General Manager's Report 1/25/07
Detective Mike McFadden came to do a training with all of our Department heads about how to spot and approach a potential shoplifter. While he did help clarify for us strategies for stopping a shoplifter in the act, the larger discussion centered around how to put an end to our shoplifting problem. It appears as though we are a very easy target for shoplifting for a number of reasons, but the most important one being that we have no public image of being a business that catches and prosecutes shoplifters. Detective McFadden loudly recommended that we invest in a surveillance system, and speculated that a business of our size and with our inventory is being ripped off at least a couple of times a week. We are planning to take another look at how to get Catapult to calculate a better idea of our true shrinkage now that our electronic inventory is more self-maintaining.
We are getting ready to print out patronage dividends. We are waiting to hear whether or not the equity assistance fund will be approved so we can send along a notice offering members the chance to donate to this fund if need be. It has been a while, also, since we did a member survey, which we would also like to include. Another question remains, “should we mail them out, or ask people to come and pick them up?” Any thoughts?
CGIN passwords and logins have changed for Board Member access. (Passwords change quarterly).
We had to ask a petitioner to refrain from collecting signatures for impeachment outside the store because the cause was determined to be “too political.” We currently have no written policy in place that would have allowed (or prevented) his organization to solicit signatures. More from Allen G:
We've made a product switch in the dairy department. Some of you may have noticed that we are now carrying Garelick Farms instead of Oakhurst. I'm including the notice that we posted on the dairy door regarding these changes. Some interesting things to note are that the change was prompted by member concern regarding the purity of the Oakhurst items that did not contain the farmer's pledge (cottage cheese, sour cream, half-and-half, and cream); Oakhurst really dropped the ball on informing us of services and products that could have prevented a change; sales of Garelick are surpassing sales benchmarks set by Oakhurst; and our other local dairy vendors (White's Orchard and Caldwell's) are supportive of the changes.
Update on labor concerns: attached is a copy of the labor report that I prepared for the management team. We have pre-emptively trimmed 40 hrs. from our peak summer scheduling in anticipation of our winter slowdown. Ideas for promotions to boost sales have not been forthcoming from our Department Heads with the exception of the deli. They have re-instituted the daily lunch special. Sunday labor averages run at an adjusted average of 15%, and Saturday labor averages run at an adjusted average of 13.5%. The real labor burden, according strictly to the numbers, is on weekday delivery mornings, when we have dept. heads working on their orders while stockers put away incoming orders. We are not making any plans to make any more major changes to our schedule at this point.