PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Portland’s Green Zebra Grocery is lending a helping hand to local restaurants and chefs amid the coronavirus pandemic. The store has recently teamed up with Russian restaurant, Kachka to offer Chef Bonnie Morales’ popular dumplings in-store.
“It’s incredibly vital,” Morales said. “Having another way to sell and have that income is absolutely essential.”
The collaboration with Kachka is part of the grocery store’s ongoing effort to partner with local businesses, as many now have to operate at limited capacity and find other ways to work through the COVID-19 crisis.
“This partnership is really extending a lifeline for us so that we can move through whatever this pandemic brings,” Morales added. “It’s business helping business and this is that in practice.”
Green Zebra says the goal is to provide local restaurants and chefs with a platform to promote and sell their popular small plates and products — in-store.
“We just realized that we can be an avenue for restaurants to put their foods on our shelves and still make some money,” Green Zebra’s Culinary Consultant Mike Shether said.
Shether, also known as the “local food guy” of Green Zebra says the retailer also teamed up with Portland’s Blue Star Donuts in April and has stocked the store’s shelves with some of the donut shops top sellers.
“Since then we’ve just been reaching out to different people around the area that are still making food and we’re like we still have shelf space.. we still have foot traffic,” Shether added. “We just really want to support local.. cause now more than ever that’s important.”
Shether says Green Zebra plans to continue these collaborations into the future and adds that more partnerships with local businesses are already in the works.
“We really want to support them as much as we can and we’d love to make this an established part of business forever,” Shether said.
Kachka’s famous dumplings and Blue Star’s more popular doughnuts are available indefinitely at all four Green Zebra locations and online.