first thoughts about our LCG working group

[Barry Zalph]

Buying Club Working Group members,

Arte introduced us to the concept of Committee Charters for each committee of LCG. I have downloaded the template for writing a committee charter and started thinking about a couple of elements that we need to establish: the purpose and goals of the committee. I want to seed the conversation with a few ideas and give you all a chance to approve, reject, revise, or replace them before I start writing in more detail.

I am thinking in terms of a “soft launch” for LCG, which might take the form of a buying club and may take another form that involves establishing accounts with one or more food suppliers, selling food and perhaps other items on a regular schedule, getting LCG members involved, and spreading the word that we exist and are working toward a full-scale local grocery. With that in mind, maybe we should name our team the Soft Launch Working Group. Alternatives to a buying club (which involves members placing orders on a set schedule and then either picking up their orders or having them delivered) could include:

* getting a booth at a farmers market and selling to the public weekly

* holding pop-up markets at neighborhood events

* partnering with a community center or other community-serving organization to sell items at their location at specific times.

I’m sure that you can think of others. I still like the idea of a buying group, but I just wanted to recognize that something else might fit our needs better.

My idea of a soft launch is that it should not involve signing a lease or otherwise making a large financial commitment to something other than inventory and some refrigeration. Of course, if we start a buying club and it grows to 500 people spending $50 weekly ($1.3 million/year in gross revenue), then we probably need paid staffing and maybe a bigger space than the basement of the Kling Center. I think that a soft launch could be much smaller than this and still be a worthwhile first step.

For the charter:

The purpose of a soft launch is to give us an opportunity, with low financial stakes, to:

• develop relationships with suppliers
• develop and debug our bookkeeping and cash tracking systems for retail operations
• get legally registered to accept EBT payments
• develop experience working with customers in our chosen neighborhood(s)
• provide a service to LCG members and show them that LCG is really happening
• gather more data about what our members want to buy, and at what price
• earn net revenue to pay down our debts and prove our worthiness for grants, partnerships, and development loans

 

The purpose of the working group is to dream up and evaluate ideas for a soft launch for LCG that fulfills some or all of the above purposes.

The goal of the working group is to present to the LCG board a proposal, or a small set of alternative proposals, for a soft launch for LCG. Any proposal will be accompanied by its rationale and budget, along with our assessment of its strengths and risks. We seek to provide such proposal(s) to the LCG board by 10/1/2026 (basically 6 months from now). Once the LCG board chooses a soft launch proposal to implement, this working group with be dissolved and an LCG Committee will be formed to operate, manage, and report on the chosen soft launch project for its duration.

All of the above is just one person’s first thoughts. I am happy for you to disagree, make counterproposals, make major modifications, etc. I have no pride of authorship about this. I just wanted to get the thoughts starting to flow.

I’ll be out of town on Friday and Saturday and might not get to work on a rough draft charter until Monday. I would love to have some of your ideas to work with by then.

In cooperation,

Barry Zalph

[arte.c...@gmail.com]

Hello Barry, here are my initial thoughts

On Wednesday, March 25, 2026 at 8:23:03 PM UTC-4 Barry Zalph wrote:

Buying Club Working Group members,

Arte introduced us to the concept of Committee Charters for each committee of LCG. I have downloaded the template for writing a committee charter and started thinking about a couple of elements that we need to establish: the purpose and goals of the committee. I want to seed the conversation with a few ideas and give you all a chance to approve, reject, revise, or replace them before I start writing in more detail.

Thanks for taking this on. Very helpful to the boards ability to stay informed about what we are doing. 

 

I am thinking in terms of a “soft launch” for LCG, which might take the form of a buying club and may take another form that involves establishing accounts with one or more food suppliers, selling food and perhaps other items on a regular schedule, getting LCG members involved, and spreading the word that we exist and are working toward a full-scale local grocery. With that in mind, maybe we should name our team the Soft Launch Working Group. Alternatives to a buying club (which involves members placing orders on a set schedule and then either picking up their orders or having them delivered) could include:

* getting a booth at a farmers market and selling to the public weekly

* holding pop-up markets at neighborhood events

* partnering with a community center or other community-serving organization to sell items at their location at specific times.

I’m sure that you can think of others. I still like the idea of a buying group, but I just wanted to recognize that something else might fit our needs better.

