Hello out there. Welcome to Smooth Co-operators, a Belfast Community Co-op program. I'm Emily.
I'm Alessandra. And we're here to talk to you today about the cooperative business model and
the Belfast Community Co-op in particular. Today we've been chatting about fall and delicious foods
and apple crisp. Alessandra, you want to tell us about your apple crisp? I made the best apple
crisp the other day. We went apple picking at the Hope Orchard. So we have tons of apples in the
fridge. And some of them are good eating apples and some of them are less good. And I'm always
looking for a dessert that feels like it's cheating a little bit. And this feels like it is because
it has fruit in it. So I got my baking dish, covered the bottom with butter. And then I sliced up the
apples probably like one, two, maybe four layers thick. Like it was apple heavy. It was so good.
That sounds great. And I alternated the rose and how I stacked them. Then I mixed together a little
bit of flour, oat, vanilla, spices, butter, and then like a lot of sugar. A little bit of cane
sugar. But a lot of this like we sell this really dark brown sugar at the co-op. And I wish I knew
what it was called. But it is so flavorful and molasses-y. Put it on top, sprinkled it with water,
put a little extra butter on, and like baked it. And then made homemade whipped cream. I think I'm
going to make it for breakfast because it feels like it has a little bit of protein, a little bit
of sugar, and just was filling and like, I don't know. Sounds delicious. Yeah, I'm thinking about it
right now. I often like to make muffins in the morning. I just use a basic muffin recipe and then
put in whatever I have. So it's been a lot of blueberry muffins recently because we have blueberries
in the freezer. But now that it's fall, it's apple muffin season. And I just love them so much.
Do you cube them up or do you slice them? Mostly chunks. Okay. So it's a little bit of,
it's very random. The shapes are random. And I don't know how I would store this like if I did
my own pumpkin. But I love a pumpkin muffin. Oh my gosh. Yes. Especially with like nuts and
chocolate and butter and pumpkin. But would you like prepare your own pumpkin puree and keep it
in the fridge? Because I always use a can. Yeah. Growing up, my mom and I would boil or steam the
pumpkin or squash to make it soft. And then we'd scoop it out. And then we would put it in containers
and put them in the freezer. Like two cups at a time. So then when you were using a recipe,
you could go to it. You saw it out. Yeah. Have you ever made a stuffed pumpkin? I have. Did we
make stuffed pumpkins together? We might have. With like the bread and the cheese and the onions.
Nope. And peppers. Okay. Well, and sausage. There's a stuffed pumpkin recipe out there
where you like carve out the middle of the pumpkin. And then you put in bread and cheese and onions.
And like more cheese and eggs and sausage. And then you bake it. It's amazing. That's so good.
And then you cut it. So you're eating the pumpkin with the inside. Yeah. So mine, I've done a baked
pumpkin with like wild rice and cranberry walnuts and sausage. And then again, you eat it with
the pumpkin. Your recipe seems to be missing cheese. It is. I think your recipe needs a little
more cheese in it. I think I would agree. Oh my gosh. We love food. Did we come to this podcast
a little bit hungry? We might have. I think it might be a little hungry. But we actually came
today to talk about a few other things, particularly principle six, which is the principle we're on.
But before we get to that, we wanted to talk about things that are really exciting at the
co-op right now. Alessandra, what are you so excited about at the co-op right now? So starting at
6am on Monday, October, we'll say 16th. I'm pretty sure that's right. Common sense 2024 voting started.
So at 6am, everybody at the co-op who has a valid email address got a ballot and voting started.
And since then, 430 people have voted to determine who gets the roundup donation for next year.
And there's a lot of super cool organizations on there. If you didn't get a ballot, you can email
info at bellfest.coop and I will hook you up with all of your ballot information. If you didn't get
a ballot, just go search simply voting in your inbox and you can vote that way. Voting's open
till October 30th. And then I will spend some time tabulating the votes and we'll get ready for an
announcement because the donations have been enormous. They have. $7,000 is an enormous amount
of money for a small organization that literally spends $25,000 a year. Very impressive. And all
of those organizations work to make our community better and that's what we're trying to do. We're
trying to work to make our community better. So just feels like this really great relationship
that we have going on and the owners choose the organizations that are the most dear to them.
