Penzeys Spices started as a small coffee and spice company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the late 1950’s, then expanded to catalog sales in the 1980’s and now has almost 70 stores in North America. I’ve always just known the brand as having top quality spices and seasonings and have visited their stores from time to time, but I gained a whole new level of respect for the company after the 2016 election. Bill Penzey Jr. began sending out heartfelt messages to customers with a clear and articulate progressive voice and I loved it. I received the following email yesterday and in it Bill encouraged people to spread the email and its message, so I want to include portions of it here so that you may also know about what this company stands for and perhaps choose to support them in any way you can. I am not affiliated with the company in any way, I just love what they stand for and any time I can directly support people or companies that share my ideals I try to do so.
In times of inhumanity, the super-humanizing of cooking matters more than ever. The kindness of Cooks sets better futures in motion. Working to care for those around us has always been what makes this country great.
Our offer is in support of America’s immigrant population, but the reason the President took the time out of his day to call a group of immigrants animals was to distract from the investigation into Russian involvement. Every story about the investigation needs to start with this reminder: Our President chose a campaign chairman who had accepted $17 Million from a pro-Russia political party. This chairman went on to personally pick the vice presidential candidate, who then went on during the transition to pick a literal Russian agent as our country’s top national security advisor, despite being explicitly warned about his past. This may all be innocent, but it needs investigating.
Last week Wednesday, the same day as the scheduled release of the Senate’s bi-partisan findings on Russian election interference, the White House used all the stagecraft it could muster for a conversation on Californian immigrant youth gangs. The Senators announced: “The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton.” The president once again played to his base and announced, “These aren’t people. These are animals.” If you even glanced at the news since, you saw which announcement got all the attention.
Yes, all youth gang crime is bad, but there was no reason to focus on strictly immigrant youth gangs. There has been no upsurge in immigrant crime, or reason this should be taking the President’s limited hours away from the nuclear issues in Korea and Iran. It doesn’t take much cynicism to see this was never about overcoming the issues that cause disadvantaged youths to find belonging in gangs. I’m pretty sure history will judge this to be just one more chance for the President to rally his supporters by promoting fear of immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants. And that’s wrong.
Immigrants are not America’s weakness, immigrants are our strength. Browse our website and you will be hard-pressed to find anything that was not brought to our shelves as a gift from immigrants. In the desire to pass on the dishes of kindness and caring of their youth to their new families and communities, immigrants blessed America with the greatest diversity of flavor any nation has ever known. We are grateful.
In these last months we’ve discovered a good message travels far, but a good message with a great offer has the possibility of reaching everywhere. With just how important it is for all of us to show support for our immigrant community, right now this seems like a time for a great offer.
So for one night only, in support of all that immigrants have made America, we are offing you three Spices of your choice. As much as we tried to make this offer work for our stores, there was no way way on short notice to have this offer not gridlock them. So I apologize, but this offer is only good online from now until 10am Pacific Time tomorrow, Friday 5.25.18. To try to make up for this not being in the stores, we’ve reduced the minimum for free shipping lower than we ever have before to just $15. I hope this helps.
We also tried to make this truly your choice of any 1/4-cup jar, 1/2-cup jar and 3/4 cup bag, but the nearly 600 coupon codes made the website really sluggish. So we based the possible choices on previous "your choice" offers. We are giving you the choice of the most popular items which are pretty much the most expensive ones. I get it, I love our Basil, but I’m not going to use my coupon for that when I also need some equally tasty, but slightly more expensive Garlic.
To get your up to $28.39 worth of 3 Free Spices and/or Seasonings, just visit us at penzeys.com and simply enter your three choices (one each of each of the 3 sizes) separately into the apply code box at checkout.
There’s no need to enter the items separately into your basket, the codes, if entered into the Apply Code box at checkout, do that for you for free! There is no code needed for the free shipping with just $15 in spending, that one’s automatic for everyone. It’s easy, but don’t delay. This is one night only from now until 10am Pacific Time tomorrow.
Please feel free to pass this email along to those who might enjoy its message and its offer. We are keeping our fingers crossed about how this is all going to go on our website. We are pretty certain we are not as popular as an Elton John concert ticket release, but if we cross that threshold tonight, please try back later tonight or early tomorrow when things should have quieted down.
In closing, I would like to praise the President for his support for our country‘s law enforcement on the county level last Wednesday; it was good to see. It would be good to see that same support on the federal level. His attacks on federal law enforcement officials, calling into question the loyalty of those who have given a lifetime of dedication and duty to our country, are every bit as wrong as his attacks on our country’s immigrant community.
Even if it is ultimately proven that there was no collusion or corruption on the President’s part, these investigations still have to happen because he did not do a decent job of vetting the people around him. This investigation is no one’s doing but his own. At the heart of conservative values is the belief in taking responsibility for one’s actions. Our country could really use our President to embrace this core conservative value right now.
Thanks for your continued support,
Bill Penzey
I’m about to place my order and it feels so good knowing I’m supporting this company. I meant to post this yesterday as the special offer is expiring today, but I wanted to make sure everyone knew of another company they could proudly support. Even if you don’t check out the special sale or website, just knowing that there are companies out there unafraid to speak out against this administration and every awful thing they do and represent is important and encouraging.