Hey all you co-operators out there, welcome to Smooth Co-operators, a Belfast Community
Co-op program.
I'm Emily.
And I'm Alessandra.
And we're here to talk to you about the cooperative business model and the Belfast Community Cooperative
in particular.
And today we are going to talk about principle three, member economic participation.
So one of the things that makes co-ops different from other businesses is that they all adhere
to these seven cooperative principles.
We are walking you through them and we have come now to the third cooperative principle
which is member economic participation.
The International Cooperative Alliance defined and established these seven principles over
time and I think the last time they revised them was in 1995.
And so the definition of member economic participation according to the International
Cooperative Alliance is, members contribute equitably to and democratically control the
capital of their cooperative.
At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the cooperative.
Members usually receive limited compensation if any on capital subscribed as a condition
of membership.
Members allocate surpluses for any of the following purposes, developing their cooperative
possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible, benefiting
members in proportion to their transactions with the cooperative and supporting other
activities approved by the membership.
So basically when you decide to join a co-op, there's an investment that you have to make.
Sometimes for a food co-op say, it's a smaller investment like $200, sometimes for a worker
co-op or a more industrial co-op it's like $10,000.
Basically the co-op is coming together to meet the needs of the community and they have
to figure out how much money they need to raise to start meeting those needs.
But in this case, the capital is not the master.
The co-op doesn't exist to have a lot of money or to make a lot of money, but rather the
capital is the servant.
The capital is there to help be a tool to be utilized so that these businesses do well
and end up serving their owners.
There are some businesses where the capital is a little more stagnant.
It's a startup cost and then you kind of run the business from there.
For a consumer co-op it's a little bit different because for us our capital is like kind of
constantly flowing in in terms of member participation because people are shopping there on a daily,
weekly, monthly basis.
As the co-op makes money and puts money into the bank and there's a surplus, that money
is then the shared capital of the owners.
We should talk about ways that owners put capital into the business.
Obviously, the first one is going to be by shopping.
People who are actually utilizing the store and purchasing the goods that they need from
the co-op, which was made to provide those for them.
Recently, we put together a new brochure called Ways to Save.
We also have a website with the same name because there is the perception that the co-op
is an expensive place to shop.
It's true.
Right now, if you wanted to go in and buy an eight dollar jar of sardines, we've got
that for you.
Some people really appreciate that.
Other people would like to buy a two dollar jar of sardines and we also have that.
In the Ways to Save brochure, it lets you know that there's all these different colored
circles around the store that give you a clue as to what that product is.
Sometimes that means it's on sale with co-op deals.
Sometimes it means that it's always the lowest price that it can be and that's co-op basics.
Sometimes it means that our store has decided to put a specific product on sale and that's
called Fresh Picks.
There's also ways to save specifically if you are an owner.
Economic participation, buying groceries at the store.
When you're an owner, you get owner reward points.
For every dollar that you spend, you get 1% of that back.
It goes into a little savings account.
Once that savings account hits $3, you get to use it on any purchase like a coupon.
We also get 2% back on local food.
I love that part.
Local products.
Super cool.
If you shop locally, then your savings account gets bigger faster.
For owners, we also have a pre-ordering program.
If there's a special jar of salad dressing or a special rice that you use all the time,
you can order it in bulk or order it by the case and then you get a 15% discount on that
because we don't have to unpack it and put it on the shelf.
We keep it in its box.
We call you up and you come pick it up so there's less labor.
We can extend that benefit to our owners.
Here's a secret.
I do that for toilet paper all the time.
It's the best.
The other thing we wanted to talk about, just to put it out there, we sat down to talk about
member participation and created a list of all of the different ways that people participate
in the co-op.
The list that we made was long and kind of overwhelming.
I don't even think that we got to the end of it.
There are so many different ways that owners participate in the co-op and that the co-op
then participates in the community and gives back to its owners.
Whatever that flow of money and goods is, the whole intention is to have the money coming
into the co-op and the goods leaving the co-op end up in a positive place to try to impact
the community in a positive way by buying locally from farmers or buying locally from
other producers by having local banks do our payroll, by paying people who work locally,
and then they pay their bills locally and they pay rent locally.
A lot of the money that is generated by the co-op goes back out into the community and
stays local.
Some big box stores are based overseas and all the money that gets spent there leaves.
It leaves this county and it leaves this state and it leaves this country.
We really try to put that emphasis on that economic participation that the co-op keeps
as much money local as we possibly can.
The systems are not set up to make that easy to do.
