PORT TOWNSEND — Work-life balance: We talk about it plenty.
At the Port Townsend Food Co-op, Kenna Eaton is managing to make it happen.
You can see one way Eaton mixes work, exercise and care for the environment if you look at the floor of her office next to the co-op at 414 Kearney St.
She keeps three pairs of shoes there: one for bicycling to and from work each day, plus sneakers and sandals for walking around in Port Townsend’s fluctuating weather.
The wet, cool conditions here are England all over again, Eaton says. She was born south of Liverpool, near the River Mersey.
Then her father got a job transfer to Delaware, and she attended high school there in New England. While earning a degree in horticulture at the University of Delaware, she took a fateful trip to Montana.
She went to a camp at Flathead Lake for “biology geeks,” as she puts it.
Then, “I fell in love with the West, and with a boy.”
This boy was Tim Eaton from Saratoga, Calif. He’s been her husband for 28 years now.
The couple made their home in Moscow, Idaho, where Tim ran a nursery and his wife went to work at the Moscow Food Co-op. Back in 1982, she was one of just three staffers; nine years later she became the general manager.
The Eatons also raised two children: Rob, now 26, works and goes to school in Portland, Ore., and Cate, 24, is in the nursing program at Idaho’s Lewis & Clark State College. By last year, Mom and Dad had realized they were ready for the next phase of their life together.
In the fall, Eaton learned of the opening for a general manager at the Port Townsend Food Co-op, an operation with annual sales of $11 million in a cramped 8,000 square feet of retail space.
That’s a higher volume, in a smaller grocery store, than in the Moscow co-op.
Eaton, 53, wanted change and challenge, and Port Townsend promised both. She was hired in December.
“It seemed like serendipity,” she says.
Then came the packing up of their entire lives. Tim had closed his nursery; Eaton said goodbye to her staff at the co-op.
They also left behind the relatively conservative community of Moscow for the liberal-leaning Port Townsend.
It was a shock — but “a good one . . . There’s something about being challenged that’s energizing,” Eaton says. “I got pretty comfortable at my old job.”
When Eaton started her new job in March, task No. 1 was interviewing some 90 co-op employees. She sought to learn what they wanted and needed in order to do their jobs happily and effectively; she sees herself as the bottom of an inverted triangle, a point supporting the growing organization.
Which way it will grow is a question that will drive Eaton for the foreseeable future. This summer, she’s preparing to do a survey of the 5,500 co-op members — the owners of the store — to learn what they want more of.
Eaton has already heard things like “more parking” or “more seating in the deli.” But to create a strategic plan for the co-op, she of course needs a comprehensive gathering of desires.
As the general manager, Eaton must listen to both the member-owners and to the board of directors, the group of volunteers who lay out a vision for the future.
The Port Townsend Food Co-op’s past is marked by pioneering community action, Eaton believes.
“We led the way selling natural foods; we led the way selling organic [produce],” and in working with local farmers.
The co-op, which first opened in a storefront on Tyler Street uptown in 1972, moved to its current spot, a former bowling alley, in 2001. The organization has since purchased the building.
Elsewhere on the North Olympic Peninsula, another food co-op has opened in tiny Clallam Bay, and discussions are under way for a downtown Port Angeles food co-op. In Port Townsend, the co-op’s leadership considers a triple bottom line: people, place and profit.
Survival depends on the profit part, Eaton says.
And the co-op’s donations to the local Farm to School Program and Organic Seed Alliance are part of its reinvestment in this place.
When it comes to the people working and shopping there, “we’re maxed out,” as far as space goes. “It’s really crowded in the back for staff,” Eaton says. And though the marketing, human resources and administrative offices have been moved to a separate building, “it’s crazy in there,” in the kitchen.
So a box, “a very expensive box,” has been built on to house a walk-in cooler and freezer. Also, an existing part of the kitchen is being repurposed for cutting and wrapping meat.
Other additions could come under consideration, but so might moving to another location entirely. Eaton and the board believe it’s time to study the alternatives.
Meanwhile, Eaton and her mate are studying Port Townsend and the Pacific Northwest. They’ve been house-sitting on Marrowstone Island, so Eaton bike-commutes 14 miles to her office — in all weather. On a recent Thursday, she got soaked in a morning rain. And one July weekend, she and Tim brought their bikes to Victoria for some more rainy riding.
They also like to take the ferry to Whidbey Island, or to Seattle from Bainbridge Island.
“Tim and I are having fun exploring,” Eaton says, adding that she feels fortunate to have “met a guy” who became “my best friend.”
Some evenings, they go out for walks on the beach — which in a way epitomize their new, coastal, post-child-raising time of life.
“At night, we look at each other and say: We can stay out as late as we want,” Eaton adds. “It’s very liberating.”
This is what you call “a very good life balance,” says Rick Sepler, a member of the co-op board who is also the city of Port Townsend’s director of planning and development services.
Each of the finalists for Eaton’s job showed excellent management skills, Sepler says. Eaton stood out ultimately because she also showed her knowledge of managing relationships, along with an environmental and community consciousness.
“We wanted to make sure, for her and her husband, that this was a good fit,” Sepler added.
From what he’s observed so far, the co-op and Port Townsend suit the Eatons well.
As she bikes to work, Eaton is an inspiration, said Sepler. “She models what we as a co-op talk about in being healthy.”
Sepler has also watched Eaton building trust among her fellow staffers. And together, they’re about to start down the path of planning the next 20-plus years.
To move or not to move is one of the more pressing matters, and it’s “a complex calculus,” Sepler said.
Eaton, meanwhile, revels in the complexity of her new job. “It’s never dull or predictable,” she says.
“We’re lucky to have her,” added Sepler.