And I think that is one reason why the program is so successful. It's sort of tremendously
excited about common sense. Can we call it the most wonderful time of the year? The most wonderful
time of the year. What are you excited about at the co-op Emily? Oh my goodness. We talked about
before in this show that September is our ownership month. In September we decided to focus on
talking to people about equity and doing an equity drive. At the end of August we had 451
fully vested owners. Currently, so right now mid-October, we have 619 fully vested owners.
That's amazing. It is an incredible boost in our numbers. Thank you to everyone who responded,
asked questions, decided that they wanted to support the co-op in this way. It has been
heartwarming to know that our community is behind us. Well we talk about the monetary
investment but also the emotional investment in this business and in this community. And I think
when people read our appeal letter to say like, hey, this is why becoming fully vested is really
great for the co-op. Part of they're doing that because it's like monetarily successful for the
co-op. But the other part of them, they're doing it because they're emotionally invested in this
community and in this business and they're like, well what do you need to thrive? Great. I'll do
what I can to help. That speaks volumes about why this business exists and why we want to make sure
that everybody can get food and have food access and a good job. Yes. Okay, quiz time. Pop quiz.
It's open note folks. Alessandra. Some people know the cooperative principles off the top
of their heads and some people are Alessandra and have to read them off their phone or Emily's list.
Would you mind going through the cooperative principles that we have covered thus far?
I would love to. I love these cooperative principles that bind all cooperative businesses together.
The first one, you've got voluntary and open membership. The second principle is democratic
member control. The third is member economic participation. The fourth is autonomy and
independence. And last month, we visited the fifth cooperative principle, which is education,
training and information. This month, we're focused on the sixth cooperative principle,
which is cooperation among cooperatives. Yeah. Emily, will you define that fun one for us?
Cooperatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the cooperative movement
by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.
So what does that mean in like lay people's terms? Cooperatives work with other cooperatives
for the benefit of humanity. What's really fun about principle six is that it also speaks to
one of the cooperative values, solidarity cooperatives are better when they're working together.
When they work together, they can pool their resources to gain expertise. They can scale.
They have a support structure. They can be more sustainable. They can have a bigger impact,
especially they can share costs and resources, which is huge and something that our co-op
participates in through various organizations such as NCG and Caluminate. And we're going to
go over those in a second. It's cool because I think every time I've gone to like a workshop or
a conference that was focused on cooperatives, the focus isn't on ourselves as competition.
The focus is on collaboration. The focus is on sharing something that you've done that was
successful, asking for help when something is hard, bringing to light all of these organizations
that we've learned to use as resources that are also cooperatives and figuring out how to
network with those people so that we can all do better. All cooperatives want other cooperatives
to do better. Something that's really cool that happens in our state every year is the main cooperative
business alliance. They put on a conference called the P6 conference. It brings together people from
all different types of cooperatives within the state to talk about certain aspects of cooperatives.
It's really exciting. It happens in April each year. I know Alessandra has attended multiple
times. Probably, I don't know, maybe five or six. The Belfast Community Co-op is always a sponsor
and we try to send people. Most of the time they pick a space that they think is central. So
it's happened in Augusta a lot. A couple of years ago it happened in Belfast, which was really
amazing. So a lot of people got to go to that one. It happened down in Rockland when Rock City was
transitioning from a sole ownership business to a worker cooperative business. In this past year.
It happened in Lewiston because there's a lot of cooperative activity going on out there.
Housing co-ops, grower co-ops, farmer co-ops, as well as food co-ops. That's really fun.
Agriculture in the Somali communities. So we should talk about NCG, which is a huge resource for us.
NCG is the National Cooperative Grocers. Remember when it was NCGA? It was so hard for me to drop
that A. National Cooperative Grocers Association. It's like, no, just National Cooperative Grocers.
So this is a story that I tell in orientation, which is why I jumped in there. I tell this story.
In the 90s, a lot of small food co-ops were putting in their orders to the big distributors
and their orders were getting dropped because they weren't big enough. And so all these food
co-ops called each other up and they do the thing where they're like, I'm having some trouble.
Do you think you can help me? And the other food co-ops were like, oh, we can't help you because
that we're having the exact same problem. So all these co-op got together and said, maybe we can
form a larger co-op and we will file our orders through this larger co-op. And then they can't
turn us down because our order will be big enough. And National Cooperative Grocers was born.
So they helped to coordinate bulk ordering through all of the co-ops. And that has sort of down the
line allowed the co-ops to get better deals on bulk buying. And then all of those sales and deals
and cost savings can be passed down to the shopper. Even beyond that, NCG and UNFI have come together
to create basically a store line. It's called Field Day. It's like, if you ever go into Haniford
or Walgreens and you see there like Haniford and Walgreens branded products, we have that too.