There are places where we kind of don't have a choice, but anytime we do have a choice
and that choice leads to somebody who is local, that's what we try to do if it's for the best
of the co-op and for the best of our owners.
With that in mind too, it's sort of related because it's about economic participation,
but it's not related, but I feel really connected to the Common Sense Program, which is rounding
up at the register.
I feel like it's amazing that our owners put forward all of these organizations that they're
really passionate about and then the owners vote for the top 12 and those top 12 become
the organizations that we do fundraising for every month is a different organization and
that changes throughout the year and 100% of those donations that come through the co-op.
We're just sort of the middle person in all of this.
We talk to the organizations, we make a couple posters and then it's really the community
that shows up and rounds up at the register, but that's a way that we participate in the
economy, the members as a whole, because we are deciding that these organizations and
their values are important enough that the co-op supports them and represents them.
$5,000 to an organization who only has a $25,000 annual budget is a huge amount of money and
it's like very impressive and very impactful.
So impactful for all of those organizations throughout the month and throughout the year.
And that's thanks to all of you who come in, shop at the co-op and donate your sense to
these organizations.
It's really incredible and we've had some record breaking months recently.
So a huge thank you to everyone who participates.
Yeah, it's really amazing.
Well, I'd love to shout out a little bit about our core program that is cooperative ownership
reaching everyone.
So we do have a program that provides an at register discount for people who are receiving
some sort of financial assistance from either the state or federal government.
So we do require that they are participating in one of these assistance programs, but once
that has been shown to be the case, then people can actually receive a 10% discount
right at the register on their purchases that they make.
And I think that has been hugely beneficial to our population here in Waldo County.
If I remember correctly, we used to have other at register discounts, but we don't anymore.
Why do we do that?
I know many of you will remember when we had a senior discount.
Historically, it was every Tuesday.
It became pretty fun for me as a cashier at the time.
You made a lot of friends.
People still love you and remember you from those Tuesdays.
Really enjoyed cashiering on those Tuesdays.
That was really fun.
However, in 2018, the board and operations were doing a lot of looking at our financial
health and well-being.
What they were seeing is that at register discount that we're providing, particularly
with the senior discount, ended up being that we were giving away our profits before we
were making them.
This is also the time that the board and operations were very seriously looking at doing an expansion,
whether building a new store or renovating the store that we have currently.
They were trying to figure out what they needed to do to make that financially feasible.
Signing up those at register discounts are those places where we weren't giving ourselves
a choice about what to do with our profits.
We were just saying no matter what, they're going to go away instead of after the fact
like, okay, we have this surplus.
What are we going to do with it?
You just mentioned the core discount.
It does mean that any seniors or any owners at all who need to have assistance, we understand
that and we totally want them to have that assistance.
But everybody has different income levels and different backgrounds.
It does mean that there were people who were getting the discount who perhaps it wasn't
a matter of eating food that day or not.
It was just like a real benefit.
I think too that what's notable for me is that while we were doing the at register discount
including the quarterly discount days, we were not able to give out patronage dividend.
Patronage dividend means that at the end of the fiscal year when the co-op has made
money and there's a profit, the board decide what percentage of that profit goes back to
the owners.
That is based on how much you shop.
The more you shop, the better the co-op does, the more patronage dividend you get back.
The whole point of distributing that surplus goes back to this principle where the capital
that the co-op has created is shared capital.
Something that I get asked a lot, why do the cashiers ask for my owner number every single
time I shop?
Every time.
And they do this because of patronage dividend.
Basically we want to make sure that what you are spending at the co-op is reflected in
the dividend that you receive at the end of the fiscal year.
The cashiers need to be diligent in making sure that they hear the number correctly,
they type the number incorrectly, and that they have selected the appropriate name.
I apologize to all those people who get frustrated about that, but it really is due diligence.
We want you to have the correct patronage dividend at the end of the year.
The more you spend at the co-op, the larger your patronage dividend and actually owner
rewards.
Once we switched over to that a couple of years ago, that starts to make a big difference
because if you forget to give your owner number, for example, or you accidentally say somebody
else's and they don't ask you what your name is or there's no confirmation that it's really
you, you could go on to spend $200 on somebody else's account or on no owner account and
then you actually miss out on those owner rewards, which really do add up.
I love owner rewards.
I'm saving all of mine for the family holiday dinner that I have to be in charge of this
year and hopefully that turkey will be a lot less hit to my wallet.
That's amazing because I buy snacks for mine when I don't have cash and I'm like, I wonder
if I have owner rewards.
You have to spend $3 at a time, so sometimes I buy like a $2.50 thing and then I round
up for common sense and I feel good.
