Help The Elderberry Grow and Thrive
Donation protected
Jan, the beloved owner of The Elderberry, is retiring! Long-time employees and managers of the shop, Meg Madden and Sydney Batson, are taking over, and they need your help to ensure that The Elderberry can continue to serve the community in 2025 and beyond.
The Elderberry is going through a big transition, and we’d love your support to help us reach our goals. We’ll be investing in updated tech for a smoother in-store shopping experience, an online store, redesigning the shop, hiring new employees, and more. Here’s a more detailed breakdown of how your donation will support us:
Allow The Elderberry to serve the community from a place of resource and abundance:
- We plan to increase staff wages and do the seemingly impossible: support ourselves financially while doing purpose-driven work that feeds our soul.
- Estimated Initial Cost: 10K
New online store:
- We plan to create a beautiful online shop that brings the apothecary to you wherever you are.
- Estimated Cost: 1K
We will refine our products, and share them with more people in the Charlottesville community and beyond:
- We will be resubmitting all of our products to VDACs, refining the recipes, updating the labeling, and adding to the aforementioned online store.
- Estimated Cost: 2K
New POS System, Internet, and Phone Plan:
- Some of you have been in the store waiting to check out while we reboot our glitchy POS system…We will be investing in a new register that will provide both a more easeful checkout experience and connect with our online store (a process that is tricky when you have about 500 different loose herbs, tinctures, and oils). We will also be upgrading our internet to support both the new POS and make for better quality class recordings.
- Estimated Cost: 8K
We will be able to research and explore the specific needs of our community:
- Especially following the closing of Rebecca’s Natural Food Store, we want to provide more products that meet the health needs of our customers
- Two new employee hires
- A new herbal associate to assist with product making as we ramp up production
- A marketing specialist to help us engage with our community, share herbal education, and promote our products
- Estimated Initial Cost: 20K
A more enjoyable and streamlined in-store shopping experience:
- We will be making some tweaks to the in-store infrastructure to allow us to display more products while maximizing the space we currently have
- Estimated Cost: 3K
Guest Speakers:
- We would love to host guest herbalists and health professionals from around the country to add to our herbal education programs
- Estimated Cost: 3K
Organizer
Meghan Madden
Organizer
Greenbriar Heights, VA