It's just called Field Day. And it's just like whatever you would call the generic brand. And
we go through a lot of different steps as well as other co-ops go through the same steps to keep
those products at a certain price so that those products can continue to be accessible staples
in all of our stores. And then lastly about National Cooperative Grocers is when you're a co-op,
you exist to serve your owners or your members. So if your owners and members are having a specific
difficulty, the Cooperative Business Model calls you to help fill that need. And so a lot of startup
co-ops and a lot of existing co-ops were having a lot of need with designing and remodeling their
stores because they're not a typical grocery store, but you do also have to like know about
grocery to build a grocery store. And so the NCG developed this whole development cooperative
aspect to their business to help more co-ops exist and to like function like a good business.
So they help to put together design plans, market studies, they can go store by store,
they can go department by department, some people specialize in produce and they come in and they're
like, oh my goodness, your beans are too close to your bananas. People like their beans and
bananas separate. They help people just like be really good at being grocers. Yeah, that was a need.
We've had department specific consultants come in from NCG. Recently we did have someone in the
produce section. Super friendly and awesome. So glad that he came. But we've had somebody come and
talk to us about diversity, equity, and inclusion. That was really great. They also hold department
specific conferences. Department managers can go to these conferences where there are other
like minded department managers from other co-ops and they can share ideas and resources and training
and it's just an incredible focus on training, not even just department managers, but general
managers. So our general manager has to four times a year attend meetings where the focus is on the
cooperative business. Yes. How are things doing? What are the trends? What can you learn? How can
you be a better manager? What are other people doing that's absolutely crazy but it works?
What are other people doing that's absolutely crazy and maybe we should avoid it and stop doing it?
But the focus is on training and development. We do get a lot of benefits for being part of NCG.
Good turn just joined. Co-ops up and down the main coast. Portland food co-op in Portland.
Rising tide food co-op in Dameroscota. Good turn food co-op in Rockland. Belfast community co-op
in Belfast and Blue Hill co-op in Blue Hill. All of us are members of NCG. So who else? Maybe
Caluminate next. Caluminate. Everybody used to have a different name. They used to be called this back
in my day. Caluminate used to be CDS Consulting. They changed their name to Caluminate. It's a
cooperative of consultants. So these are people who have expertise in different areas of the
cooperative business. So it could be board governance. It could be operations. It could be finance.
There's just a wide range. IT. I'm not thinking of everything obviously, but there's a very long
list. They do things such as trainings. They have a huge amount of trainings and it's been
really great because they used to do all of their trainings in person. But because of the COVID pandemic
everybody has changed the way that they are operating and now they provide a multitude of
online trainings. So they're so much more accessible. More people can join. More people can join.
It's more flexible. Especially for us living in Maine. We don't have to travel out of state to go
to a training. They used to try to do some place that was central to a lot of co-ops and that's never
Belfast, unfortunately. Yeah. Sometimes we would partner with some of the other coastal co-ops here
to have trainings. But again, then there's still logistics and everybody agreeing on a time and
when you can join a training because it's offered three different times in one week or it's pre-recorded.
Yeah. You can just reach a lot of people. And it's funny because CDS Consulting was Cooperative
Development Services and so they focused on co-ops. They came from co-ops. They were marketing
managers, board presidents, general managers, cashiers. They were everybody from co-ops and
they came together to support co-ops. And they are a co-op. And then they kind of decided at some
point in time that they could use the tools and the principles and the values that they were using
to support co-ops and support other businesses in the same way that co-ops need support, other
small businesses need support. And they thought that they were really well outfitted to bring the
cooperative model even further into their consulting business, which is super cool because it's a
little bit, it's all out front and forward, but it is a little bit of an unusual way to reach some
of those businesses because the cooperative model again isn't taught in schools. It's this thing
that it's like, it's a little bit radical when you bring it out into the world because it's about
collaboration and cooperation and not competition. It's about running a great business and supporting
all those other great businesses around you. Not only do they do trainings, but they also have
specific consulting hours. So if you have an issue, like we just did our capital campaign,
I believe we used a consultant from Columinate as well as a consultant from NCG. So having those
resources, having those people with expertise that you can talk to is invaluable.