I like how that ties in.
Yeah.
When people invest in the store, I don't know if we all think about it as like buying our
little part of the store or as like being in charge of it, but it really is that.
Think about the equity investment and becoming fully vested.
There's going to be a lot more talk about this later, but if you pay $15 a year and
you need to pay $200, like my quick math tells me that that's about 13 years before
people have fully paid in their share, which is totally fine.
We kept it that way because it felt like an accessible amount of money.
It felt like it was on par with what we were asking people to participate in in years past.
When you think about investing in a company, nobody's going to be like, hey, can I become
fully vested over the next 13 years?
They're going to be like, you have to pay in nap.
We want to have this successful and stable business and that's why we need your investment
is because we need you to be emotionally and also monetarily invested in this business.
I think that if we can encourage people to pay their equity a little bit sooner or pay
it in full if they can afford it, that there really is stability in that because the call
doesn't use that money.
That money goes into a bank account and is there to show ourselves or show investors
or show our accountants that we are a solid business, that we have a lot of backing in
our community.
Hmm.
Okay.
What's next?
That member economic participation.
Is there anything that we're missing about it or are there any questions you guys have?
I haven't really gone down this road yet, but it's like, we want to hear from you.
I think I want to hear from people in any way that they can, whether they show up on
every other Friday.
We do community outreach tabling in front of the store from 11 to two where I set up
this beautiful vegetable tablecloth that Emily hemmed for us and we hand out ways to save
brochures and annual reports and maybe free snacks and water.
I want you to tell me what your favorite bar is.
I want you to ask me when cherries are coming in.
I want to hear about all your fun ideas about the new store, about paper, about art.
I want you to tell me about anything that has to do with the co-op you used to be a
part of in the seventies in New York City.
I so want to know.
If you guys have questions about member economic participation or questions about the co-op,
it would be super fun to hear from you and you can write to ownership at bellfast.coop.
Yeah, and we will read it and then we can write you back or we can answer it on our
next podcast.
So before we were talking about internal readiness, we were talking about tightening up our discounts
because we were changing or we were starting to focus more on what we could do for expansion
renovation on the store.
That process started several years ago and now we are actually in the renovation process.
Is there anything you can tell us about what's been going on at the store?
People love videos of cement sliding down the chute into the forms.
I know I do.
Like I have made amazingly detailed videos.
Doug has made videos, our general manager, has made videos just like explaining wonderfully
what's happening in the basement and all of those videos get like eight views by our really
hardcore watchers and listeners.
I made a video where cement is just cascading down the chute into forms and like 400 people
have watched it.
That was my favorite.
Maybe they're just like watching it over and over again or like maybe some out got onto
like some kids channel because I know that lots of kids like construction.
But right now they're putting up forms for the shop for me walls.
I have gotten some super fun education from the guys who are working there and you have
to like you dig the hole.
You level it out.
You do all the fancy laser things to make sure it's level and then you pour these footings
at the bottom of the wall.
You want a nice wide base for stability, but then that has to dry and cure and we all know
what a wet and wonderful summer it's been in man.
So I think took a while and then they build with rebar.
They like build the walls on top of that and then in within that wall is going to be the
slab.
But so right now they're building the forms, which are these like really sturdy boards that
hold in all the concrete.
And it's so precise like you don't want to mess this up.
The rebar has to be in the right place.
The boards all have to be like in the right order because when you think about how much
concrete that is and how heavy it is, it's pretty impressive.
So that's outside the store.
The cafe footings have also been dug and they're going to start to build those in the next
couple of days out in the back of the store.
We're pouring the footings for the hydraulic lift and that will be outside the store, but
it will be fully covered once it's installed.
It'll be within the envelope of the store.
Yes.
Yay.
And we buried a 1000 gallon propane tank because propane tanks that are not buried are like
pretty dangerous.
Yeah.
You can run into them.
Drive their cars into them.
Yeah.
That's very scary.
So we buried that.
We are building a dumpster pad.
If a dumpster gets picked up and put down on asphalt over and over and over again, it
can really grind away the asphalt.
So we've built a concrete pad in hopes that it lasts longer, is more durable.
And in the basement, they're doing the framing for the walls because in the basement, we're
building a meat, cooler, a meat preparation area of prepared foods, cooler and freezer
and a preparation area because right now so much prep for meat and prepared foods happens
on the sales floor.
But guess what is going to be on the sales floor?
Things to sell.
I love that.
Yeah.
So we're going to prepare things downstairs and have more space on the floor because
it will allow us to design the store in a way where you can walk through it.
