Board Report: New Directors and Officers 

BY MOLLY SNELL-LARCH 

The new Columinate board of directors, seated on March 19, consists of Ben Sandel, Don Moffitt (Vice President), Jade Barker, Wynston Estis (Secretary-Treasurer), and Molly Snell-Larch (President). We have been hard at work orienting to our new roles as directors and to each other as we form a cohesive governing body.  

We are endeavoring to better understand our financial situation and set clear goals for the board in the coming year. As part of this work, we will be scheduling a retreat in the coming months for the board, Interim General Manager Vernon Oakes, and our board consultant Rose Marie Klee. I envision using this time to make progress on some of the significant questions we have in front of us: how to proceed with a management search and on what timeline, potentially altering our structure to allow for staff to become member-owners of our cooperative, building alignment as a governing body, and building our knowledge about our shared business. 

I am grateful to be surrounded by some stellar cooperators in that work. As always, if you have questions or comments for the board, please feel free to attend our board meetings—now held on the first Wednesday of each month at 12 PM ET—or send us an email at board@columinate.coop.  

Parting Thoughts: “To Own, Use, Serve, and Belong”  

BY LESLIE WATSON 

I was asked to share some reflections, now that my service on the Columinate board is in the rearview mirror. I honestly don’t feel quite ready to sum things up in a tidy few sentences. Instead, and for now, I am just going to freestyle a bit.  

In addition to winding up my time on the board, I’ve also largely wound down my consulting practice of eleven years and have moved into a new role as executive director of Cooperative Development Services. I’m in the thick of discovering what it looks like and what it requires to be answerable to a board that governs by written policy—and to be accountable and responsible for all of the things that happen in an organization, even those I don’t necessarily control. Not gonna lie, it’s a little daunting. 

As I have prepared for my first few board meetings these recent months, I have been very grateful for my experiences at Columinate in advising boards, serving on boards, observing boards, and reading a million monitoring reports from scores of general managers over the years. Thank you for these opportunities to learn and for the chance to participate in this co-op—or, as we used to say from time to time: to own, use, serve, and belong.  I wish the current board and the entire co-op the very best of luck and ample amounts of grace as you continue your shared cooperative journey!

HR Team: New Support Service

BY MELANIE REID 

The HR Team is excited to be in the early stages of rolling out a new service offering. We are working on the first marketing materials for our new subscription HR Support Service. The service includes a variety of HR functions offered in an annual support package that is customizable to the needs of an individual co-op.  

Geared towards smaller co-ops that do not have onsite HR support, the package includes options such as an HR systems review, update of the Employee Handbook, management training, policy compliance survey, and most importantly, monthly support calls with the GM and available hours for managers and staff to access an HR professional as needed. 

We are seeking pilot projects. If you have a client who might benefit from this, please let us know! Melanie Reid and Sarah Dahl are the main contacts for this program. 

Interim General Manager Engagements

BY MARK GOEHRING 

Our Interim General Managers (IGMs) are fully deployed with the following assignments 

Wynston Estis: Food Conspiracy in Tucson 

Garland McQueen: Dorchester Food Co-op in Boston; see report below 

Chris Morris: People’s Food Co-op Ann Arbor; see report below 

Scot Destasio: project management support for startup Purple Carrot in Little Falls, Minnesota; see note below, plus new assignment pending with Urban Green in Providence, Rhode Island 

Dana Tomlin: prepared foods department support for River Valley Market in Northampton, Massachusetts and Ocean Beach in San Diego, California; see note below 

Bobby Sullivan: Durham Food Co-op in North Carolina during GM search 

IGM consultants were asked about their impact. 

Garland McQueen, Dorchester Food Co-op in Boston: It is a mainly a Spanish-speaking clientele and staff, which makes things interesting. It is a hybrid store, about 50/50 [natural/conventional groceries]. The co-op was open 13 months when I arrived; it was going downhill fast and depended totally on grant money to stay afloat. Since then, I have worked to reduce cost of goods by 20%, reduce labor by 60% (yes, both calculations are correct). 

Sales are up 50%, but that is not a lot of dollars. We have started events on Saturdays to increase traffic, and it has been effective. Most events have names like “Saturday Sample Extravaganza”—the latest one is Sweet Tooth Saturday, which will sample items such as chocolates, cookies, and soft drinks. Something free always brings more traffic, and we often have new members sign up during these events. 

The store has a long way to go to be sustainable, but if we have enough runway with the grants and the current trend continues, then there is hope. I love my job! 

