Planning and implementing a successful expansion or relocation for your natural foods cooperative is a major undertaking that always involves risk. As the natural foods marketplace is experiencing rapid change and growth, retail natural food co-ops are being challenged to serve their members and their communities better than ever before. Long-term survival, maintaining and building market share and cooperative growth are critical issues for [...]
By Mary Myers, Walden Swanson 038 January - February - 1992 Editor's note: This article is the first in a series of three articles on Business Plans for co-ops. Has your co-op ever produced a business plan and then not known what to do with it? Have you seen your co-op's business plan sit on the bookshelf and collect dust? Have you ever [...]
By Bill Gessner 033 March - April - 1991 Losing Market Share? Many of today's retail food cooperatives now have a history of ten to twenty years. Meanwhile, the natural foods industry and the natural foods market that co-ops helped developed has grown dramatically. In many regions of the country, the coops have lost a large share of the natural foods market to privately [...]
By Walden Swanson 010 April - May - 1987 "Business plans may be great for bankers and investors, but if companies really followed them, you might never have heard of Compaq, Lotus, or Ben & Jerry's." This quote is from "The Best-Laid Plans", an article in Inc. Magazine (February 1987). The article takes some of America's best small businesses and examines their business plans [...]
