General Manager's Report 1/11/07
We've been getting at least one person a week in here asking us about whether or not they can volunteer as part of a worker member program. I think that this shows significant interest in resurrecting a worker-member opportunity. We've been making more efforts at getting an educational word out about how important co-ops are in our community, and people are excited by these ideas and looking for more of an outlet for participation. Both Kimalee and Erica have been looking into insurance coverage that would protect us should volunteers become injured during a shift in an effort to try and get an implementation process going. Research suggests that we could get our volunteers covered by a facility liability policy, but more research is still needed in this area.
More changes in the deli: Chuck, our deli manager brainstormed the idea of implementing a “co-managership” with his assistant manager Carly for the deli instead of having a single manager at the helm of this continually problematic department. He cited big hurdles to overcome, a need to create a more unified deli team, and a feeling of being pretty overwhelmed and overworked as the main reasons for this change. We went ahead and approved the restructuring. So far, it seems to be working well. Two leaders carries us through the week quite well, and decreases the feelings of being overwhelmed.
Sales are going down, down, down, and labor is beginning to creep up. We're looking at a few different strategies to try and combat this issue: one being decreasing labor by either going to some kind of “winter hours” on the weekends and shaving hours out of the workforce, and two, doing some creative promotions to try and increase sales to offset the cost of labor. We've also asked the staff to voluntarily try to decrease hours when they find themselves with nothing left to stock and to consider trading some of their morning shifts for evening positions that are still open so that we don't have to hire anyone else to fill these positions. The spurt of holiday sales have made it unnecessary to make any labor cuts this month, but we are trying to get something preemptive in place for when we really quiet down in January. Department managers are also looking at where they can get by with fewer employees.
One of our smarty-pants staff members consolidated the many and confusing spreadsheets in circulation regarding what we owe to our investors to get a more real idea of what we owe. The final number suggests that there is $93,598 that still needs to be paid back to 40 different investors.
We've been approached by a group that is trying to get a Waldo County Women's Health Initiative off the ground that they would like us to be a part of by doing education about how healthy eating can be a tool for improving health. Fran is setting up a meeting with them to determine how we can participate in this interesting and important outreach opportunity.
New Year's By the Bay was a bit hit at the store. We were busier than expected, doing $17,063 in sales, due largely to the fact that performers showed up unexpectedly during later hours and the UU Church crowd all traversed over here after their event ended at 10pm. We've made detailed notes about what we could do better for next year.
Reports of increasing theft in the wine department. Eric can confirm that a $30 bottle was stolen on New Year's Eve. We are looking into getting a mirror not unlike the one we have in HABA as a deterrent. Surveillance systems have been discussed as well.
Staff holiday party was a big hit! We wish we had seen more of you in attendence.