Dear Cooperators and Friends,

Spring is such an energizing time of year. All around me trees are budding, new birds are arriving from their winter away, and every day my garlic gets a little taller. It’s a time for new growth at FCI as well! We were so proud to share our updated vision and mission and our new strategic plan with you all in March. The outpouring of excitement and support we’ve received from startup cooperators and partners is bringing us great energy as we begin to examine all of our work with an equity lens and enact our plan. 

As you look through our plan, you may notice that partnerships and collaboration are present throughout our priorities. If we know anything from the cooperative model, it’s that we will never succeed in isolation. Connecting and collaborating with partner organizations has been a bright spot in our year so far. These kinds of collaborations help us form a collective support network for startups and ensure that we’re identifying emerging needs and trends, working together to fill gaps, and learn from – and with each other.

Here’s just a smattering of some ways that we’re in collaborating to best support startups:

• As part of our redesign of the startup food co-op development process, we’ve been gathering feedback and insights from partners who are steeped in co-op development with us like seven roots, Columinate, National Co+op Grocers (NCG), and your Peer Group facilitators
• Our Peer Group startups, past and present, are helping us take Cooperative Principle Six to new levels by generously sharing their expertise and experience with other Peer Groups. Thank you to Assabet Co-op Market, Gem City Market, Prairie Food Co-op, and Suncoast market for presenting in our Peer Groups this spring! 
• We’re starting to meet with presenters to collectively plan the agenda for the 2024 Up & Coming Conference (September 12-14th – mark your calendars!) 
• And, we’ve been collaborating with NCG as they develop their process for supporting startups, and to make sure startups have the information they need to access quality market studies.

Collaboration is cooperation, and together with startup cooperators and partners we’ll continue to build a more equitable, liberatory, and successful startup food co-op movement! 

As always, there are great tools and information throughout this edition of our enews. Startups across the country are gearing up to open this spring and summer, and others are reaching some important milestones. Many of you are gearing up for your annual meetings – did you know we have a tool for that? And, we are getting ready to release a new FCI Action Guide that so many people have been asking for: a guide all about how to convert an existing grocery store into a food co-op. With independent grocery stores closing at an alarming clip and a generation of store owners thinking about retirement, this guide comes at an important time. We’ll be hosting a special webinar about the new tool in May and will be sharing more details soon!

In cooperation,

Faye

 

Resource Spotlight

Planning an Impactful Meeting

With the warm weather returning our minds turn to . . . annual meetings! The majority of startup food co-ops have their annual meetings between April - October each year, with the largest number in the fall, so it is time to start thinking about what to include in your annual meeting agenda and all the details you’ll need to iron out for the event. We’ve got a lovely 101 primer document on running ownership meetings from the Firebrand Cooperative on our website to get you started, you can find it HERE!

See All our Resources at FCI.coop >>

Startup UPDATES & Celebrations

Pullman Good Food Co-op - site announcement - PGFC, located in Pullman, WA, has announced the site of their future food co-op store and will begin their fundraising campaign this spring to raise the capital to move forward with purchasing the building! 

Wild Onion Market - GM hired - March was a big month for this startup on the north side of Chicago! Congratulations to them on reaching 2000 founding owners last month, closing their funding gap and becoming officially fully funded, being 90%+ complete with the construction of their future store, and, if that weren’t enough . . . on hiring their permanent General Manager, Teresa Meza! 

Fertile Ground Food Co-op - major grant received -  Located in southeast Raleigh, NC and with a future store location announced, this startup food co-op just keeps building on their momentum - they’ve just announced being a major recipient of the Wake County Board of Commissioner’s community grants program, being awarded $1 million toward the cost of building their grocery store! 

Caledonia Food Co-op - major funding milestone  - This St.Johnsbury, VT startup had a dream location go vacant and go up for sale almost overnight in 2023, and acted. Outmaneuvering a dollar store chain to put down $350,000 to secure an option to purchase the site, crowdsources from their owners and community in mere days. Needing to reach $2.2 million to complete the purchase, the CFC announced they passed the $1.1 million mark in mid-March, ahead of their projections, and expect to sign the final purchase agreement for the site by the end of this month! 

                      Announced Opening Dates!

This spring, everything is popping up food co-op! These startup food co-op’s have announced official target opening dates so far for 2024:

• May 1st, 2024 - Detroit People’s Food Co-op; Detroit, MI (North End neighborhood)
• May 15th, 2024 - Food Shed Co-op; Woodstock, IL 
• June 12th, 2024 - Wild Onion Market; Chicago, IL (Rogers Park neighborhood)

Upcoming Events & WORKSHOPS

• FCI special webinar about converting your grocery store into a co-op, coming in May: We are releasing a new action guide to help you convert an existing grocery store into a community-owned cooperative, and will be hosting a webinar on the topic. More details coming soon!
• National Rural Grocery Summit, June 24-25 in Montgomery, AL. The summit is co-hosted by the Rural Grocery Initiative at Kansas State University and the Hunger Solutions Institute at Auburn University. FCI will be on-hand to lead sessions about food co-ops. If you’re a rural startup, consider attending!
• CCMA, May 30-June 1 in Portland, ME. This national conference for open food co-ops is hosted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives. FCI will be there connecting with established food co-ops and sharing innovations, news, and trends from startups!

• Up & Coming Food Co-op Conference, September 12-14 in Kalamazoo, MI. Don’t forget to save the date for the national conference for YOU - startup food co-ops! We’ll start sharing more information soon, and registration will open in June!

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SUPPORT SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS

How has FCI’s programs and support helped your startup achieve your goals?

“If it wasn't for FCI's support, I think we honestly might have given up long ago. I think that our co-op has taken advantage of, and benefited from, every program that FCI offers.  From their guidebooks to their Peer Group calls to the Up & Coming Food Co-op Conference, the FCI team is always available to offer expert advice and guidance. I'm continually impressed with how much support they are able to provide to the startup community. They are a small but mighty crew! We would not be where we are today, on the verge of starting construction of our store, without FCI's support!” Kim Frink, Board President, SunCoast Market Co-op

Thank you Kim and SunCoast Market Food Co-op, for entrusting FCI to support you through your co-op journey! There are so many other startups, like SunCoast Market, that rely on FCI throughout their co-op’s development. To meet the growing needs of the startup community, FCI must grow and transform our work to build a more just food system through cooperation and we need your support. 

MAKE AN IMMEDIATE IMPACT BY DONATING TODAY! Donations are critical to our work as they provide the necessary funding to directly support our programs, resources and initiatives. With your generous contributions, we can expand our reach, deepen our impact, and create positive change.

DONATE

We want to hear from you!! Cooperative Principle 5 emphasizes the importance of education, training, and information sharing.  Each month we will share up to five items that are of interest to the co-op community. This month we are sharing three inspiring articles. If you would like to submit your P5 to our corner, please use this form for consideration. You can also access the form on our website.

• This one’s from 2019, but such a powerful and relevant piece about how food co-ops are often more successful than chain grocery stores in “USDA LILA” communities: “Why community-owned grocery stores like co-ops are the best recipe for revitalizing food deserts.”
• Dollar stores’ role in communities is complicated. Here are three articles we were reading recently: one, two, three.
• The first CGRI (Cooperative Governance Research Initiative) survey yielded enthusiastic responses from 500 cooperatives, capturing substantial diversity in terms of industry, type, size, age, and location, and creating a baseline for the range and frequency of cooperative governance practices. Targeted follow-up interviews generated additional insights.Governance Study, Findings from the Cooperative Governance Research Initiative, UW Center for Cooperatives, 2022.

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