delight their health-seeking customers, while creating a challenging, empowering and rewarding work environment for their members, leaders and advisers, with opportunities for personal and professional advancement. And that is exactly what he has accomplished with Pilgrim’s Market.
What started with Joe and one employee operating the store, with a focus on providing healthy food and supplement options in Coeur d’Alene, has flourished to now occupy an entire city block, with 120 staff members.
Today, Pilgrim’s Market could easily be compared to a food bazaar. In addition to the plethora of grocery items, Pilgrim’s produces its own line of fermented foods—The Cultured Mama. Making hundreds of healthy and tasty food items from scratch every day, Pilgrim’s truly offers an experience and product selection not found anywhere else.
In recent years, Pilgrim’s acquired three residential lots behind the store, which they have converted into an organic urban farm, producing thousands of pounds of farm-fresh foods every year.
“Freshness and quality are inseparable,” affirms Joe. “Foods we grow in our farm are harvested, washed, packed and literally walked to the produce section of the store. It doesn’t get any fresher than that.”
Each department at Pilgrim’s is run autonomously by its management, allowing managers and team members the opportunity to innovate with new and exciting products—and the result is an environment of craftsmen who consider their work a rewarding and passionate labor of love. “The results speak for themselves,” says Joe. “The foods are very high quality, healthy and free of so many objectionable ingredients found in traditional foods.”
At Pilgrim’s Market, Joe and his team continually strive to better serve their employees and their customers, and after more than two decades in business, they’re achieving their goal. “Working—and even shopping—at Pilgrim’s is more like being part of a loving family than it is a tedious shopping chore,” smiles Joe. “We have great customers and employees, and I love knowing that after 22 years, we are deeply woven into the fabric of this community.”
Pilgrim’s Market 1316 N. Fourth St. Coeur d’Alene, ID 208.676.9730
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