Founding Member Drive going well- More news to come

[Capital City Market]

Dear Capital City Market Co-op supporters:
 
The steering committee will be meeting over the weekend to do some information gathering and discuss the next steps forward.   We will update you in the next few days on our recommendations and also the excellent progress made thus far with the Founding Membership Drive.   In the meantime, don’t be shy about sending us your feedback, thoughts, and ideas!   

 

Thank you for your support,

 
Capital City Market Steering Committee
capitalcity...@gmail.com
juneau-f...@googlegroups.com

[Kathy Hill]

Hey guys,

Thanks for your hard work and fast progress with the Capital City Market. Here are my thoughts, since you asked. Sorry this is so long but I have been giving this issue considerable thought. First I will describe my experience then explain my vision.

I have taken a leadership role in two coop groceries. The first was well-established in a storefront when I moved to Norfolk, VA in 1979 and was well known for having the best, cheapest, freshest (and only organic and bulk) spices in town. It was definitely a hippie-model store, but it was successful, with a 3-tiered price structure for public, members, working members. It was about half the size and scope of Rainbow Foods, but had a similar inventory and vibe, and featured a juice bar. We sent members around the region to slaughter organic chickens or pick up homemade tofu. We introduced "fair trade" to the region. It began as a buying club in somebody's garage in the sixties, and functioned that way for several years before opening a retail location. I was long a working member and served on the board in the eighties. I was unable to persuade other board members that our lovable manager was driving us out of business and had to be replaced. That year the store closed permanently (after the directors quit one by one, starting with me). Lesson learned: Directors need to be trained in how and when to read and understand financial statements.  It's not enough to mean well. 

I helped start a coop four years ago, as a member of the Los Angeles Eco-Village,  in Koreatown, a very urban and mostly low-income ethnic neighborhood. Again we started as a buying club. We placed orders collectively with http://www.azurestandard.com/. The Azure website allows group members to share one order number so individual  orders are batched for one destination. We took turns driving to the parking lot of the Rose Bowl to meet the truck every month. We took turns splitting the orders. After six months or so, Azure was sending the truck right to our building, and we arranged for a rent-free room off the lobby of our apartment house. We bought bins for grains, beans, flours, a scale, etc., took turns manning the store, taking orders, placing orders. Thanks to the bulk room, you don't have to deal with five gallons of laundry detergent all by yourself, or find friends to split it with. New members are asked to make a deposit, then purchase against it; your credit balance is always refundable, but all accounts operate in the black. When your credit runs out, you fork out a new deposit. This margin of credits is what pays for inventory. The "bulk room" is still functioning this way three years later, open two afternoons a week in a very small space (8 by 16). There are monthly meetings of all members and outreach to the whole neighborhood. There are continuing discussions of renting retail space. The CSA continues. There are local crafters, gardeners and cooks who sell their wares in the bulk room.  A wiki for all details about this model : http://urbansoil.net/wiki.cgi/LAEV_Food_Coop. A small group still keeps the whole thing running. We were trying to model ourselves on the famous Park Slope coop http://www.foodcoop.com/ , which offers shirts saying "will work for food." The unequal and uncompensated labor burden seems to be the main reason there is no retail store after three years of solid activity. That, and a core desire to keep prices affordable, which means there is never enough surplus $$ to meet a payroll or pay rent. I see it as a failure of budgeting - again, there is not a process built in for sound financial analysis and planning except in the very short term. The group is functioning well, but not growing.

In both cases I think that roots as a buying club with no overhead were essential in the development process. In Juneau, we have different supply-chain issues. If Azure Standard shipped to our ferry terminal, we'd take boxes someplace under cover for the split, and hope members picked up their orders (or shopped) on schedule... but if we had to pay rent for our space, in addition to paying for ferry shipping, the financial picture would be pretty dicey right from the outset, even with all volunteer labor. Identifying a free location downtown where we could split a buying-club bulk order and sell the surplus might be a way to dip our toe into the water. But first, there has to be a good reason not to just shop at Rainbow or with whoever takes over the A&P, where volunteer hours are not demanded. What is the new coop's niche, if the A&P remains a full service market? (And even if it is available to us, its rent was $94,000 a month and the profit margin was less than 2%; this is not likely to be profitable for any start-up, especially a grass-roots one.) I don't think we can be a lot cheaper so there has to be some competitive factor other than price. What is it? What would make the average Juneauite (who voted against the bag tax) join?

As for the future: 

If the new coop will be just an importer, the way all the other markets are, it's not contributing to the sustainable Juneau of the future any more than Walmart is. I would like to see it define itself as our pathway to food security. Food issues in Juneau go way beyond our need for a full-service market downtown. My understanding is that if barges are delayed for two days, the food section of Costco goes bare. My estimate is that all food shelves would be empty in the first week and everything eaten in the next. Most households, I gather, can only live out of their pantries for two or three days... Is that enough around here? Hurricane Igor cut off remote rural areas in Newfoundland. Labor strikes have closed down major ports. Alaska is vulnerable to fuel shortages, avalanches, ice, earthquakes, etc. These pressures will get worse over time.

