Closing the ‘Gap’ – Using co-op data to achieve improved store performance
By Mel Braverman 126 September - October - 2006 Many cooperatives struggle to find appropriate operational benchmarks and to set challenging yet attainable goals. Without the use of external data to help them understand how [...]
Monitoring the Manager
By Mark Goehring 123 March - April - 2006 There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is commonly known to directors and managers. It is a dimension open to interpretation—potentially as vast as space [...]
Rebating Superdividends to Members in the UK
West Midlands Co-operative Society (WM) and Oxford, Swindon & Gloucester Co-operative Society (OSG) have recently merged to create the fourth largest co-operative society in the UK: The Midcounties Co-operative. They currently operate co-operative funeral services, [...]
Home-Grown Talent: A guide to promoting from within
By Carolee Colter 122 January - February - 2006 Promoting leaders from among your existing staff offers a lot of advantages. Surprises are minimized—the person’s strengths and weaknesses are known quantities. Furthermore, you can reward [...]
Co-op Expansions Raise the Bar
By Bill Gessner, Patricia Cumbie 121 November - December - 2005 Every expansion is unique in some respect, but the universal truth is that building a larger facility includes taking on a bigger role in [...]
Case Study: Strategic Growth by Acquisition
LaMontañita Co-op Food Market Founded: 1976 Members: 12,000 Number of Locations: 4 (Albuquerque, Gallup, Santa Fe) Number of Staff: 200 You don’t have to travel far on the sun-baked streets of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to [...]
Avoiding Post-Expansion Burnout: The board of directors’ role
By Bill Gessner 120 September - October - 2005 More than half of our food co-ops have engaged in planning and implementing an expansion project during the past three years. As demanding as these projects [...]
20 Years of CDS Highlights
The Common Cooperative Financial Statements (CoCoFiSt) program allows food co-ops to compare data and create best practices for a wide range of operational functions. The Food Co-op 500 (later renamed Food Co-op Initiative) program is [...]