A Year of Growth

John Tashiro, General Manager

While I personally hope the warmer weather continues for a bit longer, the cooler early mornings and evenings certainly feel refreshing. The return of students to the downtown scene, fewer out of state cars parked in the lots, and the gradual increase of geese sightings are all signs that fall is not too far away. At the Co-op, we too are busy making plans for the upcoming fall and winter holidays, all while we continue to try and find ways to serve you better.

First and foremost, THANK YOU for your continued support of the Co-op over the last 12 months. In June, we finished our 2016 fiscal year (July 1, 2015 – June 30, 2016) and will be sharing those results in the near future. In the meantime, here are some quick highlights:

·   Co-op sales were just over $41 million with almost 70% of those sales from Members.

·   Local and Made in Vermont products made up almost 40% of sales, or just over $14 million dollars.

·   We created a new Co-op Basics program. We lowered the price on over one hundred items, including local and organic foods, to create a set of high quality staples for every shopper.

·   Membership grew to almost 12,000, a 6% increase over the prior year. When you include all of the household Members on these accounts, we’re at about 20,000 Members!

·   Co-op Member Workers volunteered almost 18,000 hours in our community! This equates to over 8 full-time volunteers and is an almost 4.5% increase over the prior year.

·   Customers donated over $137,000 by rounding up their orders at the register through our Rally for Change program. We’ve donated over $230,000 through this program in its first 21 months, with over $97,000 going directly to the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf to support their innovative programs.

·   Our Food for All program (FFA) offers a 10% discount to community members who participate in 3SquaresVT, WIC, Social Security Supplemental or Disability Income. This last fiscal year, FFA members received almost $172,000 in discounts, allowing them to use that money for other necessities like housing and heat.  

At the same time that we’re improving on how we operate the downtown store for our Members and customers, we continue to make good progress with our expansion plans. We presented our plans for the South End store to the Development Review Board (DRB) on August 17 as part of the City’s permitting process. Our presentation was well received and we appreciated the many testimonials from the South End community in support of the Co-op. Prior to this presentation, we made some changes to our site plan to mitigate some ongoing neighborhood traffic concerns. To best explain these changes, we made a short video that you can see on the expansion page of our website. We will be presenting additional information at the September 20 DRB meeting to address additional questions and we are looking forward to this session.

In addition, we’re continuing to create plans for our smaller format store in the Old North End, near the corner of North Union Street and North Winooski Avenue. We started the permit application process with the City at the end of August and continue to work on draft interior and exterior plans with our expansion team. We anticipate requesting Board approval for this project at the October meeting.

With fall in the air, it’s time for our annual Co-op Food Fest (formerly known as our Harvest Festival)! Join us on Sunday, September 25 from noon-4pm at Union Station, 1 Main Street. Meet over four dozen local producers and sample their delicious products! We’ll have door prizes, face painting, free chair massages and live music by Hard Scrabble. Join us to meet your local farmers and producers and learn where your food comes from.

Thanks again for everything you do to make our Co-op the bustling store that it is and for offering us the opportunity to give back to the community. We are committed to serving you, our Members and the broader community. Looking forward to seeing you at the Co-op and making it another great year!