Ari 40 Years and a Thousand Thanks
Ari Weinzweig reflects on 40 years of Zingerman’s
CANADIAN ARCHITECT and Native activist Douglas Cardinal once wrote: The most powerful force is soft power, caring and commitment together. You need that centre to make a contribution creatively. You need its power to make it realise your vision. You can have visions and dreaming but how you realise them depends on caring and commitment.
Cardinal’s sentiment sums up what we’ve tried to do for 40 years at Zingerman’s, since we first opened the Deli doors March 15, 1982. Ronald Reagan was president and Anthony Carter was catching footballs for the University of Michigan. Gandhi, An Officer and a Gentleman and Chariots of Fire filled movie theaters. The world knew nothing of blogs, websites, laptops or cell phones. No Instagram or Twitter. Telephones connected to a wall with a cord.
World politics were not on our minds. My partner Paul Saginaw and I were just excited—and eager—to open. We felt good about the 25 sandwiches on the initial menu, along with a small selection of what the world now knows as “specialty food.” Corned beef was cooking, rye bread was getting sliced and Nueske’s bacon was in the oven lending its amazing applewood-smoke aroma to the neighborhood. We wanted to be kind and caring and do business with dignity, to make a great place for people to work (we had only two others on staff then) and deliver exceptional eating experiences for customers. We were intent on being a positive addition to the neighborhood. We took nothing for granted, working with the belief that the burden was always on us to make coming to Zingerman’s a worthwhile experience for both coworkers and customers. On opening day we did many good things, made a few mistakes, and began working on how to get better. Four decades down the road, all of that remains true.
We understand that it’s only through the care and commitment of many thousands of coworkers, and what are now probably millions of customers, hundreds of great purveyors and two dozen partners, that we are still in business, appreciatively and enthusiastically in a position to push forward to do more cooking, give more service, keep learning and growing and supporting our community.
A few years before we opened the Deli, Masanobu Fukuoka wrote about his philosophy of farming and life in The One-Straw Revolution. He was committed to leaving his land, and the lives of all those he interacted with, better for the experience. I feel the same way. I’ve found myself reflecting on how one would most effectively assess an organization’s success. What if gaining power, money and influence was not the main focus? What if national statistics didn’t just measure how many jobs a business created or how much sales had grown, but rather how many lives it positively impacted? While money certainly matters, Paul and I agreed from the get-go that our work was about a lot more than building a big bank account.
This idea of contributing positively to the people and community of which we’re a part is still happily in our hearts and in our heads. It was there on day one, and that same intention remains intact today.
At the end of the first day we did business, we were tired, but already making lists of what we would do better. Today those lists may live on Google Docs and cell phones instead of being scribbled on paper, but the original intention remains: to do our best, make a living, have fun and make a difference.
Ari Weinzweig is a co-founding partner of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, who regularly contributes to edibleWOW. Read more at zingermanscommunity.com.
