General Managers’ Report 1/22/08

• There has been turnover in the department of Accounts’ Payable, and this important position is now being staffed by former Staff Rep Erica B. We look forward to utilizing Erica’s excellent organizational skills and ability to keep track of details to bring this department to a level of improved customer and vendor service.

• We’ve completed our end of 1st quarter inventory, which we conducted electronically. At first glance, we were skeptical about the accuracy of the final results, noting some obvious errors in the on hand counts, but upon further review, we feel satisfied that the results have about the same margin of error as doing a physical count. We attribute most of the errors to data entry and an inconsistent knowledge about Catapult’s capabilities and quirks on the part of folks doing doing data entry. We keep getting better at it every time, however!

• Upon the discontinuation of providing used plastic bags for customer carryout of groceries, we’re noticing that we are using a lot of paper bags instead. While some transition time to get used to the idea of “bringing your own bag” is to be expected, the front end crew has asked us to entertain the possibility of charging for paper bags to help expedite this process, with the ultimate goal being to discontinue the practice of providing any packaging other than boxes. Our thought was to solicit feedback from the membership as a whole on our upcoming member survey so as to best make a decision that would be in the best interests of serving the membership as a whole.

• Please note that a new edition of a Belfast Co-op Cookbook is in the works! Caryn, our Grocery Manager, is in the process of convening a cookbook committee and she is inviting Board members to be a part of the process. We also hope that all Board members will submit your favorite recipes. You can submit them electronically by e-mailing them to belfastcoopcookbook@yahoo.com, or by dropping them in the box at the customer service counter.

• We had a pretty successful holiday season, overall. Staff report that they’ve never seen it so busy in here as it was the two days before Christmas, not even in the summer! We noticed that we had a lot of folks with guests that had various dietary restrictions coming in and looking for “weird” (their term) ingredients that they knew they could find here. We did see a lot of new faces. Our participation in the New Year’s By the Bay Festival was also a success, with a packed house during the hours our performer was here, and a decent amount of deli activity up until closing time. It was a good idea to trim our hours of operation back to 10 o’clock instead of the traditional midnight, however.

• We’ve now operated at our new Winter Hours schedule on Sundays for 2 consecutive weeks, with nary a peep of inconvenience or negativity from customers accustomed to our previous hours of operation. Our Front End Manager, Mylisa, feels that this has been a positive change, and our customers appear to have adapted quickly to the change. It appears that most of our Sunday regulars were well informed ahead of time, as only a few folks are coming and rattling the doors after they’ve been locked for the evening.

• We are going to be installing an entirely new telephone system by the end of the month. Our old system was showing signs of being in the “death throes,” and so we made the decision to bite the bullet and replace them lest we suddenly find ourselves with no useable phones. Zafra in IT will be co-ordinating their installation along with Quality Communications, the contractor with which we have a well established working relationship. We’ve also switched over to TouchTone Communications for our local calling, long distance, and Internet service, which may save us a bundle over what we were paying with our previous provider, Nationwide.