February 2025: Winter Edition

This edition of HOTG features an employee spotlight on Jocelyn Hunt, our marketing team announces our newest location, there's some great information about some of SP's benefits and more!

Jan 31, 2025

Jocelyn Hunt has been UVM’s GM for the past two years and has championed this position. While this is the role many of you know Joc from they began working at SP in 2022 as the Kitchen Supervisor at Lake, progressing into the Kitchen Manager position. When the GM position opened up at UVM it was a sure fit. Joc is now interviewing for a new GM at UVM so she can begin to expand her role into a regional management position for SP, WOW!

Joc has been working in food service since she was a teenager, “As soon as I was legally able to work I did, it was a month after my birthday that I got a job”. Her first job was at a McDonalds and then she moved onto a local inn and tavern called Hartness House in Springfield, VT. She got into all aspects of it, working at the front desk, housekeeping, food preparation, serving, and even giving history tours! Joc went to school for political science, law and society. While she knew there were jobs available in her field it was clear that she wasn’t ready for a desk job anytime soon, “I find so much joy and pride in serving people and doing it well, having a constant interaction with coworkers and customers. I love working with my hands, being on my feet, and working with people”. Even as Joc keeps progressing through management roles their favorite thing to do at SP is hop on a busy line, treating it like a game.

Joc’s advice to new SP team members is, “Lean into the community as much as you can, there's a lot of great people and support in the company, not everyone is aware of that”. She also recommends to all team members, “Go around and see and work in an outlet that’s not your own. It gives you great insight into the company”.

When I asked Joc what their favorite thing to make is, their answer was incredibly UVM and BTV-specific, bagels! They said, “Making a breakfast sammie on a bagel is my absolute favorite. We also get really fancy with our cream cheeses, we recently had a chai cream cheese”, Joc paired the chai cream cheese with a cinnamon bagel and can’t recommend it enough.

If you’ve ever talked with Joc there is a very good chance you heard about her favorite thing in the world, her pup Odie, “He’s the best thing ever, he’s the light of my life”. She adopted Odie from the Central Vermont Humane Society. Odie is a mixed breed of Pitbull, Pomeranian, and cattle dog. He’s extremely energetic and loves to take his plushies on walks, especially his three-foot carrot which is larger than he is. *please take a moment to envision this*.

UVM is such a unique location in that it’s inside of a university. Instead of customers being folks on lunch break or a family on vacation UVM team members are cooking for and serving their friends and peers, “We have a lot of fun up there, being in the student environment people tend to know each other outside of work and we know the customers, you’re serving your friends and classmates, there’s a lot of passion and care there”. Talking with Joc was such a pleasure, congratulations on the new role!

Wellbeats & the Employee Assistance Program:

We know the winter months can spur some big thoughts and feelings. Whether it was a New Year's resolution that’s getting forgotten or the winter weather is bringing you down we have some benefits that could help!

If you’re looking for a mindfulness practice or looking to move your body more check out SP’s Wellbeats benefit. This online platform offers yoga classes, meditation practices, nutrition classes, HIIT classes, guided runs, and more! Each of you has received a welcome email to get you signed up for the program. If you haven't, please check your spam folder or contact me for help! Kate@skinnypancake.com

SP’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) platform is 100% confidential and works independently of Skinny Pancake. Whether you’re experiencing seasonal blues or any other personal issue support is just a phone call away. The EAP can connect you to a variety of specialists who can help with things like anxiety, stress, and problems with coworkers, supervisors, friends, or family, they can even help you with financial questions! The EAP also has solution-oriented free counseling, again it is confidential, and we’d never even know you called.

Simply call InvestEAP at 1-866-660-9533 or log onto the website: www.investeap.org. When you use the website, you must set up an account and use the password “pancake.” Attached is a PDF explaining how you can contact EAP at any time. If you have any additional questions about this program don’t hesitate to reach out to me, kate@skinnypancake.com

Link: Employee Assistance Program

A Note from our Marketing Team: We’re Opening a New Location!

The Skinny Pancake will be opening a new location in Peabody, MA in early March of this year. We will be making a public announcement in the next few days. Folks in the community may ask about this news as we continue to build up promotion, so we’re writing to share a bit about it.

Our new Peabody location is in the Northshore Mall, located right next door to Salem and only 18 miles from Boston proper. Consistent with its name, the Northshore Mall serves the greater Boston Northshore area. This is a dynamic, bustling, and vibrant mall - not your typical mall some of us remember from the 90’s. There are virtually no empty storefronts. With 140 stores and entertainment spaces, the mall is a destination that fulfills a wide variety of needs for folks who live in this area. The place is regularly packed with shoppers.

With every opening, we realize our mission and maximize our impact. When we open in Peabody, we will increase the volume we buy from VT farms and food producers including Maplebrook, Cabot, Boyden Farm, and VT Artisan Coffee and Tea. Our new Peabody MA location will also be sourcing a lot of its food from a new region including the New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine seacoasts. Executive Chef Keith Lada is hard at work contracting vendors and lining up sourcing partners.

THANK YOU for helping our mission every day. In addition to moving all that volume of locally sourced food with each meal period, every SkinnyP restaurant helps create the stability we need to grow the mission further and provide steady employment for amazing people.

If you have any questions about this exciting news and the new location in Peabody, MA, please reach out to us at heard@skinnypancake.com!

Local Food Fact from Keith!

SP’s Peabody Purveyors

It's an exciting time to be opening another new location in an area that overlaps with a number of the sourcing areas we already use. Peabody will be a mix of bringing in some suppliers we use in VT (Maplebrook, VT Bean Crafters, VT Salumi), some that we already know from Hadley (mainly the North Hadley Sugar Shack), and a bunch of new ones as well. Peabody presents an interesting challenge being in an urban part of New England. The land required for farmers and producers to supply some of our main ingredients (like maple syrup) isn’t easily available in urban centers, but we have managed to align ourselves with some great partners close to Peabody.

The dairy farm we'll be buying all our milk from is located right in Peabody! Dunajski Dairy has been a family-run operation that's getting ready for the 4th generation to take over, the farm was started in 1915 and is located less than two miles from the North Shore Mall. Our honey will come from a producer called The Colony, about 35 miles from the restaurant, which sits on a piece of land that has been continuously farmed for 300 years. It was the Thompson farm in the 1700s and ended as the Richardson Dairy farm in the late 1980s before becoming a home for bees in 2019. Our mozzarella purveyor resides in Connecticut, this will be our first regular supplier from this state, a company called Liuzzi. Liuzzi brought five generations of cheese-making experience to New England and started making artisanal Italian cheeses in the 1970s. Valley View Farmstead Cheese will be supplying delicious chevre as well. Valley View is run by a married couple who farm on her family's land and have been making cheese for almost 20 years, their sons are now getting involved in the business as well.

We continue to find amazing food with amazing stories wherever we go!

What do your Insurance Benefits get you?

With open enrollment out of the way don’t forget to utilize the benefits you signed up for! If you’re enrolled in one of our health insurance plans, dental insurance plans, and/or vision insurance plan consider scheduling your annual physical, your six-month teeth cleaning, and your next vision exam. All of Skinny Pancake’s health, dental, and vision plans cover preventative care. Preventative care is one of the easiest ways to utilize your insurance at no cost to you!