General Managers Report                                                                        12/20/07

●      It has been our pleasure to announce that former Produce Assistant Manager, Tom Luther, has been promoted to Produce Manager upon Genevieve's departure.  Genevieve has moved to North Carolina with her new husband for personal and family reasons.  Tom has moved forward in his new position with great energy, hiring a new staff member with highly relevant produce experience, and improving cooler organization.  Tom has also been working to streamline his electronic inventory maintenance, and has plans to improve his department's receiving procedures for both ease of vendors and staff.  We anticipate a seamless transition with the vendors, as Tom has already established strong relationships with many of last year's growers. He also shows a willingness to make dealing with vendor concerns his number one priority.

●      Staff members and Board members alike had the opportunity to attend the Maine Feeds Maine teleconference this past month.  In attendance were GM Erica Buswell, Education Co-ordinator Fran Clemetson, Board Member Karen Aveni,and new produce staff member Chris Grigsby. Discussion centered around brainstorming solutions for overcoming obstacles that keep our state from being self-sufficient in food production.  Obstacles include lack of new farmers in the industry, lack of adequate and efficient distribution channels, lack of customers that make meals from whole, fresh, ingredients, and a lack of policy-makers in Augusta that hear the concerns  about sustainable agriculture.  Solutions offered included more education around food preserving, more marketing incentives to eat locally, and increased support for farmers' markets and CSA's. In addition, we had the opportunity to network with a number of other organizations that share a mission similar to ours, and had the great perspective of being able to see that collective, grassroots power is slowly changing the face of agriculture in our state for the better.  By cooperating with each other, we have real potential to make a big impact on policy-making.  We can also say that the potential for creating and growing producer's co-ops in our state is huge and timely.

●      Our health insurance provider, Dirigo Choice, has ended their relationship with partner Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and is now partnering with Harvard-Pilgrim Health Care.  Upon assessing other options for health insurance, including possibly adding a Health Savings Account benefit, we determined that the interests of our staff, as well as our interests as a small, independent business, are best served by continuing to utilize Dirigo Choice for our health insurance needs. Another reason to continue our relationship with Dirigo is to show support for state subsidized health care.

●      Spinning off of our training experience at Rising Stars, Kimalee and Erica are in the process of creating a supervisory training manual for department managers that supervise employees of their own.  Proposed training material includes exemplifying co-operative leadership, modeling superior customer service, building a strong departmental team, the importance of staff training, developing the leadership skills of your staff, building systems for effective communication, setting standards for accountability, evaluating staff performance, tracking department financials, promoting co-operative principles and values, goal setting, taking care of oneself, and basic IT knowledge.  We hope to present each training module at special DM meetings, and plan to implement the new program in January in order to get through all the training material before we start our busy season in May.

●      We enjoyed the most well-attended staff holiday party that any of us could remember this past week.  As far as we can tell, a great time was had by all, with fabulous food, the best door prizes ever, and a great team effort to get set up, and then cleaned up.  In the spirit of celebration, we made perhaps the best barter for Co-op equity in our history:  a non-refundable membership for 10 gallons of organic chocolate and vanilla pudding!

●      Membership update:  We've had 40 new members join since our last meeting.  At the end of November, we suspended 45 memberships due to non-payment.  As of January, the finance office will be helping us keep track of how many of those members eventually make a payment so as to get a more complete picture of how many members remain out of good standing.