The Progressive Grocer Top Women in Grocery (TWIG) is a prestigious award giving industry recognition to grocery retail leadership, and this year’s list includes one of Columinate’s own, Rebecca Torpie. TWIG awards are granted annually to a generous number of women in a huge and diverse industry, from team leaders and store managers to senior executives. The 2022 awards were announced in June 2023.

Torpie, a grocery co-op consultant with origins in Philadelphia, has been BriarPatch Co-op’s full-time marketing director since 2019. BriarPatch, located in Grass Valley, is a 50-year-old northern California co-op with annual sales now over $40 million. Torpie also continues to consult with food co-ops across the country, bringing more than ten years of experience to her work, specializing in marketing team assessment and development, communication and branding, and marketing management coaching. She has been part of the Columinate team delivering training through the General Manager Development Program since 2021.

In 2020, Torpie spearheaded the re-imagining of BriarPatch’s volunteer program to pair shopper-volunteers with area nonprofits for co-op discounts. The PatchWorks program proved itself to be a vibrant, successful strategy to offset nonprofits’ need for assistance that also acted as an incentive to shop. In 2022 alone, BriarPatch more than doubled its volunteer hours from 2021, and this had a significant impact on the nonprofit community during the pandemic. During the year prior to April 1, 2023, shoppers volunteered 12,470 hours at area nonprofits.

The TWIG award recognizes Torpie’s impact and multiple accomplishments at BriarPatch Co-op as well as within the grocery sector, including a volunteer assignment at a coffee cooperative in El Salvador through NCBA CLUSA. Her BriarPatch work now includes preparation for the co-op’s major expansion this year: the co-op will be making a big leap to a new market by opening a second store in Auburn, California, in August. In light of plans for a second store, Torpie led the efforts to change the co-op’s definition of “local” to its current definition of the Sacramento Watershed. This shift included external marketing along with coordinated efforts to identify and tag hundred of brands and SKUs.

Overall, Torpie’s passion is mobilizing marketing departments from passive to creative, energetic, and thoughtful teams. Her goal is to give independent food stores solid footing and confidence in the game of grocery marketing.