I like the idea of soft launching the co-op. However I would like this group to initially focus on these alternatives you've listed. I'm open to any ideas you have about getting research started on the items in your list above.

 

My idea of a soft launch is that it should not involve signing a lease or otherwise making a large financial commitment to something other than inventory and some refrigeration. Of course, if we start a buying club and it grows to 500 people spending $50 weekly ($1.3 million/year in gross revenue), then we probably need paid staffing and maybe a bigger space than the basement of the Kling Center. I think that a soft launch could be much smaller than this and still be a worthwhile first step.

I think the concept of a "Soft Launch" is a big idea that will require a substantial amount of inter-co-op collaboration. Given the organizations current limited capacity I believe it is in our best interest as a special committee to come to the rest of the co-op with a working model or provable prototype from the list you mentioned above. From my POV as a board member I anticipate others in the co-op would be concerned that "Soft Launching" would overwhelm their already thinly stretched capacity. 

 

For the charter:

The purpose of a soft launch is to give us an opportunity, with low financial stakes, to:

• develop relationships with suppliers
• develop and debug our bookkeeping and cash tracking systems for retail operations
• get legally registered to accept EBT payments
• develop experience working with customers in our chosen neighborhood(s)
• provide a service to LCG members and show them that LCG is really happening
• gather more data about what our members want to buy, and at what price
• earn net revenue to pay down our debts and prove our worthiness for grants, partnerships, and development loans

 

The purpose of the working group is to dream up and evaluate ideas for a soft launch for LCG that fulfills some or all of the above purposes.

This is a great list Barry. Take a look at the co-ops stated purpose in our bylaws, I would make sure each of your bullet points connects to one of our purposes  

 

The goal of the working group is to present to the LCG board a proposal, or a small set of alternative proposals, for a soft launch for LCG. Any proposal will be accompanied by its rationale and budget, along with our assessment of its strengths and risks. We seek to provide such proposal(s) to the LCG board by 10/1/2026 (basically 6 months from now). Once the LCG board chooses a soft launch proposal to implement, this working group with be dissolved and an LCG Committee will be formed to operate, manage, and report on the chosen soft launch project for its duration.

I like the timeline however I feel it is important for us to steer this project towards a prototyping from the beginning; getting consent as we go. I want to avoid working 6 months on a proposal and not having the support to get a yes vote on it. I believe we can achieve this by leveraging the co-ops survey tech and communications team to get owners opinions on our work in each news letter. We can and should also use the in person owners meetings to present our findings to the group. This project will need continual owner buy-in and we will need to recruit more hands to this committee if we want it to succeed .

 

All of the above is just one person’s first thoughts. I am happy for you to disagree, make counterproposals, make major modifications, etc. I have no pride of authorship about this. I just wanted to get the thoughts starting to flow.

I’ll be out of town on Friday and Saturday and might not get to work on a rough draft charter until Monday. I would love to have some of your ideas to work with by then.

In cooperation,

Barry Zalph

Barry, how do you feel about drafting a questionnaire based on the questions you have in this message? The next newsletter is next week on the 14th. I'd like to start getting more peoples input on what you have here before the momentum fades.

Thank you

-chambers

[Barry Zalph]

Arte,

Thank you for your insights. I will work on a quick member survey for the 4/14 newsletter. If anyone in this Buying Club working group has suggestions of questions to include in the survey, I would really appreciate your input.

Survey research is a complex field, and I have no professional expertise in it. It is very easy to ask questions whose answers provide little or no good information for making a decision. It’s easy for people to answer questions about things that already exist, like: Do you prefer to attend: 1) a Bats game; 2) an R&B show; 3) a U of L women’s basketball game. When it comes to preferences among various options for something that does not yet exist, people are not necessarily good at determining what their preferences would be. For example, Would you rather: 1) buy groceries from buying club that accepts orders online and has a weekly pick-up; 2) buy groceries from a stand at the ___ Farmer’s Market; 3) buy groceries from a pop-up grocery weekly at the ___ Community Center? Well, nobody knows how it would feel to do any of these things. Would the prices be identical? Would the hours be the same? How long would the line be? etc.

Let’s all give some thought to how we could do one-time experiments to prototype, as Arte suggests. The important thing is to make sure that each experiment gives us new insights into what will work on a larger scale.

Thanks,

Barry

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