General Manager's Report to the Board 5/24/07
Thank you to Karen and Bindy, who joined in on a Q and A session with the folks from the Portland Food Co-op. It was great to be able to offer the historical perspective that both of these women were able to bring to the table. While I haven't yet heard back from the PFC crew about their visit, I think we were able to offer them some good info and it felt good to be putting our Principles into practice by mentoring this up and coming co-op.
Thank you also to Paul and Lynne R. who joined us this past Monday to help begin the consolidation of the membership surveys. We made it through the very first page of the document: early results suggest that of the 225 members that responded, two-thirds of them do 50% or less of their shopping here, and in most cases, the rest of their shopping at Hannafords. The top two reasons that they shop where they spend the highest portion of their grocery dollars include quality/freshness and Staff knowledge of products. 58% of respondents feel that the customer service offered in the deli rates as a 4 or a 5 on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the best. Hoping to get another round of results compiled before the end of the month.
We've moved into our new bathrooms and love how clean and spacious they are! The new mop sink makes life better in lots of ways. Thanks to Phil for putting in all that time to paint, and for selecting the palate of sunrise colors (based on an informal employee survey) to help keep us all focused in our work.
We are in the midst of transitioning into our summer schedule. New this year are some temporary hours that have been added into the schedule for the time period between May and October 1st. The transition has not gone as smoothly as we were hoping it would, due mainly to an early lack of qualified applicants willing to start at wages between $8 and $9/hr. We feel like we have been able to hire some really great new staff people, however, and are happy that we didn't just fill the open positions with warm bodies.
Our in-house education committee (comprised of Fran, Kate, and Erica) have been brainstorming ideas to get a real member education space created inside the store. We would like to have a place where we could offer handouts regarding nutrition, educational info, and brochures for other Co-ops, as well as a place for people to look through archives of photos and old newsletters, and possibly a lending library for members. We feel strongly that a well-developed education space would both help us to be more effective in our store's mission, as well as help us to promote our Co-op advantage. The committee, along with a large portion of staff members and department heads, favor taking over the castle space for this endeavor, and redesigning the area to include a space where children could hang out while being supervised by their parents, as well as having access to kid-friendly educational activities.
Our main distributor, United Natural Foods, has been slowly moving the number of available products that they offer into another warehouse that is blocked from our use. As a result, we are seeing a decrease in the amount of their inventory that we are able to offer, thus resulting in lots of empty holes on our shelves. We are currently fighting to get United to give us access to the other warehouse so that we can continue to meet our customer's needs. As their second largest account in Maine, we feel that they owe it to us. Other possibilities that are on the table that would help us solve this problem include purchasing our own delivery truck and driving it to their Dayville warehouse ourselves.