Scot DeStasio, Purple Carrot: Geez… Garland’s sounds like a fun challenge! I speak Spanish, so I would love to be in that environment!  

I started with Purple Carrot April 1. In the last 10 days, we have taken the store design to a more complete place, and a refrigeration list has been put together and bid out through a local distributor. 

From a startup standpoint, I think this is a good example why it is important to have Columinate involved early in the process in an advisory role—this will lead to better results and in most cases an expedited timeline. 

Chris Morris, People’s Food Co-op Ann Arbor: Started in January, building stability and culture following the departure of GM and recent retirement of HR manager. Focused on strategies to grow sales and level expenses after 12 years in the red. 

Seeing modest total store growth as we cycle their closure of foodservice last week. Center store up 12.5% and produce 5.6% YTD. Launching three new local food vendors in our grab-and-go this month. 

Flash sales have been a success. Hit their largest single day sales mark in several years following our one-day bulk promo with department sales up 50% YOY that week. 

Working with the University of Michigan to launch a promotion soon for MCard holders, 10% off bulk purchases Monday through Friday. 

With parking constraints downtown we’ll be launching Co-Op Happy Hour with member specials on weekday evenings when the county lot across the street is open and free. Weekends the lot is free, and these are our busiest days, with a Farmers Market Saturday and Artisan Market Sunday nearby. 

Robin Bolles (new!) is providing IGM support to an internal IGM at East Lansing Food Co-op in East Lansing, Michigan. [Robin’s profile will be coming soon to the Columinate audience. —ed.] 

Bobby Sullivan is providing on-site and remote IGM services to Durham Food Co-op in North Carolina. (Bobby stepped in to help with an emergency situation and is still the GM at French Broad Co-op.) 

Dana Tomlin, River Valley Market and Ocean Beach: Providing support of a new deli manager on daily tasks but also BIG projects. Created an entirely new PLU array and moved all their current PLUs to the new system, while also moving to new scales with ingredients/allergen data moved AND aligning that with a new menu in order to control the recipes that were being made. Also supporting new staff: store managers, deli managers, and purchasers, all while supporting the current staff up to the director level. 

We’ve rolled out a new program with a new menu, and I’m supporting them through rollout and tracking of sales. The new deli manager was beginning to see patterns in their production, and I was able to support their new knowledge with an established system for production, tasks lists, etc., that they did not know existed and had been missed in their onboarding process. 

IT Consolidation and Security Training 

BY JOEL BROCK 

Despite my best efforts, thus far I am blocked on importing messages from some of our platforms, namely RingCentral and Zoho Connect (the Beacon). Since we have a timeline and a budget and I need to keep things moving, we have made the judgement call to proceed with migrating more users into the MS 365 environment without having the discussion history available from the start. This conversation and discussion history, which is very high-value, will not be lost; we will continue to work to migrate it. I’d like to proceed with our plan, excepting this material, and allow for more time to come back to it and address the project with fewer time and financial constraints. 

Files, calendars, and other resources will be present on day 1, along with access to some new tools and features that I will be excited to share with you all over the coming months. 

You can expect to receive more details from me in the next two weeks as I move forward with bringing users into the MS 365 space. This will be done in groups. Common Good will be coming up soon, and the CBLD Team and the Board of Directors should begin emotionally preparing yourselves. ;-) 

For my Common Do-Gooders: You will be brought in in two stages, since your phones are wrapped up in the migration. First, we’ll get ourselves set up in MS Teams, and then we will schedule the date and time for the phone cutover to switch to MS Teams from RingCentral. 

And just to reiterate this important point from earlier: Google Workspace and email, Google Docs, etc. will not be going away as part of this stage of the process. So even after you receive your new MS 365 account from Columinate, you will continue to retain your Google account from Columinate, and your emails, etc. will continue to arrive at your Google account. 

It will feel good to move past this particular logjam, and on to whatever dozen logjams await me!  Don’t hesitate to email me with your questions or feedback at joelbrock@columinate.coop 

Security Training: 

The results are in, and Columinate consultants and staff are really enjoying the newly released series of online security trainings! Based on 23 reviews, the average rating was 4.7 out of 5.  

Check your email for the course offerings from wizer-training.com. 

Also note: For users with a Columinate or Common Good Google account, you may use the SSO (single sign-on) option to log in with your Google account, rather than creating a new password. 

So don’t sleep on this important information to keep yourself safe while online. Because you are never really offline… ;-) 

Lastly, while it isn’t a competition, I can lean on some of your competitive spirits and say that in terms of completion rate, the AP team is winning at 67% complete!