Columinate’s Manager on Contract and Interim General Manager services can be a game-changer for food co-ops and community-focused independent grocery retailers. In this report, we will highlight Chris Dilley, working as Manager on Contract at Detroit People’s Food Co-op.

The opportunities for utilizing a Manager on Contract fall into two broad categories: new store openings, and an operational tune-up or turnaround.

New store openings, especially startups: Opening a new store requires different experiences and skills than managing a store that is up and running. Columinate consultants serving as managers on contract can build and work with the local team and other professional support to manage the store through store opening—then hand off to the client’s long-term general manager a few months after store opening.

Management transition coupled with an operational tune-up or turnaround: Often alongside a manager transition comes an opportunity to identify and implement changes to strengthen store performance. The return on investment of having a Manager on Contract stems from Improved systems, team empowerment and development, and an updated retail strategy. Columinate’s grocery retail experts assess and identify opportunities for improvement, and because they are in a position of responsibility as manager, they can build alignment and implement changes needed for better store performance.

For new stores, Columinate support can begin with a consultative relationship early in the process, during the organizing stage when the vision for the store is first being created. Once implementation begins, Columinate’s Management on Contract services include:

• project management during the store design and build-out process;

• management during pre-opening, when store systems are developed and implemented;

• management during the critical opening stage, when the best available resources should be deployed to ensure the community experiences an exciting store;

• finally, management during the first few months of the new store operations.

An ideal time to hand over management responsibilities to the long-term general manager is when the store, team, and systems are stable.

That timing for hand-over of management applies as well in a store turnaround. In a single-store operation, the Manager on Contract typically serves as an Interim General Manager (IGM). In a multi-store setting, the role could be IGM or Store Manager. Sometimes the position is named Interim Turnaround Manager, and in longer engagements the role could be Contract General Manager. The common thread is that the engagement includes management responsibilities and authority to get stuff done.

Utilizing Columinate Manager on Contract experts can also go hand in hand with our GM Development and Training program and our GM hiring and search support.

There are many examples of interim management assistance, and each has its own circumstances and challenges. Columinate’s group of talented grocery experts are passionate about co-ops, especially successful ones! For more information about having a Manager on Contract during a manager transition or when planning to open a new store, contact Mark Goehring.

Chris Dilley at Detroit People’s Food Co-op

The Detroit People’s Food Co-op is getting ready to open and has contracted with Columinate’s Chris Dilley as Manager on Contract. Build-out in the co-op’s new facility is nearing completion, with opening now planned for early 2024. The new Detroit Food Commons facility, a partnership between Detroit Black Food Security Network and Develop Detroit, will house the Detroit People’s Food Co-op as well as a community kitchen operated by the Black Food Security Network.

We spoke with Dilley at the September Up & Coming conference about his past and current work. As background, consider the growth of People’s Food Co-op of Kalamazoo (PFC Kalamazoo) under Dilley’s twenty-year stint as general manager: The co-op grew its annual sales from a half million to $3.6 million and expanded its square footage by a factor of four, including a relocation—and that’s in a competitive, over-stored grocery market. The co-op also supported a shared-use kitchen, run by Can Do Kitchen, which has subsequently relocated and grown into a larger kitchen and business incubator facility.

PFC Kalamazoo has done a lot of work to build up local food system resources, and for the past ten years has contracted with the City to manage a thriving farmers market. Back in 2016, after the co-op’s first three-year contract managing the farmers market, PFC staff Chris Moore reflected on this successful program in a Cooperative Grocer article (Dilley’s name does not even appear in this report, keeping a focus on an excellent outreach and marketing opportunity.)

Dilley is especially proud of PFC’s ten years of conscious anti-racism work that has changed the culture of the co-op—and this experience helped bring him to share his skills through Columinate and at Detroit PFC.

Back in 2015, Columinate’s Jade Barker reported in Cooperative Grocer on several co-ops, including Kalamazoo, “Building Partnerships Across Race and Class,”:

“People’s Food Co-op… got its start in addressing issues of race and social justice after a store expansion and relocation. Before the move, says General Manager Chris Dilley, “People who came in the store were primarily white. People working at store were totally white.” As a result of a relocation, the co-op found itself between two low-income neighborhoods, one African-American and the other racially mixed… This move prompted some discoveries, such as, according to Board President Jo Ann Mundy, race and racism. One tendency of whites in the U.S. is to see themselves as outside of race, or racially neutral. That view was challenged when People’s became an all-white island in a sea of color. Dilley says, “I learned I was white. It was an identity-development process.”

Launched in 2015, PFC’s Anti-Racist Transformation Team (ARTT) has gathered monthly and functioned as a leadership body, in addition to board and staff leadership, to support cultural transformation through training of staff on how to have challenging conversations about racism and other inequities, to setting lines on community behavior in and around the co-op kindly and fairly while supporting the staff, and even finding new ways to approach holidays such as Thanksgiving that are fraught culturally while being important to store sales. “The primary impact of the ARTT at PFC, however, has been to center conversations about equity,” says Dilley, “slowly building the muscles of all of us to listen and act with intentions that resist how we’ve been socialized.”  

Now he is challenged to help Detroit PFC with completing the store build-out (including a key power system component that has been delayed and has pushed back the opening to early 2024). At Detroit PFC, according to Dilley, “I feel nothing but support.” That includes the co-op’s organized system of “dedicated volunteers in all fields and a very compelling support leadership.” Among the latter, and also present at the September Up & Coming conference, are Lanay Gilbert-Williams, newly appointed board president, and Malik Yakini.

Yakini is a co-founder of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and of the Black Food & Justice Alliance. He is a board member and former president of Detroit PFC; for years he has been a recognized figure in Black and startup co-op networks. (Detroit PFC received the 2023 startup co-op “Best of the Best” award at the Up & Coming conference.)

Yakini spoke about bringing on Chris Dilley as Manager on Contract, as the co-op nears opening: “The Detroit People’s Food Co-op is overjoyed to have Chris Dilley as our general manager on contract. He brings more than twenty years of co-op grocery management expertise, a sensitivity to racial and cultural issues, and a kind, gracious personality. We are looking forward to Chris getting us to opening and beyond.”

Dilley also singled out help from National Co+op Grocers: “I can’t say enough about NCG support.” In a new initiative, NCG is supporting a cohort of three startups located in its central corridor: Detroit PFC, Food Shed Co-op (Woodstock, Illinois), and Wild Onion (Chicago). This cohort of three startup managers and others regularly meets online with NCG specialists to strengthen the resources and skills of the startup co-ops. “NCG helps build out the myriad of business systems necessary to open up a cooperative grocery store successfully—helping us keep our eyes on all the balls we’re juggling as start-up managers.”

We can look forward to further exciting reports from Detroit and the upcoming store opening!