The Peddler takes on hills, delivers local food

PORT TOWNSEND — Whatever you do, don’t stop in the middle of climbing a hill. Juri Jennings, aka the Peddler, tried that exactly once.

“Not a good idea,” when you’re pedaling your bicycle, hauling a trailer full of groceries while Port Townsend’s wind is blowing.

That is when you must make momentum work for you, Jennings said.

She’s learning such things while delivering food, flowers and the occasional birthday cake on her Peddler bike-trailer unit. Fully loaded, it weighs more than she does.

The Peddler was an idea born last June at the Port Townsend Food Co-op. In the midst of the pandemic, Jennings, vice president of the co-op board, wanted to deliver groceries to people who needed to stay away from a busy shopping environment. She hoped to do so without gasoline.

Jennings worked with fellow board members Lisa Barclay and Monica Le Roux to develop a shopping-and-delivery service that has since expanded to serve local farms and the Port Townsend Farmers Market.

“It was Juri who thought of organizing it into a larger project. That’s Juri all over,” Barclay said.

Jennings transports grocery orders and farmshares to households across Port Townsend, from the Fort Worden neighborhood to Castle Hill, Uptown and even Hastings Avenue. She pedaled the Peddler trailer unit through summer, fall, winter and now spring; her heaviest load weighed in at 150 pounds.

The Peddler didn’t happen in a vacuum, of course.

Rick Oltman of Cape Cleare salmon was an early mentor, helping Jennings with a trailer design that uses foam chests that insulate food without being too heavy. Used bike-tire tubes work perfectly to keep the lids on tight.

Many years ago, Oltman designed a similar unit for Cape Cleare’s Pam Petranek to transport seafood to the Port Townsend Farmers Market. Petranek, now an elected Port of Port Townsend commissioner, continues to tow it there on Saturdays.

These are long, lean trailers, nothing like the wide ones people use to carry their children, Oltman noted. Jennings has learned to pack hers with several grocery orders, then head out to her customers’ homes on carefully chosen routes.

Some of Port Townsend’s streets act like wind tunnels, she said. The Peddler avoids those — Water Street, 19th Street, anything around the Post Office — on blustery days. Rocks add ballast against the gusts that do find her.

Jennings, 36, moved to Port Townsend five years ago with her husband, Roarke, whom she met in Bend, Ore. Jennings was born in Hawaii but grew up in Osaka, Japan, which has a metro-area population of 19 million.

“It’s way too big for me,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

While the Peddler venture has called on Jennings’ personal resources, she said there’s a major force in her life who demands even more energy. Her son Niko, 2, is in that stage where he’s exploring the world and experimenting with anything he can get his hands on.

Jennings and her husband do a child care “switcheroo,” as she puts it, on days when she delivers food in the morning and Roarke works afternoons as a cashier and produce stocker at the Co-op.

After six months of ramping up, Jennings started tracking trips on her Surly Big Easy electric bike, and last week she marked 650 miles traveled since January. An average week has her making 10 to 12 deliveries to subscribers and to customers who choose the one-time or 10-time pass via her website, peddlerPT.com.

That e-bike helps Jennings, who weighs about 110 pounds, ascend Port Townsend’s unavoidable hills. But she said there’s another kind of juice that keeps her going strong on the inclement-weather days.

“It’s all the support I got,” she said. Friends who helped her start the Peddler are “like riding with a really strong wind.”

Barclay, for her part, believed in Jennings from the start.

“She’s a dreamer,” she said, “passionate about helping people and about the environment, but she also plans carefully,” developing a business plan and putting in the work to make it real.

“A whole lot of people call me up and ask questions” about bike trailers, Oltman added.

“They call once, and then they’re gone,” he said — but Jennings persisted.

Out on the road, “I feel a little like an ant,” the Peddler admitted.

As for the Peddler’s future, Jennings can imagine a flock of grocery-delivering bicyclists covering the terrain between farms and households. Producers such as the Cocoa Forge in Port Townsend and Finnriver in Chimacum — along with the Co-op and the farmers markets — constitute a rich local food economy she wants to be part of.

Now and then a passerby sees the Peddler trailer and asks: “What are you selling?”

Could it be ice cream? Coffee?

Jennings can see herself offering both — one day when she retires.

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Jefferson County senior reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladaily news.com.