Results of surveys, highlights from conference shared
By Tom Ganser
Correspondent
At last month’s Rotary meeting, Brienne Diebolt-Brown and Stephanie Goettl provided members with an update of the efforts underway to explore the opening of a food co-operative in Whitewater. Diebolt-Brown and Goettl, along with Patrick Cannon and Lacey Reichwald have taken the lead in this project.
At the July 26 Whitewater Rotary Club meeting, Diebolt-Brown credited Reichwald as “the original brain behind the Whitewater co-operative idea,” starting in 2009, with the idea at that time of establishing a small co-op downtown aimed at offering different options than the Sentry grocery store.
A survey conducted by Reichwald that year revealed 91 percent of the survey’s 98 respondents would shop at a co-op and 63 percent would become members. Parking and location were cited as important factors.
According to Goettl, the idea of opening a co-op in Whitewater – and fizzled out in 2009 – became very relevant with the closing of the Daniels’ Sentry Foods grocery store in December 2015. By that time, the Walmart located in Whitewater adjacent to the Sentry location had added a grocery section.
The impending and ultimate closing of Sentry, according to Goettl became “a major public issue that we did not have a grocery store in the community.”
The situation was intensified by what appeared to be difficulty in attracting a traditional grocer to replace the Sentry.
“When Sentry closed the city became very much the epicenter of people complaining about the fact that we didn’t have a grocery store,” Goettl said. “The CDA and the Common Council very much saw that we need to have at least a response to that issue.” That led to a public listening session and the formation of a CDA taskforce.
Goettl shared some of the results of a survey conducted by Reichwald in October 2015, including that 65 percent of the 307 respondents selected a natural foods store or co-op as an option for the Whitewater community, and citing value and location as important elements.
Other findings of the survey last fall indicated 39 percent of the respondents would shop at a co-op periodically and 55 percent frequently. Among 18 different features that might draw people to the co-op, the top five were: availability of local produce, local meats, organic produce, a deli/café and a bakery.
Reichwald’s Facebook group focusing on a co-op in Whitewater has drawn more than 700 people since it was created in October 2015.
Goettl said the challenge in looking at a co-op, is thinking long term, beyond 20 years, and continuing to work on the idea regardless of potentially attracting a traditional grocer to fill the void left by Sentry’s departure.
With the financial support of the CDA, Diebolt-Brown, Cannon, Goettl and Reichwald attended the Up and Coming Food Co-op conference in Bloomington, IN, in March of this year, which Goettl described as a “co-op for co-ops” and a way to connect with national experts on the topic.
Goettl said one of the biggest myths is that people must be members of a co-op to shop there.
The seven principles for successful co-ops shared at the conference were:
1 – voluntary and open membership;
2 – democratic member control;
3 – member economic participation;
4 – autonomy and independence;
5 – education, training and information;
6 – cooperation among cooperatives, and;
7 – concern for the community.
While all are important, Goettl said democratic member control “is really very critical. It’s meant to be driven by the community. It’s meant to allow the community to specifically weigh in on different things… A co-op is not one thing… it’s whatever your specific community needs.”
Based on the workshops she attended at the conference, Diebolt-Brown said co-ops that fail “are ones that do not follow the recipe. They get so excited, they jump ahead, and don’t do things step by step like they are supposed to” including understanding and preparing for the “roller coaster financial ride” involved in starting a co-op and stabilizing it over time.
The attendees from Whitewater also learned there are three stages that need to be followed in creating a successful co-op: organizing (6 to 12 months); feasibility and planning (6 to 12 months), and; implementation (7 to 13 months).
Additionally, they reported, the four essential cornerstones that must be present at each stage include: articulation (the hopes and dreams of the organization), talent (those invested in the co-op’s success), capital (financial resources needed at every stage of development), and systems (organized, integrated, coordinated, and interdependent methods.)
Diebolt-Brown said the Whitewater efforts are at Stage 1.
“We’re trying to figure out what do we want in a co-op. There are people who are disabled in this town. There are senior citizens in this town… 45 percent of the children in this town are on free and reduced lunch. So we know there’s a lot of poverty and we also know there are a lot of people who are limited in how to get to a co-op.
“How do we put together a vision of a co-op that works for everybody? There are going to be people who just want to buy boxed food and there are going to be people who say ‘I actually need glutton free, I need everything fresh, I need to make sure it’s whole-milk dairy… You have to keep talking to people and finding out who’s actually going to buy in to an idea,” she said.
Diebolt-Brown emphasized the importance of arriving at a shared vision.
“If people are acting with a different vision, it will not work. We have to all come together to figure out exactly what we want this to look like and then more forward with the more bureaucratic side of things, which would be to organize legally, incorporate, and appoint a board of directors formally, and then we would move on to the second stage,” she said. “We have a vision team who’s already done their first visioning process… and what they want this to be is a community organization, something that serves the community, a place for the community to meet.”
In a follow up email with Goettle, she said as a cooperative “we would seek to serve everyone as much as possible, knowing and understanding that, at some point, it is impossible to satisfy the needs of every single person and continue to make the money needed to continue operating a grocery store.”
To move into Stage 1, a steering committee of 20 or so people is being formed with plans to include a variety of people from the community “who really think this is a great idea and can bring their unique point of view toward what they think the community needs,” she said. A later task in Stage 1 will be creating a board of directors, a requirement as part of the legal process of incorporating a co-op.
The board, however, will not be running the co-op, Diebolt-Brown said.
“We need to get people who have very specific skill sets to be on that board of directors,” she said, adding that they’ll be instrumental in attracting a professional to Whitewater to oversee the operations of the co-op.
“We’re at the point where we’re about to create a board of directors. We’re building a shared vision and what we think that shared vision should be. It’s pretty obvious we can have conventional food, as well as maybe some organics or maybe local food or glutton free or some of those other things that people look for. But we know that it’s got to be a mix,” Diebolt-Brown said.
At Stage 2, the board of directors will be in place and people may be hired to work part-time for marketing efforts about opening a co-op in Whitewater. The advice of tax attorneys who specialize in the operation of co-ops will be sought and steps will be taken to incorporate.
Once the co-op is incorporated, members of the community – with an initial target of 600 – will be offered the opportunity, possibly later this month or next, to demonstrate their commitment and “buy in” to the formation of a co-op through a payment of $100 that would cover the first year of membership in the co-op once it’s open. Their input will also be sought as the project continues.
Later in the process, members would also have the opportunity to make larger loans to fund the project that would include pre-planned agreements for repayment from the co-op over a period of 7 to 10 years.
At the beginning phase of Stage 3, internal financing from members and external financing from banks, for a minimum of $2.5 million must be finalized before construction or building renovation contracts and all contingencies to the project must be removed.
The next phases of Stage 3 – construction and renovation, preparation for opening, and sustaining the operation of the co-op for the first year and beyond, represents the final “no turning back” decision point and requires the $100 commitment of a target of 2,000 people.
In response to questions from Rotarians, Diebolt-Brown and Goettl both indicated there is no intention for a Whitewater co-op to compete toe-to-toe with Walmart but rather to fill the gaps for things such as locally grown produce, the board of directors will include representatives of the Farmers Market and the City Market, and a decision as to the location of the co-op will not be made until later in the planning process.
