A lot of Things™ happened this week at NWS. Here's a handful of them.
Wine joined our beverage list.
We're officially selling beer and wine in our deli. This is huge news for us, as people love to have a beer or a glass of wine—which we'll be selling by the glass, or by the bottle with the option of corking it to-go—with a meal.
As soon as we received our buyer's license, we had pallets of beer from our neighbors at Hoops at our door, ready to sell. Our other vendors quickly followed suit, and we were fully-stocked on beer by the evening.
The wine orders operate on a different schedule, so we went through the weekend without it, but as of yesterday, our wine selection has arrived.
Thought about describing our wines to you, but whoops!, I have not tried them & TK already knocked this one out of the park.
Each of our options falls into the category natural wines, or wines farmed organically and made without adding or removing anything during the fermentation . Like the production of our salumi, this is an ancient tradition. While I haven't yet had a chance to try our wine selection (it's only been a day—chill), TK has assured us each of them has something special to offer, and will pair well with just about any item on our menu.
The Spring Roll joined our sandwich menu.
Composed of smoked teriyaki tofu, cabbage, cucumber, pickled vegetables, lettuce, Marcona almonds, basil, cilantro, sriracha and sesame oil with rice vinegar all wrapped up in a naan (or on a hero roll, if you're ISO a vegan option), this sandwich tickles the tongue, and is taking over a menu slot for The Tempest.
Patricia, who comes in at 5 a.m. to bake cookies and pasties before working in the deli, is an absolutely unstoppable force of creativity with food. Within weeks of her tenure at NWS, she already had folks abuzz about the prototype to this sandwich. Just a few short months later, it has arrived on the sandwich board. At the time, we were making variants with pork loin, gravlax, tofu and even skipping the prepped protein altogether—all of which had their strengths, and are available as substitutions for essential carnivores—but we've landed on tofu.
One final note on the Spring Roll: Unlike most of our sandwiches—which are best consumed immediately, or at least within the day if you—there is a strong undercurrent amongst our staff that the sandwich is best eaten after a short wait, or even chilled.
I usually can't wait that long, but it is worth noting: this is a great picnic sandwich, for that reason.
Michael left for Bonnaroo.
Our co-worker Michael—who typically arrives at work with a ukulele in his hands and a song in his heart—left Tuesday to make his way to Tennessee for Bonnaroo Music Festival.
In addition to catching not one, but two Phish sets, he's also decided he wants to be the Duluth, MN Bonnaroo Street Team. It sounds a lot more labor intensive than it actually is—he's just taking a selection from several local breweries, and some NWS "buddies" & swag to the annual Craft Beer Exchange—but it is still awesome that he's chosen to represent our city.
While I doubt most or any of our readership is currently in Great Stage Park, TN, at the festival, or reading this post in time if they are, check our Instagram later today to see how NWS's first trip to Bonnaroo is going.
Final round of interviews for our Mail Order director position.
If you didn't know that we've been operating sans-Mail Order Director for an undisclosed temporal span, that's a good thing and doesn't surprise me. Our team has a knack for filling-in the cracks when they appear. The marketing & media team have taken over the mail order phone calls, an we needed only list the job internally to find a handful of candidates.
The interview process came to a close this week, and next week, we should have a new director in-place. We're only six months out from the wild, wild West that is late-November through the end of the year in mail order, so they'll have a lot on their plate to manage in a short span of time.
Thank you for your patience in the meantime. Our mail order clientele are awesome, and a fundamental aspect of our success as a business, so not having someone specifically in-place to handle that job is not a state in which we ever hope to stay for long.
They asked me if I wanted to lead another scavenger hunt.
This was basically my reaction, I think, though I don't know the context of this .gif.
Last July, we hid twenty sandwiches-worth of magnets around town in honor of our Twentieth Anniversary. With the exception of a few very thoughtful responses I received, the campaign went over well.
This year, we'll be doing things a little bit differently. The stakes will be higher, it's going to be more challenging, and it's going to happen slightly later in the Summer (personal reasons, don't worry about it), but believe me when I say I'm very excited to get any willing participants into the outdoors, getting their hands dirty—maybe literally—in pursuit of free NWS grub & swag.
Stay tuned for details in the very near future. Until next time, I am Ned, and these have been five things that happened this week at NWS.