The Spirit of Generosity
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 [...]
Being Really Great Grocers
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 [...]
Strategic Pricing: Why and how
By Mel Braverman, Jeanie Wells 177 March-April 2015 Almost every cooperative retail grocery is feeling increased competition in its community. Twenty years ago, merely having featured products consistently available was enough for co-ops to be successful, but this is no longer an option. In the last few years, not only has the conventional industry become smarter operators of its natural/organic sets, we have also [...]
Context Matters: Using Trends to Monitor the Financial Health of your Co-op
By Michael Healy When it comes to numbers and data, context matters. The context in which we place particular numbers helps us make meaning of those numbers, and this is particularly important when we are talking about financial data. Over many generations, managers and accountants have developed financial reporting tools that help them do their jobs. Balance sheets, income/expense (aka profit/loss) statements, and [...]
Minimizing the Risk of Fraud
By Thane Joyal, Mark Goehring 173 July - August 2014 Loss prevention is a key piece of the retail grocery business. Co-op managers are aware of this at their level and manage against it every day, but everyone in the cooperative needs to pay attention to the possibility. Board members: don’t be complacent. There are myriad ways to steal from a grocery store: at the [...]
Safety, Security, and Loss Prevention: Strategies for success
By Michael Feiner, Paul Feiner 170 January - February 2014 Food co-ops may be some of the best-intentioned enterprises across the retail spectrum. They are guided by core values of shared responsibility, environmental stewardship, support for more equitable communities, and conscious consumption; it’s hard to imagine a more mindful and ethical social venture. Yet even the best intentions do not make a co-op immune [...]
Open Book Management: Emerging lessons in the food co-op world
By Jeanie Wells 168 September-October 2013 Has your co-op considered Open Book Management? Chances are that even if you haven’t implemented it but have attended a food co-op conference in the past three years, you have heard talk about Open Book Management. That’s because it has been slowly but steadily catching fire throughout the North American food co-op sector. Some stores are having great [...]