Protecting the U.S. Postal Service

Hey everybody. Derek Kilmer here. I'm talking about something. I think that's on a lot of people's minds lately and that is the United States Postal Service. Uh I'm here joined by Bill from the Sunrise Coffee Company in Port Townsend and uh You bill uh send a note to me. I'm talking about how the Postal Service um and uh some of the operational changes that have been made have impacted his business. so. For being with me, maybe start off by just telling folks a little bit about the Sunrise Coffee Company. Well Sunrise is a specially coffee roaster we um we roast uh organic coffee for our to market in our region from West to Port Angeles South to Silverdale on Bainbridge and East to Kingston. So we have a pretty good market space. Uh we also have a. You know a Sunrise Coffee house, which we had to close several months ago. No one is allowed in our space and we have we build a walk-up window overnight which helps and since we're in the port of Port Townsend we went to the port and ask for permission to build out a protected outdoor space. We have three picnic tables out there we've enclosed with Ilos, lattice work and some more benches. so that's really helping. We're just a little worried about the winter, but I'm sure we're gonna figure it all out so we have um we have we sell to people who walk in our shop we sell to a Safeway from here to Silverdale and Krogers and all of any regional grocery store we can get into. Well as someone who can't start my day without at least two caffeinated beverages first, I wanna say thank you for what you do um but share with folks you know so you reached out to my office earlier this week about some of the experiences that your business has had related to the Postal Service. You know, share folks uh about the impacts that you're you share with folks the impacts that you're seeing. But we are um Cortes and is sort of a dead end. uh town in the sense that um you have to cross the hood Canal Bridge or take a ferry to Whidbey Island to get off to get out of here and you know we um have limited our south of here uh counties that have a higher ratio of cases just to protect ourselves and our staff we right now. Uh six employees and we um we've haven't had to let anybody go so having said that we rely on the Postal Service for everything we um, I'm I'm a real fan of the post office. I always have been you know we've uh we give a pound of coffee to their break room here in Port towns in every week just because we love the Postal Service and we'd love what they do for us. but you know the last month and. We've just noticed this incremental decline in service and the service is not just with um Uh you know letter stuff, but it's also we have an online business and we rely on the post office in their priority rate boxes for everything we ship so we've tracked all those shipments in the software we have and not only can we see on our tracking the things that slowed up considerably, but we also are hearing from our. Clients, for example, um just last week we had a client that ordered twelve pounds and we had to divide it up in two boxes We at one box 4 days late but then um the next box to arrive for another 4 days so everything is slowed down and we it's it's really affecting our online business and um just in letters you know We the port office. A half a mile away and the last bill we got for our lease, took 4 days to get here so that that's a pretty good example of what's going on and how we're affected you well. Unfortunately, this has been a tale that we've heard Uh you know in all sorts of areas I heard from a veteran who was concerned because he gets his prescriptions uh through the mail um you know. And obviously there's a tremendous number of concerns about the impact on our vote by mail system um so yeah, we're we're seeing a lot of concerns I will point out um this week. The house is gonna be voting on a bill called the delivering for America Act to try to unwind some of the operational changes in organizational changes uh that the Postal Service uh had begun to implement that is frankly slowing the mail and um. Not just preventing further damage it actually you know and and actually we saw the postmaster General today announced that they would put a stop to these changes, but we also not only need to stop further changes. We need to unwind some of the damage that's already been done because as you point out, we're already seeing damage to that. Yes, no doubt about it. We've got uh stickers on our door after closing and its attempt we've never ever. had to stick around. Until the last month is that right So never never in the history of your business, never not one time, but we've we've got a couple already and you know you can tell that the the our carriers are really trying to do their best but they just can't. I don't know I'm I'm not. I don't know the details of how they get their job done every day, but they're just not they're just. it's just not making it like it used to and that was only you know 6 weeks ago. Yeah. Well, I think this highlights the importance of the bill that we're gonna be voting on later this week uh the delivering for America and frankly, it also highlights the importance of making sure that the Postal Service is adequately funded um so that it can maintain those service standards going forward. so uh bill I really appreciate you taking the time just to share with folks uh what you're seeing on the ground um and not only that for sharing delicious coffee with the people of the Pacific Northwest. Let pleasure and thank you for your interest in our business and what's happening here cuz it's really very troubling for uh for somebody out here in the hinterland to be helpless about what's going on and I appreciate your concern. You bet we got your thanks again.