And they have such an incredible reading library. If you're like, oh, I've just always wanted to
know about board finance or about, you know, how to be an HR person in the cooperative world and
all those things are there. Startup co-ops, all of those articles are there and are pretty wide
ranging and pretty comprehensive. Cooperative main business alliance is another way that we can show
there's cooperation among cooperatives in Maine. A bunch of, if not all, of the cooperative businesses
in Maine belong to the cooperative main business alliance. We support each other with
advertising. We support each other through funding and education for co-op month this month. Yeah,
October is co-op month. They're doing webinars that are about finance, housing co-ops, our general
managers taking part in one that's about expansion and how to get funding for those expansion
projects and then also how to like continue to review the funding in a finance way afterwards.
And cooperative main business alliance puts on the principal six conference every year. And that's
really important because that's a place for producer, consumer, grower, worker, housing,
childcare, co-ops all to come together and to share their successes and hopefully try to spread
that information out into the world. And one thing before we move on to anything else that
cooperative main business alliance is really great at doing is legislation work. So they work with
lobbyists, I guess. We think like maybe lobbyists are bad, but in this case if it's cooperatives,
maybe they're good. I don't know. They work with representatives from the state of Maine to get
bills put into play that favor the cooperative business model. So that means that if you are a
sole proprietor business and you want to sell your business, you're retiring, you haven't found a
good buyer, or somebody you found can't afford the business, but you know that they would be great
at running it. You can call cooperative main business alliance and they will work with you
to transition your business from a sole proprietorship to a worker owned co-op. So that happened
the most recently that I can think of with Liberty Graphics. Oh yeah. And so that was a sole proprietor
ownership for like, I don't know, 30 plus years, but a lot of the workers that work there have
are dedicated and have worked there for a long time. So they worked with cooperative main business
alliance to build bylaws, to build a board, to build a governance structure, to build a structure
of accountability and empowerment so that they could take over the business. And that's what
they've done. They are expanding and they are renovating their workspace. They have new storefronts.
They're making new shirts all the time still. And they're like really continuing this business
that was built and run by one person for a very long time who was very successful in order to
maintain the integrity of the business. He felt like selling it to the workers was the only way
to do that because somebody else would swoop in and just see dollar signs and just do anything to
make the most money. And he knew that's not the legacy he wanted to leave behind with his business.
Such a cool story. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. And because obviously workers have to run a business that
makes money, but it's balanced with the accountability to the community and the environment that he
always was working for. We should also talk about CCMA, which is the Consumer Cooperative
Management Association. They do a big conference once a year. It's always in June. This June 2024,
it's going to be in Portland, Maine. Someone in our office looked it up yesterday. It's the last
day in May. Yeah. May 31st, which is a Friday to June 2nd, which is Sunday. Great. It's pretty
amazing. It's going to be a fun party time down in Portland celebrating cooperatives. Oh my goodness.
I went to CCMA once in Minneapolis and just the energy that is developed there and the excitement
because you hear what all these other people are doing in their cooperative to like make the world
better. And then you and then like, well, what goes on for you when you share your story? You're
so used to hearing your own story that it sounds normal and they hear it for the first time and
they're like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. That's what you're doing. And you're like, oh yeah,
we're all doing this thing together. We are all cooperating together for our community so that
they're better. Yeah. As you might be able to tell, Al Sondra and I are pretty pumped about
principle six. It's one of, I mean, basically when you talk about cooperative principles
amongst the cooperative community, P six is like what always comes up because it's just really great.
It's so beneficial. Yeah. I'm wearing a Liberty Graphics shirt right now. But we wanted to talk
to you about a few other things today too. So now we're reaching the end of October. October has been
it's National Co-op Month. It's been so fun to talk to people about it. I just wanted to highlight
really quickly the fact that we sell products in our store from other co-ops and their products
that you probably purchase. Equal exchange is a big one. They do coffee and chocolate,
amongst other things, but we do love their chocolate. They're a cooperative and I'm just
going to go through the list. List them up. Okay. Organic Valley. Cheese, butter, milk. I just love
it. It's great. Florida Natural. Orange juice. Yep. Blue Diamond Growers. Those crackers,
those salty crackers. Rio Hanna. They do wine and olive oil. They make an excellent Malbec if
that's your taste. Frontier Co-op. The spices and bulk herbs. Rock City Coffee. That's my favorite.