Maybe this coop could focus on increasing local resources instead of adopting the import model. Although this climate makes food production difficult, it is not impossible, and Juneau once had farms and dairies. Can we coordinate with the local food pantries as to their needs? Can we coordinate with city agencies to favor edible landscaping on public land?   See http://foodsecurity.org/what-is-community-food-security/ and http://www.foodsecuritynews.com/Resources.htm  

Could the coop sponsor a community round table discussion on food security?  Likely allies include the Juneau Sustainability Commission, Alaska Youth for Environmental Action, the Slow Food group, the Glory Hole with its rooftop veggies, several local people who have received grants for building greenhouses, Turning the Tides which is planning a community greenhouse on Fritz Cove Rd, the downtown Rotary which is building a greenhouse at the jail, and all the other environmental groups. With enough greenhouses, Juneau could become the kale capital of the world. The dump has land and  a methane source for a heated greenhouse complex. The Sunday Market is already a strong venue for local growers, fishermen, etc.  - do we want to compete with that? Or complement it, give those vendors a year-round outlet? There is a guy there now trucking organic veggies up from Washington every week. He's competition, but only in the summer. Is there a mechanism by which the locals who are most knowledgable about foraging, hunting and fishing can share this body of knowledge with the rest of us? How big a population do these resources support? How do we develop and preserve this information? What's the shortfall that needs to be addressed through gardening/agriculture? The Cooperative Extension folks (Darren Snyder for one) are a good resource. Maybe the Sustainability Commission has answered some of these questions? What would our diet look like if only local foods were available? Bear fat and dried salmonberries with smoked fish? Can we improve on that? Ed Buyarski knows. Should we have a food bank under the permafrost with enough calories to sustain all of downtown for six months?

One four-foot by four-foot garden can sustain one person for one year.

SEACC maintains a good mailing list (Green Drinks) of all the environmental groups, so that's one place to start. I think it is essential to start any coordination process under the current city administration as the next mayor may not be as friendly to these ideas. Pat Moore at KTOO is developing a series of radio shows based on envisioning the sustainable Juneau of 2025 (and how we get there from here) and having a food coop here is certainly part of that vision. 

I guess my big issue is that Juneau has so many admirable single-issue groups channeling everyone's energy, but no unifying umbrella structure such as that offered by the 'transition town' movement: http://transition-towns.org/  to help us work toward sustainability in a coordinated fashion.  As long as each group focuses on its own mission, we never get critical mass for any substantive change (think "Occupy").

Please let me know what I can do to help the Juneau food coop succeed. Thanks again for all you have done and are doing. I am available to help until the first of October, and after the end of March. We all have to eat. 

Kathy Hill

[Dixie Belcher]

GREAT letter!    GREAT ideas!!!    YAY!!!!     Dixie

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From: kathi...@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 15:24:14 -0800
Subject: Re: Founding Member Drive going well- More news to come
To: juneau-f...@googlegroups.com

[Patricia Hull]

Thank you for sharing your insights, Kathi, and for your thought-provoking questions. While it is true that cause-related groups in Juneau differ in the focus of their programming, their missions often share an over-arching value:  they all seek, in their own way, to improve the quality of life in our community. Self-sufficiency; pragmatism; the entrepreneurial "can-do" spirit, are values shared by pretty much everybody so a co-op dedicated to sustainability would draw together for-profit and public interest groups alike.  It would also partner-up politically diverse individuals who may not agree on other things, but who would put their differences aside in favor of the common ground they do share. I has happened before.  In short,  I believe a co-op with a local sustainability focus would thrive here. 

It would be interesting to explore low or no-cost space options and to develop ways to encourage that to happen.  All across town are retail spaces which have sat fallow for years: the space Marta mentioned between Perseverance Theatre and Douglas Cafe; the lovely building that once housed Alaska Litho out on Thane; the former VFW Hall on Fourth Street.   Perhaps these landlords would entertain a special very low lease rate and write the rest off as a loss (which they must be doing now anyway?) .  Perhaps a new CBJ statute could give the land-owners a tax-exemption so long as the space was being used for a community development purpose and they were allowing it to be used rent-free?   The VFW Hall could certainly be used for shitakke mushroom farming :) 

I 

[Dennis Harris]

Patricai Hull wrote:

> The VFW Hall could certainly be used for
> shitakke mushroom farming :)

The VFW Hall *is* being used every day, but you wouldn't know it
if you're not an akido practitioner.

[Tanya Bartholomew]

Thank you for your last paragraph, Patricia,and CBJ should really consider it because we are focusing on the good health and community development; besides, the city will eventually get their money via sales tax.  Also, we do need a manager that is trustworthy, creative and committed to the coop mission.  I believe a manager can coordinate the contracted coop vendors with sufficient fees to maintain the building and volunteers on special days.

Tanya

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Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 21:34:21 -0800

Subject: Re: Founding Member Drive going well- More news to come

From: patricia...@gmail.com
To: juneau-f...@googlegroups.com

[Patricia Hull]

I meant the old American Legion Hall.  The other red building t