Martha Whitman tells the story of La Montanitas experience with growth through acquiring stores in new markets. Watch and learn about the leadership of the board of directors as they engaged their membership throughout the process.
In Tucson, AZ competition is ramping up and the leaders at Food Conspiracy are taking decisive action. Hear from GM Kelley Kriner about the steps that the management at Food Conspiracy took to make the Co-op a strong and sustainable force in the community.
The New Normal has hit Chico Natural Foods in California. General Manager Liza Tedesco believes the response from the food co-op sector must be accessibility. Liza share her perspective and the initial steps and questions that co-op leaders must ask themselves in order to answer the question "What are the barriers to more people shopping co-op?"
Since River Valley Market in Northampton, Mass. opened seven years ago, the co-op has been in a continual growth cycle. Current president of the board, Dorian Gregory, said that when the co-op opened they’d hoped it would be a success. By all accounts, the cooperative has outstripped projections, and now she said, “The question for the board is what is our co-op’s vision for [...]
Dave Olson, of National Co+op Grocers (NCG) has a crucial message to get out to cooperators across the country. Watch as Dave unpacks a ton of data, headlines, and graphs in order to give you a clear sense of where natural foods co-ops sit in the context of the broader natural foods marketplace. It's a stark image, but one that Dave hopes will will either [...]
The Co-op Cafe provides a day of highly interactive and engaging strategic conversations designed to build shared understanding and alignment at your co-op and among co-ops. Cafe conversations focus on participation, and building community and meaningful relationships in our co-ops as essential elements of growing our co-ops. The Co-op Cafes are sponsored by the National Co+op Grocers (NCG) and produced by the CDS Consulting Co-op as [...]
Ruffin Slater believes that the success of our cooperatives can be distilled down into a formula. In fact, he's done it! Watch as he shares with us his equation for cooperative success and delves deeper into how co-ops can make a difference for our stakeholders.
Bobby Sullivan, the general manager of French Broad Food Co-op has some clear and direct ideas about how co-ops can and must thrive amidst growing competition. The area of Asheville, North Carolina is an extremely competitive market for natural foods, and the co-op needed to step up its game. By focusing on excellent service and marketplace differentiation as a co-op, they are seeing rapid [...]
When natural and organic foods made their appearance in the grocery market over 20 years ago, most conventional grocery stores dabbled with selling them in their product lines. Fast forward to today, and now big box retailers, convenience stores and conventional grocers have taken a massive chunk of business from the natural food retailer market. In a market where Seven-Eleven sells seven times more [...]