Dean's Beans. Also delicious because it's coffee. Real pickles. I'm going to comment on all these
now because I love pickles. Yeah. Aracacia. Not sure what that is. Essential oils. Oh, they're
great. Divine Chocolate. Again, chocolate. Yes, please. Organic Prairie. Yeah, pretty sure that's
beef. And Cabot Creamery. African Market Baskets. Personal favorite. I have so many. I use them
all over the house. They're so useful. Tillamook. That's my kid's favorite ice cream. That's great.
Port Clyde Fresh Ketch. Delicious seafood. Yeah. Very local. Cooperatively caught. And Tooties Tempeh.
That's a company that's in Bittiford. Yeah. If you haven't tried Tempeh, you should. They have
so many recipes on their website because I feel like I was a little overwhelmed by cooking Tempeh
for the first time. Yeah. But their recipes are easy to follow and it's all about the seasoning,
making things delicious, get that healthy protein. I really enjoy Tempeh. Yeah. We've got a bunch of
things that are happening in the store. But I just want to say one cheesy thing where it's like
October is Co-op Month and we love to talk about co-ops. But hopefully that list goes to show that
we celebrate co-ops all year long. Yeah. Our emphasis is on working with other co-ops,
grower co-ops, worker co-ops, you name it. Those are the business structures and the business
practices that we want to perpetuate because we know that they are making their communities better
and we want to support them in that effort. So yeah, Co-op Month. Amen. Slash all year long.
Stuff that's happening in the store. Okay. So renovation in particular. We are calling the
two new structures that you can see on the outside of the store. We call them at the store the bump
outs. So those are the new spaces that we are designing. One of the spaces is for shop for me
and one of the spaces is for the cafe seating area. So the bump outs are framed. We're starting
to put up the walls in the shop for me bump out. Very soon you will get an incredible behind the
scenes view of what's going on in the store because one of the entrances will be through the cafe
bump out. We are going to be re-grading, redesigning and repouring a curb concrete slab in the front
of the store. This will serve as the entrance to the store. This will also serve as our outdoor
patio space. We will have a curb for the first time folks, which means that when you're driving a car
you cannot drive it just right up to the glass, which I feel so great about. You'll be stopped
by a huge improvement. By a big chunk of granite and concrete. So just follow the signs. We're
going to work really, really, really hard to make sure that everything is well labeled,
to make sure every worker in the store is well informed. And if you just take a deep breath
and go slow to find your parking spot, we promise we will help you get inside the store
and find what you need. And hopefully you will enjoy the behind the scenes views. And as you may
be experiencing, there's going to be the parking lot disruption. It means that going in through
the Pendleton Street entrance is going to be your best bet. That's that one-way street in between
our parking lot and the parking lot of the Masonic building. And again, there will be a sign there.
It does mean that deliveries on Fridays will impact the parking lot. Again, we work with a
really great team who they all know this is coming. They're all making plans to make sure that
everybody is as safe as possible, that the parking lot is as clear as possible. But we just ask
you to be patient. We're really thankful for your patience. Once the concrete is poured, it's going
to look, it's going to be pretty exciting, I think. Yeah. All of these little things, the bump out and
the concrete, there are all these sort of little visions of what the store is going to feel like
when we're done with it. That's awesome. If you are interested in watching our renovation videos
that Doug and Alessandra put up, please check out our YouTube page. You can go to YouTube and search
Belfast Community Co-op and they're there generally in the shorts section and they are just lovely.
I've created a whole playlist that's called like renovation weekly updates or something
and it starts with week two. So you can just watch, maybe it's 15 minutes at this time.
Yeah, that's so fun. And just watch the whole progression of the store change. Yeah. So something
else that's happening. Unfortunately, this event will have passed by the time you're hearing it,
but the board is putting on owner forums again. It's something that we are that they had done in
the past, but because of the pandemic that got disrupted. They're really excited about doing
in-person events again. So if you have questions about the renovation, unfortunately, again,
you'll be hearing this too late. But hopefully you've seen it in the store and through our E news
that there is an owner forum happening that is going to focus on that. And I only bring it up
because I want everyone to be aware that this is just the beginning. The board is excited about
having these in-person things. There should be more forum events coming in the future. So stay
tuned. Well, thanks Emily. I guess we're going to wrap it up here. Yeah. Thanks everybody. I hope you
enjoyed learning about principle six. Again, one of our favorites. Yeah. Goodbye, cooperation nation.
Bye. Thank you. You have been listening to episode number seven of smooth cooperators
hosted by Alessandra Martinelli and Emily Berry produced at the facilities of Belfast Community
Radio.