DIGITAL EDITION

Summer 2022

The Edible Inland Northwest team and I ran a marathon together this spring. And the physical distance we traveled to get it all done was much greater than 26.2 miles—we launched a new website, brought on new contributors, got to travel around Spokane and the region meeting new people, and found some amazing stories that are shared here in this issue and others that have in our back pocket, ready for when we have the resources to tell them all in the way they deserve to be told. On top of all of that, we printed our largest run of magazines since the start of the pandemic.

Ten thousand may not sound like a lot in the age of the Internet and social media, where news agencies, brands and influencers can reach millions of followers in seconds, but I assure you, it feels like a lot when it’s 10,000 print magazines arriving on pallets, all needing to be distributed across an area of over 45,000 square miles in a short period of time. Over the course of the pandemic, our print run wasn’t set. I’m still using crumpled-up pages from Issue 2 (released in February of 2020) and Issue 4 (Holiday of that year when we had the second shutdown) as packing material because people simply weren’t out in the world to pick them up.

Going into a business that has granted us a cubic foot of their space to leave our magazine for customers is not something I take for granted. Every time I would go out and see a large stack left, I would personalize it, beating myself up and feeling like I was letting down this team, our contributors, readers and the businesses I set out to serve. So printing 10,000 copies even before the mask mandate had been lifted, I wasn’t sure if I was just setting myself up for another, bigger round of disappointment.

My fears were quickly quieted as we had the opposite problem. Because of you, we had a new challenge in keeping the racks stocked consistently! By the beginning of May, we had to ration the remaining copies just to make sure that we would have some available until this issue you are reading now was ready to take its place.

It’s certainly a good problem to have, even at a time when paper and gas prices are sky-high, but it sent me thinking back to how I felt seeing those boxes of magazines just waiting to be picked up in someone else’s business. I realized I was missing the forest for the trees. How so many small and local business owners must have felt these last few years waiting and hoping for customers to come back in earnest. Was my stack of magazines sitting there some kind of reminder that business was slow and answers were scarce? I choose to believe that empty racks mean people are back out and enjoying bars, restaurants, cafes, local shops and all that our great region has to offer.

So you could say that was a successful 10K of the aforementioned marathon. The rest is made mainly of personal and private issues that members of our core team have faced individually in recent months. Much like seeing magazines stacked up in an empty restaurant, these life events often aren’t in our control. We can nurture things—relationships, businesses, families—but countless variables can take them from us and change our lives going forward.

Personally, I am so grateful that these people have still found the time and strength to help put together this, our tenth issue of Edible Inland Northwest, for our community. I see it as an act of selflessness when it would likely be easier to retreat into isolation, and I hope they all know how much I appreciate their help, support and friendship.

If you see an empty rack around town, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us via email or on social media and we’ll be sure to restock it as soon as possible. I’m choosing to see the empty racks as something to be celebrated and just another good problem to solve. And we’ve printed more copies this time around, so feel free to give one to a friend.

We thank you for supporting our locally-owned and operated publication, and we thank you for supporting our local food community. There's so much excitement ahead, and I look forward to sharing it with you.

Cheers,

Jeffrey Fijolek
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief

Purchase the Print Edition for $10.