Habi Travels with Ed Ryan

"When we were given our assignment to write an article for the news letter, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. Being semi-retired one of the things that my wife Mary and I wanted to do was visit our children. The only problem with that is our five children and their families are spread across the continental United States. Three of our children are west of the Mississippi. Realizing that it would be difficult to visit them for a weekend I decided to ask Mandy for some time off. Six weeks to be exact. I came up with an idea while I was on vacation to visit other Habitat Restores along our trip. I pitched the idea to Mandy and she agreed it was a good idea.

So on February 5, 2024 my wife, Mary, our two dogs Murphy and Freighter loaded the car and headed out on our trip. Our six week trip took us through fifteen states, Sixty-five hundred miles, visited three children and their families and stopped in on Four Habitat Restores. This is what I found out about those stores.

The stores I visited were in Twin Falls, Idaho, two in Temecula, California, and one in Kansas City Missouri. Three of the Restores (Twin Falls, One of the Temecula Restores, and Kansas City) were very similar to our Restore. The retail space square footage was about the same. as ours. However, none of those three stores had a much warehouse space as our Restore. In fact two of the Restores (Temecula and Kansas City) had no warehouse space. Two of the Restores (Twin Falls and Temecula) used outside areas for sales space.

One of the locations in Temecula was not referred to as a Restore but a Design Store. In that location all of the items were new. They were donated to the location by both Wayfair or Lowes. The retail space was five times the size of ours and the warehouse was similar to ours but they had tractor trailers on their loading dock full of items to be sold.

Like us, all of the locations had staff that were attentive to the needs of the customers. They were very eager to speak with me. Many of the employees that I spoke with had been working at their store for many years.

As for as pickups and and deliveries, all of the Restores were similar to our Restore except for the Temecula Design Store. All of their items are delivered by tractor trailer trucks from Wayfair and Lowes.

What I was able to learn from my trip west is that Habitat Restores are very similar in size, in the items they sell, and the people they employee. They all appear to have the same goals to help the communities that they serve."

-Ed Ryan, Truck Driver & Warehouse Associate