Penzeys Spices — Cooking Up Kindness

Penzeys Spices sells some truly awesome seasonings, and you should grab hold of some and stir them into your next culinary creation.  You can find Penzeys online or — if you are lucky — there’s a brick-and-mortar store in your area.   I’m one of the fortunate cooks who can drive to a Penzeys store in about 15 minutes.  Just walking into the store, where you are greeted with an array of amazing aromas, is a treat in itself.  But from my perspective there is another reason to support Penzeys:  The company works hard to heal the world by inspiring love, kindness, empathy, and strength.

Pinning Our Hopes on Kindness

I first learned about Penzeys Spices from a Facebook post.  It was early in 2017, and the fine folks who run Penzeys had decided to offer their Kind Heart pins to their customers who attended the historic Women’s March.  According to a post on the company’s Facebook page, here’s how it happened:   “A customer who was going to D.C. on a bus asked to purchase some of our Embrace Hope stickers to pass out to her fellow riders. We gave her some, and one of our Kind Heart pins for everyone on the bus.  With 43,000 pins in inventory we thought, ‘Why not make this something we do for all our customers riding a bus to the D.C. Women’s March; how many pins could we go through?’ That answer turned out to be all of them.”  So then Penzeys made more pins!  And, all told, they sent out 174,139 Kind Heart pins.  For free.  Wow.

Penzeys Has Bold Leadership

Bill Penzey, who’s the owner of the company, believes that cooks can spread kindness by making tasty meals that encourage folks to sit around the kitchen table, interacting with each other and building community.  I like this idea, and my car wears a sticker that says:  “Love People, Cook Them Tasty Food.”  And Penzeys believes that the effect goes much further.  As stated in one of their postings, “We see the time we spend in the kitchen as incredibly valuable. And while it may be easy to see that what we do there really does connect us to the lives of those we share meals with, we believe that, when done with an open heart, our cooking connects us to the lives of the greater community around us as well.”

But the company’s statements are not always so warm and fuzzy.  I’ve kept an eye on the company’s Facebook postings, and it seems that Bill Penzey takes a bold stand each time there’s an attack on a marginalized group — or on our democracy.  And all of these courageous posts feature a clever connection between the issue and the spices.  For example, Penzeys counteracted the discriminatory rhetoric that’s been directed at Mexicans by offering a free bottle of Mexican Vanilla Extract with a $10 purchase in store or online.  And the posting came complete with a recipe for Butterfly Cutout Cookies, which are colorful treats that remind me of the vibrant art that’s characteristic of Mexico.

Bill Penzey’s posts are clearly progressive and left leaning, so not everyone appreciates them as much as I do.  Yet Bill reports that the loss of a small percentage of customers has been more than offset by purchases that people are making to reward the company’s courageous stance and community spirit.  As Bill says in a post, “In our experience we’ve found that when you honestly support and speak out for the values of your customers, your customers support you.”  Not only that, Bill published a sales chart showing how customers had enthusiastically responded to a couple of the company’s tell-it-like-it-is postings — with peaks to represent the resulting boost in sales.

I’m not surprised that people are rewarding Penzeys for striving to be a good corporate citizen and for promoting the kindness that seems hard to find these days.  I believe that good deeds and bravery are often rewarded.

Now, About Those Spices

As I mentioned previously, the seasonings at Penzeys are truly awesome.  Their spices are fresh, and they are way more potent than the grocery store brands.  Along with bottles and packages of single spices, Penzeys offers a wide variety of interesting mixtures containing flavorful combinations that add depth and complexity to your dishes.  What’s more, the store has open, apothecary-style containers of the spices so that you can smell the product and know what you’re buying.  When did you ever have that opportunity at a grocery store spice rack?

And Be Sure to Check Out the Stories!

Bill Penzey really does believe in the power of cooks to change the world.  As he stated in one of his posts, “I believe Cooking is our best hope to show what human values really are, and how our human values know no borders or divides of race, religion, orientation, or gender. We have a long road ahead of us, and this is where most times you would read ‘and it won’t be easy.’ But seriously, hanging out, sharing conversations and tasty food with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds? This is going to be fun. Plus, who doesn’t like tasty food?”  So, in tribute to these cooks,  the Penzeys website contains stories and recipes from cooks who are “on the front lines of one of these issues.”  You’ll meet people like  Lynn Maday, who joined other native Americans in fighting an open pit mine at the headwaters of Lake Superior.  Read her story and try her recipe for fry bread!  Or learn about Jim Luger, a Vietnam veteran who discovered that grilling food over a fire provided a much-needed respite for the war-weary soldiers in his company.   There are many more fascinating stories just like these.  Take a look — and be inspired!