Congratulations! We've graduated from 2020 to 2021...

2020 has been a year filled with uncertainty and unique struggles for the entire world, hitting small businesses hard. We want to start this off by saying thank you to everyone who supported Bessie throughout 2020 💚 We couldn’t have made it through without you. You helped us turn 2020 into a huge success for Bessie, setting us up for even more growth in 2021.

👨‍🌾 More Producers

We brought on even more farmers and producers. This may seem like a small thing but, with every purchase you made, you helped local farmers make more money so they can do what they do best: raise animals in natural and humane ways.

 

🤝 More Partners

We took on partnerships with Ceres, Mill St. Calgary Brewpub, Polar Park and Annex Ale. They helped us bring in special offerings for you to pair with your favourite Bessie Box. This included a much loved mushroom sauce and some of Alberta’s best craft beer. This year has been challenging for many local businesses. We are so happy to have the opportunity of working with some of Calgary and Edmonton’s best local businesses, doing our best to help one another through this tough year. 

 

🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️More Staff

Our team grew! We hired drivers in March and have expanded the team a little more over the year to help us create a better service for you and our partnered farms. Before 2020, it was just our 3 founders working day and night (and they still do). We are so grateful to need more team members and are looking to bring on even more this year!

 

🎁 More Community Giving

Because of you, we were able to give back in huge ways. Over the last year, we gave away hundreds of pounds to you, Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary, the Calgary Drop-In Centre and the Leftovers Foundation. Our holiday giving campaign gave 1lb of food with every Bessie Box order to help fight food insecurity. You helped us donate more than 400 lbs of food to the Calgary Drop-In Centre and more than 100 lbs to Leftovers YEG. Thank you so much for helping us give back to the community throughout the hardships of 2020. Bessie sourced and donated PPE to the Calgary Drop-In Centre and made smaller donations to local arts organizations. Bessie also joined Raft Beer Labs, Annex Ale, Wild Tea Kombucha and other small businesses in advocating for harm reduction services. 

 

💚 More You

Bessie wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you. Over the last year, we’ve chatted with you about the usual things: new products, new recipes or new farmers. But you opened up even more. You trusted us enough to share details about your jobs, families, fears, and hopes. That level of trust means the world to us.

 

🎉What’s in store for 2021?

We have several exciting things that Bessie is working on and we’ll reveal this to you as the year unfolds! As a bit of a sneak peek, here’s some of what we have in store for 2021. We’ll be expanding our offerings and bringing even more local meat for you to choose from. We’re continuing to expand Bessie making it even easier to connect local farmers to consumers, continuing to shorten the supply chain and help farmers retain more profit. To do all of this, we need more hands on deck! We’ll be bringing on new faces and growing the Bessie team.
This means creating more accessible healthy meat for you and an even better experience!