By Ben Sandel 156 September - October - 2011 PDF download of article: pdf of article In March 2006, about 30 people came to a meeting at the Little Grill Collective restaurant in Harrisonburg, Va., to talk about starting a cooperative. The Little Grill had opened a 600-square-foot health food store (called The Little Store) in a rundown plaza on the poorer side of [...]
By Debbie Suassuna 149 July - August - 2010 In order to improve overall sales performance and compete effectively against other food stores, food co-ops can choose from several types of market research tools. Generally speaking, the results derived from implementing one of these research tools will enable a food co-op to employ two somewhat parallel marketing strategies— market segmentation and market differentiation. Differentiation [...]
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 the community. More and more food co-ops are remodeling, relocating, building additional locations, hiring more staff, and adding more products and services. Meanwhile, many of them face formidable competition [...]
By Michael Healy 118 May - June - 2005 Alexis de Tocqueville, in the first half of the 19th century, visited our still-wet-behind-the-ears nation and penned his famous treatise Democracy in America. In this book, de Tocqueville noted that “the American learns to know the laws by participating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in the forms of government from [...]
By Mark Goehring 117 March - April - 2005 We can no longer (verb)_____ in isolation. Try these verbs: Learn. Vision. Plan. Invest. Be. Then try your own! Nearly three years ago, the board of directors of the Brattleboro Food Co-op adopted new Ends Policies, statements defining our fundamental aims. A minor celebration followed this conclusion of a decade-long process of developing the board’s [...]
By Marilyn Scholl, Carolee Colter 088 May - June - 2000 What we love most about co-ops is the emphasis on people. Food co-ops are businesses that operate on a human scale, valuing individual voices--whether it be the democratic aspect of choosing leaders, the ongoing dialogue with customers through comment boards, or staff involvement in key decisions. In cooperatives, people are valued. What drives [...]
By David Fowle, Marilyn Scholl 083 July - August - 1999 Do the following statements or situations sound familiar in our cooperatives? "The co-op shouldn't carry (X), because these products are not natural." "This is a co-op, so all the members should have a voice in operational decisions -- otherwise I may as well shop down the block." "This decision is too controversial, so [...]
By Bill Gessner 063 March - April - 1996 Our cooperatives are truly empowering organizations, in origin and in practice, in vision and in mission, in theory and in action. Empowerment can be a simple and clarifying concept. Yet often we find ourselves misguided and muddled in the empowerment process within cooperatives. I believe this confusion serves as a primary obstacle to the healthy [...]
