Newsletters: March - April 2008
General Manager’s Report
Natural Times-March/April 2008
By Larrane Hartridge
Those of you who haven’t been in the store since the beginning of our construction are missing out. Visit www.newleafmarket.coop to follow the progress. Our marketing department has been doing a great job of keeping the site current and up-to-date on a weekly basis. The project has been moving along a bit slower than anticipated but we are extremely pleased with what’s been done so far. A huge thank you goes out to our Store Manager, Phil Valentine, who orchestrated the three overnight shifts that repositioned the grocery and wellness shelving and relocated the registers with the help of some very dedicated staff.
Balancing construction with the operation of the store is a challenge and we anticipated that we may have a few hiccups in the process. To date, we have had only three hiccups, starting with yours truly stepping into a freshly poured trench of cement. Then some ceiling tiles were blown loose from the ceiling near the entrance. Seems we created quite a wind tunnel there. Don’t be concerned, the ceiling was repaired and reinforced. Finally, just the other day a section of our bulk shelving—housing eight bins of grains—collapsed and we had to contend with 300 pounds of spilled grains.
New bulk bins was one of the items that had been temporarily cut from our expansion budget to balance the high mechanical and engineering costs. Thanks to the decision of our Board of Directors to finally have all of our owners participate equally at a $100 refundable equity amount, we now can afford to replace the bulk bins. We have had well over 1,000 responses from owners who joined the Co-op at the $25 level and have received over $55,000 in additional equity! Some owners even paid more than they needed to in order to help owners who couldn’t afford to up their equity. Others rushed in to pay the additional equity, having heard from their friends about the increase, even before they received a letter. The response has been so positive and we thank you all for your participation.
