Survey Says?

John Tashiro, General Manager

Fall is around the corner, students are back in school, and we’re busy making plans at the Co-op for the upcoming fall and winter holidays, all while we continue to try and find ways to serve you better. To that end, a HUGE thank you for your feedback through our survey this past May to understand how we're meeting your needs and where we can improve.

First, we were excited to receive 1,700 surveys and, of course, we always love to hear from our many customers and Members who offer us feedback each and every day! We picked 10 lucky winners to receive $50 gift cards as part of our survey raffle, and then just for fun offered $25 gift cards to the first and last customers who completed the survey. Your responses represent just over 15% of our total Membership and with most responses coming from Members, it is certainly a significant sample!

As a Co-op, we’re here to meet the needs of our Members and our community and can’t stress enough the value of hearing from you. What did this year’s results tell us? Well we’ve been reviewing a lot of data – beyond the regular questions, we asked some open-ended ones that garnered over 1,200 individual responses. You have valuable opinions and it’ll take us some time to sort through them and turn your thoughts into actions for improvement.

What we aim to offer here is a community-owned grocery store that meets the entire community’s needs. Not a small order to fill. Initially, we’ve reviewed survey data to see how our shoppers compare to the Burlington demographics based on age and household income.

When we look at the age groupings of our shoppers, we see anywhere from 6% to 20% represented by all age categories, with the largest percentage of shoppers in the 55-64 age range and the next largest in the 25-30 age range. When we compare each category to current census data for these same age ranges, our shoppers quite closely reflect the community. We certainly have some areas of opportunity where we might not be reaching some age groups as well as others, but for the most part we’re pretty close.

When it comes to household income, our shoppers represent all household income categories, with 5% to 18% in each category, not including the 10% of customers who chose not to share this information. In most categories, we seem to mirror the census percentages; however, one area where we can improve is with our lower-income community members. Currently our Food for All Program (FFA) offers a 10% discount on groceries for shoppers who participate in state and federal programs like 3SquaresVT and WIC. We’re working to improve our FFA program through some specific surveys and focus groups this fall to ensure that we’re meeting the needs of these community members. We’re sure that there are barriers to shopping at the Co-op that we’re not even aware of and with knowledge comes the ability to better serve our community. 

The Co-op offers products with prices and attributes for every budget. We know that some community members think our prices are too high, but in most all of our product categories we offer a variety of price points, not just the higher-end brands. Offering this type of product mix is actually not common for food co-ops and was part of our initial commitment with the City to be everyone’s City Market. For the past year, we’ve had a cross-department team in place to review pricing as well as continue to compare ourselves monthly to all other area grocery stores. We make adjustments where needed to ensure we’re competitive with everyone else; our price comparisons tell us that we are. If you ever have questions about our pricing, please feel free to contact us.

While we’re not able to respond to each individual survey participant, please know that we value your input and review each comment so we can take action where needed. This type of feedback is even more helpful as we plan for expansion. As we work to best meet the needs of customers and Members in our Downtown location, that knowledge is certainly transferable to our South End and other future locations.

Thanks again for everything you do to make our Co-op the bustling store that it is and offer us the opportunity to give back to the community. As a quick example, we sponsor a number of events and donate to many great non-profits, directly and through you in our Rally for Change program. In our last fiscal year ending June 30, 2015, we supported the community with over $286,000 in just sponsorships and donations. That’s certainly something each and every one of our Members should be proud of – you’re all making a tangible difference in your community.

If you have thoughts and ideas, please feel free to introduce yourself next time you’re in the store and let me know what you think. Until then, thanks for all you do!