Greg Nelson chaired the meeting and there were 20 members in attendance and another 5 members on the Zoom call. Guests were our speaker Dan Humphrey and his manager Ron Bernardi from Sunset Foods. Robert Mardirossian was the Greeter and also gave us the “thought of the day” which was that the suffering of the Ukraine people should make us appreciate our living conditions and cause us to extend our thoughts and prayers for these unfortunate people.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
- David Grant reminded everyone that our Club Foundation has selected the 8 charities to benefit from our annual contributions and that our members’ contributions to any of these organizations will be matched by our Foundation up to a maximum of $250 per member on a first come, first served basis with a total maximum of $2000.
- Barb announced that at next week’s meeting Club members will have the opportunity to vote on our officers and board members for the next year. The names of those members proposed were presented at the meeting.
- Rich showed a short video of the woman who is president of the Kyiv Rotary Club in Ukraine who described the chaos taking place there including bombing of the local airport. She had her family go to Japan while she stayed in Ukraine to organize volunteers to help victims with food, clothes, getting kids to school and raising money to support refugees.
- Barb reported that she and Patti really appreciated the opportunity to attend a recent Rotary training conference in a Western suburb with about 2000 other Rotarians from 6 other Rotary clubs in District 2440.
DIG N GRIN: Chuck Norton presented several riddles involving cows, penguins and why pirates never bathe before their boat trips (because they usually get washed up on shore)!
SPEAKER: DAN HUMPHREY. Dan was introduced by Ron Bernardi, a fellow Rotarian and a good friend of many of our Club members. Dan is one of the top managers at Sunset Foods (hereinafter referred to as SF). Dan made a very complete and interesting presentation on how SF buys, prepares and markets its beef and fish products; how it visits its suppliers and oversees the products it buys from them; how it gets its gulf fish from Florida, its snapper, grouper, salmon and king crab from Alaska, and its gulf shrimp from Port Isabel, Texas; and that it gets most of its pork products from a producer in Iowa and its poultry from various Amish farms in the Midwest.
Sunset Foods has great customer relations programs. It has its cutting boards located so the customer can see the meat/fish cut, weighed and packaged; it has themed events to celebrate holidays and special occasions where employees dress in costumes and are encouraged to interact with the customers; it has several employees stationed throughout the store to answer customer questions and requests; and, in its Northbrook store, it sells to customers and local residents about 150 fish sandwiches every Friday over the lunch hour for $6 a piece.
Dan explained how aquaponic systems are now being developed to raise fish in controlled environments rather than in our lakes and rivers.
Most people on the North Shore are looking forward to SF taking over the two Grand stores in Winnetka and Glencoe. The other 5 SF stores in the area are in Northbrook, Highland Park, Lake Forest, Libertyville and Long Grove. It is safe to say that SF has many satisfied customers among our Rotarians. The meeting was adjourned around 1:00 by Greg leading us in the Rotary Four-way Test.