Cooperative Grocer

Context Matters: Using Trends to Monitor the Financial Health of your Co-op

By Michael Healy|2023-05-05T20:07:57-04:00July 15th, 2014|

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|2023-05-05T20:07:58-04:00July 7th, 2014|

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 [...]

Co-op Leaders Comment on Visibility

By Carolee Colter|2023-05-05T20:30:07-04:00May 6th, 2014|

By Carolee Colter, Helena O'Connor 172 May-June 2014 According to 2013 CoopMetrics data, 30 percent of member co-ops in the National Cooperative Grocers Association have expanded or opened a new store in the last five years; and many more co-ops are planning expansions and new stores. Serving more customers in new ways is exciting, but it also adds to the workload of employees and [...]

Expanding to a Multi-Store Co-op: Build capacity from the inside out

By Jeanie Wells|2023-05-05T20:30:26-04:00March 30th, 2014|

By Jeanie Wells 171 March-April 2014 Your market study promises great sales. Developers are wooing you into their properties. Staff and shoppers are clamoring for more space. Adding a second store seems like a piece of cake, right? Not quite. Ask any leader of a food co-op that has made the leap from single to multi-store operations, and you will inevitably hear tales of [...]

Safety, Security, and Loss Prevention: Strategies for success

By Paul Feiner|2023-05-05T20:30:38-04:00January 5th, 2014|

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 [...]

Four Pillars of Cooperative Governance

By Marilyn Scholl|2023-05-05T20:30:39-04:00January 4th, 2014|

By Marilyn Scholl, Art Sherwood 170 January - February 2014 Great leaders demonstrate how to be a force for good in local communities and beyond. Our cooperative heroes—the Rochdale Pioneers—were striking weavers who opened a grocery co-op in 1844 in Rochdale, England, to help themselves and others get free from indebtedness to the company store. The Pioneers asked and answered some compelling questions: Shouldn’t [...]

Engaging Employees in Open Book Management

By Columinate|2023-05-05T20:30:49-04:00November 7th, 2013|

By Helena O'Connor 169 Nov-Dec 2013 A few staff members crowded the back of the small room. Latecomers straggled in until most chairs were full. A huge white board with a crosshatch of lines and columns, numbers and spaces stood at the front. The general manager called everyone to order. The weekly huddle had begun. One by one, department managers posted their weekly sales [...]

Bringing Open Book Management to Life at Just Food Co-op

By Melanie Reid|2023-05-05T20:30:50-04:00November 3rd, 2013|

By Melanie Reid 169 Nov-Dec 2013 Justice and Just Food Co-op in Northfield, Minn., opened its doors in 2004. Once the co-op had successfully navigated the initial challenges that every startup faces and began to experience stable finances and sales growth, management felt it was time to engage the staff in the continued success of the business. A training session during a National Cooperative [...]

Open Book Management: Emerging lessons in the food co-op world

By Jeanie Wells|2023-05-05T20:31:00-04:00September 4th, 2013|

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 [...]

Open Book Management

By Jeanie Wells|2023-05-05T20:07:16-04:00September 3rd, 2013|

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