It won't feel like a traffic jam.
That'll be nice.
Yeah.
I think so.
I'm excited about that.
What else is going on?
The parking lot flow changed, which I know is really hard and I think it was hard because
parking was a challenge anyway.
Mm-hmm.
Sorry.
All over the city.
That's true.
It's a good opportunity to shop early.
We open at eight o'clock, get here at eight, we would love to see you.
Or shop late, we close at eight.
As long as you come in at like 7.30 if you're doing a big shop, we would love to see you.
If you come in at 7.55 and you have a lot of shopping to do, we might be sad about that.
But you should definitely shop when you can.
And we have a free curbside pickup service.
It's called Shop for Me.
Even through all of this, it's still operating.
And it means that you can shop online.
You can even go online and only shop the things that are on sale.
And then someone will shop it for you in the store and then you pick it up.
Like you don't care of your car.
You call.
You say, I'm here.
And they bring it to you.
And it's a nice way to sort of like stay out of the flow of construction, but still
buy the food that you want to buy.
That sounds pretty great.
I'm excited about it.
I haven't actually utilized that service before.
Probably because I'm at the co-op every day.
Every day.
I used to make my kids do it.
So I would be like, oh, you don't like this food that we have for this week?
I would love for you to shop for food that you want to eat.
I love that.
It's pretty adorable.
Well, what else do we have coming up?
There's something really fun.
You want to tell us about the really fun event that we have in August?
It is August 12th from 12 to 2.
Annie and the Rainmakers.
Go check them out.
They're like a very high energy, super fun local band.
Yeah.
Little rock band.
Definitely some dancing.
So we'll be at Marshall Wharf on Saturday, August 12th from 12 to 2.
This is a celebration and a dance party.
This is the capital campaign was successful.
The renovation is moving right along.
This is also one of the first events that we have had publicly post COVID because we
really lost a lot of space inside the store.
Can't close down the parking lot because we need parking.
It should be a really fun time.
They've been in this area for a long time and they called us up and said, hey, back in
the day, we used to donate our time and Goldie would shut down the parking lot and we'd have
a big party and we would do a fundraiser to do this or that thing for the co-op.
And we really want to do that for you guys again.
We love your store.
We love the owners in the community.
We said, make it happen.
Yes, please.
We will figure out the logistics.
So August 12th, Marshall Wharf.
The other fun thing that we're doing is we're going to be at the street party.
So the Belfast Summer Street Party is on July 31st this year.
I think it starts around five.
They shut down High Street and there's games and food and music and lots of local businesses
have tables.
You're going to be there.
Again, that's another great place to talk to us, to come get updates, seeing what we're
doing and talk to the board of directors.
There's other fun things that we're doing and you can find all of those fun things in
a very amazing bi-weekly newsletter that the co-op puts out.
If you would like to sign up for this newsletter, all you have to do is go to Belfast.coop and
at the bottom of that page, there is a place for you to put in your email address and you'll
have a super sweet bi-weekly newsletter that you can go check out.
It tells you updates about the renovation, updates about blueberry pre-orders, for example,
anything you want to know about the common sense groups.
I would also say that if you are interested in any of the videos that Alessandro and Doug
have put together, the Belfast Community Co-op does have a YouTube page.
So it has all of those on there.
I would check them out.
And next time they pour concrete, you better believe I'll be taking another video of it.
I'll watch it.
The other thing that we have going on that we always like to touch on is the Board of
Directors meetings.
So those happen on the fourth Wednesday of each month.
We have a couple obviously coming up, a whole year full of them actually.
The next couple dates will be July 26 and August 23.
Those are happening at 6 p.m. in the Abbott Room at the Belfast Free Library.
You can find more information about that on our website.
If you'd like to attend via Zoom, there is a link to register for that meeting on the
website also.
So we've said it a bunch of times.
I won't say it again.
You know how to find it.
All right, guys.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
We're really excited to talk about everything that's going on the Co-op and Principle 3.
And I would also like to give a big shout out to Vic, who's in charge of the radio station
here in Belfast.
The radio station is in the basement of Waterfall Arts.
And you may have heard of all the ruckus going on around us.
We believe there's a summer camp going on and perhaps a little bit of construction here
and there.
But again, Vic has done an amazing job producing this for us.
Thank you, Vic.
And thank you all for joining us.
You have been listening to Episode 4 of Smooth Co-operator from the Belfast Community Co-op,
hosted by Alessandra Martinelli and Emily Berry, produced at the Facilities of Belfast
B errands at the CO-OP.