The purpose of this guide is to provide volunteer board members of new or expanding food cooperatives with an accessible tool they can use to better understand their market potential. A market study is a pivotal piece of information necessary to obtain project financing. Even more important, a good market study will help a cooperative or organizing committee decide whether it is even feasible [...]
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 [...]
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 find a natural food store with a juice bar to help quench your thirst. That’s exactly why LaMontañita Co-op Food Market is aggressively adding new locations outside of Albuquerque. [...]
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 can be, the real challenge begins when the co-op opens its doors in the expanded store. An earlier article by Carolee Colter (CG #116, Jan.–Feb. 2005) described the challenges [...]
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 102 September - October - 2002 Long before "just do it" became part of the American lexicon, the teenaged Homer Hickam, inspired by the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and fueled by a desire to beat the Russians at the space race, decided he also needed to launch a rocket. Never mind that he was a naive kid living in a [...]
By Jeanie Wells, Nancy O'Connor 096 September - October - 2001 When you last read about Community Mercantile Co-op in Lawrence, Kansas, we had just barely survived Wild Oats coming to town. The article in the May-June 1997 edition of Cooperative Grocer chronicles our struggle ending with the closure of Wild Oats. After being profitable for only the past few years, how did we [...]
Planning and implementing a successful expansion or relocation for your natural foods cooperative is a major undertaking that always involves risk. As the natural foods marketplace is experiencing rapid change and growth, retail natural food co-ops are being challenged to serve their members and their communities better than ever before. Long-term survival, maintaining and building market share and cooperative growth are critical issues for [...]
By Bill Gessner 033 March - April - 1991 Losing Market Share? Many of today's retail food cooperatives now have a history of ten to twenty years. Meanwhile, the natural foods industry and the natural foods market that co-ops helped developed has grown dramatically. In many regions of the country, the coops have lost a large share of the natural foods market to privately [...]
