by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

Whole Life Natural Market owner Jenny Spencer is reinventing her business on a near-daily basis. Like many small businesses impacted by the coronavirus shutdown, Spencer found herself suddenly juggling the demands of childcare, staffing concerns, and supply limitations while trying to keep her family, employees, and customers safe. As a food market, Whole Life is essential and could have stayed open. But in the era of social distancing, its tight physical quarters worried Spencer.

“I thought the safest thing to do was to shut the door and meet people outside,” said Spencer, who quickly switched to curbside pickup and delivery. That one change revealed the need for other changes — a customer service approach tailored to the phone, an online inventory and ordering system, plus curbside pickup and delivery protocols.

“It was going relatively well at first. We needed more orders, but as we got more orders and calls, we got overwhelmed,” said Spencer.

It was during a social chat with Holly Whitney that Spencer said she had an “aha moment” and asked Whitney if one of her husband’s businesses might be able to help.

“When Holly came home and described how Jenny was frustrated and feeling overwhelmed with the number of calls coming in, with her ability to scale up to more orders, processing and delivering, I said, ‘I’m all over it,’” said David Whitney, owner of Downeast Packaging Solutions (DPS), as well as Whitney Wreath and Machias Glassworks.

Now, Whole Life Market and Downeast Packaging Solutions are embarking on a partnership that will make Whole Life’s products easy to order one day, and receive the next day at home.

“DPS is a specialty business that helps other businesses achieve their goals,” said Whitney. “Part of that is our inbound phone order capabilities, our order processing capabilities and our fulfillment capabilities.”

DPS is physically co-located with Whitney Wreath factory on Route 1 in Whitneyville, where it serves customers like L.L. Bean and The Rope Co., a Maine-based business that manufactures and sells lobster rope doormats. With the impact of COVID-19, retail sales are down right now, leaving some of Whitney’s DPS employees with time on their hands.

“Whole Life advertises that they take orders two days a week and deliver one day a week,” said Whitney. “I suggested to Jenny that in order to scale up and bring back their business, we take customer calls five days a week.” Using the magic of technology, customers will dial Whole Life, but their call and order will be taken by DPS employees.

Spencer loved the idea.

“That means I don’t have to schedule an hourly person to take orders Monday through Friday, so we become more accessible all the week through,” said Spencer. “I believe it’s going to expand our business enough that I’ll be able to hire one or two people back to pack orders.”

For Whitney, it’s a chance to put underutilized DPS talent to work while exploring new ways of marketing DPS’s offerings close to home.

“We’re trying to fill in our own capacity problems, and also testing what capabilities do we offer our customers,” said Whitney. “And our customers include local businesses as well as multi-national companies.”

In addition to processing phone orders, DPS will assist with door-to-door deliveries, too, leaving Spencer more time to document her inventory for customers who want to see what’s available online. Despite shortages, Spencer says her inventory is robust because suppliers are delivering almost everything she orders.

“But there are still things that they don’t have, things like hand sanitizer. We’ve been able to get our all-purpose organic flour, and we have 100lbs of that in stock,” said Spencer, who receives bi-weekly deliveries from United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI).

“If we don’t get it one week, a lot of times we get it the next order,” she said.

Whole Life customers can order UNFI products through the store’s buying club. Directions to look at UNFI product listing and a Whole Life order form is on the store’s website,  https://wholelifenaturalmarket.com/buy-club-information/. The UNFI buying club has been a popular offering during the shutdown, said Spencer.

“This past weekend’s buying club order was the biggest order we’ve ever had,” said Spencer. “While it’s a nerve-wracking time, I’m very optimistic.”

Whitney is searching for other applications of DPS’s capabilities, including ways to address some key shortages brought on by the pandemic.

“I couldn’t be more busy trying to reinvent and look for new ways that DPS could help...We’ve reached out to medical equipment manufacturers across the nation and said we’re not capable of making a vent, but maybe there’s a component within that needs assembly,” said Whitney. “Hopefully when this all becomes more normal there are companies that want to or need to bring more capacity and production back within the boundaries of the United States.”

Starting this week, customers who want deliveries from Whole Life Natural Market can place their orders Monday through Friday, and receive delivery the next day.

“I feel good about the efforts everyone is making and I think our community is the kind that won’t let itself completely shutdown,” said Spencer. “I 100 percent believe that if we all team up, that’s going to be one of our answers — businesses looking out for each other, as well as the community looking out for business. I think for small towns, that’s the key.”

Whole Life Natural Market can be reached by calling 255-8855.

Downeast Packaging Solutions associate Cody Ashby is seen here weaving a doormat for DPS’s customer, The Rope Co. In a new partnership, Ashby will soon deliver orders for customers of Machias’ Whole Life Natural Market. Photo courtesy DPS