By Michael Healy 182 January-February 2016 As a director, you may notice or hear things about your co-op that may be cause for concern—or are at least worth asking about. How can you respond in a way that honors your sense of responsibility, your board’s clear delegation to the general manager (GM), and your GM’s professional judgment? Here is an approach that opens [...]
Increasingly intense and sustained competition in our market is shifting the landscape in which co-ops operate, putting a premium on certain key competencies and skills in management. At the same time, other factors are making the GM job more complex and demanding, including: pressure on prices and margin, increasing costs of real estate and development, and calls for a living wage at a time [...]
For the first time since chain natural food stores rose to prominence in the 1990s, natural food grocery stores have lost market share to conventional competition. The golden era of runaway growth for natural food grocers may become a thing of the past as a variety of competitors have figured out how to effectively sell and merchandise “natural.” This puts enormous pressure on both [...]
By Mary Myers, Walden Swanson 042 September - October - 1992 This is the third in a series of articles based on Business Planning For Cooperatives, a manual published by Cooperative Development Services that provides step by step Instructions for writing business plans. This manual is based on the principles of systems analysis, which recommend an analysis of each of a retail co-op's key [...]
By: Carolee Colter & Jeanie Wells When an organization is going through rapid change, roles within the organization change, too, and not always in a consciously thought-through manner. Expansions can result in forming new layers of positions. For example, opening a second store creates the necessity for new approaches to buying. Relocating to a new facility with a much-expanded food service leads to [...]
If there’s one thing retailers know, it’s that they have to expect surprises and mishaps as a matter of course in business. Many things can go wrong in a flash, and unfortunately, are not that unusual: power outages, organized shoplifting, workplace injury. The safety and security of the store’s physical infrastructure, as [...]
Mississippi Market St. Paul, MN Year founded: 1979 Equity investment: $90 Number of members: 15,500 Number of employees: 210 Retail locations: Selby Ave., West 7th, and Dayton’s Bluff opening Sept. 2015 It started with the results of an employee satisfaction survey. In 2012, Mississippi Market’s management learned some staff questioned the co-op’s growth plans, and they perceived it was having a negative impact on [...]
By Bill Gessner 178 May-June 2015 The collective progress in collaboration that the food co-op sector has achieved over the past decade has been significant and inspiring. “Cooperation among cooperatives,” through the Cooperative Grocers Associations and other vehicles, is building a strong, powerful momentum. An underlying core value that has supported this collaboration, but has rarely been articulated or recognized, is a strong spirit [...]
Kelly Wiseman addresses the question: what do you do when the competition is planning to move in next door? At Bozeman Food Co-op, they decided to take a hard look at their operations and marketing to make sure they were meeting customer needs and injecting excitement into their store. “We looked at every angle of operations and asked, what could we possibly do to [...]
