Company: NGVC
Filing Date: 2025-12-11
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001437749-25-037556
Chunk: 803

Company: Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-12-11
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 803
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 a retail store environment that offers carefully selected natural and organic products and dietary supplements and supports environmentally sustainable products and practices. Our customers tend to be interested in health and nutrition and expect our store Crew members to be highly knowledgeable about these topics and related products. An analysis of our Health Hotline subscriber list indicates that our customers come from broad geographic segments, including urban, suburban and rural areas, which reflects the varied characteristics and portability of our store locations.

Our Communities

One of our founding principles is to be an active member and steward of the communities we serve. As a commitment to this principle, we:

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			provide extensive free educational services to customers in the form of lectures, classes, printed resources, online resources, publications and one-on-one nutrition coaching;

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			participate in health fairs, school outreach, community wellness events and other activities to engage with and educate the community;

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			partner with community and corporate wellness programs;

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			disseminate new research on nutrition information;

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			participate in the legislative and regulatory process at local, state and federal levels so that our customers have access to quality food and dietary supplements and the educational resources to guide their own wellness;

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			continually strive to source products and services from local producers and vendors;

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			carefully collect all of our excess or distressed food and merchandise and donate it to local non-profit organizations;

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			do not provide single-use paper or plastic bags at our registers and encourage the use of reusable totes;

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			provide cash to local food banks, making donation determinations based on the number of customers who shop our stores with their own bags;

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			reduce our energy costs and carbon footprint using efficient heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting, and refrigerating systems;

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			implement strategies to eliminate excess packaging, energy and transportation costs;

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			recycle and reuse paper, plastic, glass and electronic products whenever possible;

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			manage the waste stream services at all of our stores in order to optimize our diversion of waste to recycling and compost and increase the environmental sustainability of our operations;

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			offer plant-based, compostable plastic bags and 100% recycled, recyclable and compostable paper bags for produce purchases;

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			use healthy and environmentally responsible building materials and finishes in