Jennifer Bosma grew up literally inside her family's grocery store, riding her bike through the shell of the building as it was being constructed, working the salad bar at 13, and swearing as a teenager that she'd never come back to her small hometown of Fort Bragg, California. She did come back, though, bringing her husband Tim with her. 40 years after her father founded the store, she and Tim now lead it together, along with a second location in Mendocino, as 2026 IGA USA Retailers of the Year.
IGA CEO John Ross spoke with the Bosmas in advance of the IGA Centennial Global Rally for his podcast, For the Greater Good. Watch the interview here, or keep reading for the highlights.
Their leadership shows up first in long-term thinking most retailers shy away from. The Bosmas have made significant capital investments in sustainability, installing solar panels (a particular challenge in a historic building), replacing their main cooling system, and pursuing B Corp certification. These decisions reduce their energy use by enough to power 10 homes a year. As Tim puts it, in a business they own themselves, short-term gain at the expense of long-term value simply isn't part of the math.
That same philosophy extends to how they run the store day to day. Innovation, they say, doesn't need to come from ownership — it just as often comes from customers. A feedback board lets shoppers request items directly, built on a simple insight: if one person asks for something, a dozen more probably want it too, even if they haven't said so yet. Employees are given real latitude to experiment as well, whether that's a bakery team perfecting a new recipe or a barbecue special like fried bologna sandwiches with crushed barbecue chips. The "let's just try it" mentality took hold during COVID, when the store's smaller size let it adapt fast.
Community involvement runs deep and structured. The Bosmas support Fort Bragg's World's Largest Salmon Barbecue, which serves 2,500–2,800 people annually and raises money for salmon habitat restoration. Employees who volunteer for local nonprofits — reading in classrooms, coaching teams, cleaning up beaches — log their hours for gift cards and a chance at quarterly prize drawings. And their reusable-bag token program turns a routine sustainability nudge into an ongoing charitable engine: shoppers who skip a store bag get a 10-cent token to drop into one of four rotating charity boxes, funding the local food bank, senior center, and children's programs. Since 2014, that simple system has generated $475,000 in community donations.
For independent grocers wondering how to turn everyday customer habits into lasting community impact — or how to justify a big sustainability investment with a long payoff — the Bosma's story offers a clear answer: build systems that let generosity happen automatically, trust your employees to run with good ideas, and measure success not just in sales, but in the positive difference you make where you live.