River Valley Co-op, located in western Massachusetts, opened its second location in the summer of 2021.

Amid a raging global pandemic, debilitating supply disruptions, and unprecedented worker shortages, they were able to open the doors of the beautiful net-zero facility and welcome the residents of Easthampton. The co-op saw great success in its original location, growing sales to over $30M since opening their doors in 2008. However, weaknesses of the original location carried over to the challenges of launching a second store, and within a few months of opening the Easthampton location, General Manager Rochelle Prunty was looking for some help.

Enter Dana Tomlin. A South Texas native, Dana spent over eighteen years at Wheatsville Food Co-op in Austin, Texas, before joining Columinate in 2021. Dana served in many roles while at Wheatsville, from cook to interim general manager; at River Valley, she brought with her extensive operational knowledge, especially in deli operations, which was where Easthampton was struggling the most. Dana was hired by River Valley almost immediately upon joining Columinate to carry out a six-week assessment of their two stores, but focusing mostly on the Easthampton location. At the time when she came onboard, the Easthampton store had only been open a short time. “It was awesome for me to come to a store that was as busy as they were”—a stark contrast to the competitor-heavy Austin market where she had previously worked. “The community really wants River Valley to be there,” says Tomlin.

“They were trying to row as fast as they could while the boat was filling up with water,”

The store was being managed by a brand-new team with limited management experience and very little deli management experience. River Valley operations were battling extensive turnover, in a market context of added pressures from restaurants reopening and generalized pandemic anxieties. This sent the co-op leaders into crisis mode. “They were trying to row as fast as they could while the boat was filling up with water,” says Tomlin. Dana was brought in to do an initial assessment and assist with training; however, she realized as she was nearing the end of the assessment period that the co-op was missing some of the fundamental tools necessary to manage well. She agreed to stay on and signed a one-year contract with River Valley to complete the work.

Tomlin observed that workers at the second store were lacking some foundational tools, and as a result they were relying on managers to have all the answers. One of Dana’s goals early on was to give the workers the tools they needed so that they would not be so dependent on management. Due to the pandemic and the challenges of hiring workers, the store was often not adequately staffed, and the managers were often the ones left to pick up the unfinished tasks. This left little time to move projects along.

Tomlin jumped fully into her role as a member of the leadership team. She attended some of the weekly management team meetings, all upper-level leadership meetings, and acted as high-level manager for their deli team. She assisted with interviews and helped evaluate personnel issues. Tomlin was able to act as an outside voice, someone who could ask the questions that needed to be asked: Is this the project we want to take on? Is this expectation feasible?

Although she works most closely with the store manager at the Easthampton location, she reports weekly to the general manager, providing her with departmental data and an update on the programming and projects she is working on. While focused on the Easthampton store, the work she is doing for River Valley benefits the entire organization, and the systems and processes she is building are filtering back to the Northampton store.

Moving forward, Tomlin is working on a way to make the skills and process that she has brought to River Valley Co-op transferable to other co-ops. However, the level of engagement that she has with River Valley makes it difficult to reproduce changes in management with more than one client at a time. Her contract with River Valley expires in February; after that, she does believe that a more scaled-down program, complete with a fair amount of on-site work up front and bi-weekly check-ins with the workers and managers, could be helpful to other co-ops. “I hope that at the end of this what I am going to be able to provide is some stability,” says Tomlin.

Learn more about Dana Tomlin here