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Proposal - Expanding Coop Access

This proposal is to allow non-members to be able to shop from the coop, while reserving voting privileges to dues-paying members.

Simon - Overall thoughts: I think this would be cool if it existed but I don't really see why this needs to be a co-op project and it feels like it could happily live along the co-op work on its own with potentially the co-op as one of the clients (in the same role as the buildings) as outlined below! I think if there's energy to do this people should do it, but I'm not sure it makes sense to do "as Greens & Beans". Generally I'm wary of building in a "we must grow to succeed" mentality, especially because it sounds like to do this we need to turn over 10s of thousands of dollars in produce. On that note I think this focuses maybe too much on the produce side of things, which isn't the full extent of what we do. 

Final thought: I think parts of this should be broken into separate proposals rather than a "all or nothing" thing. To me I think the customers vs members thing is entirely separate from setting up a bike messenger driven produce delivery project.

Luigi - I also think this can be separate proposals but, if we want, we can leave as one proposal with multiple items to vote on. Opavote allows that, and I think that is more efficient since the background and problem are the same across proposal items.

Jon - Let's split the proposals. The creation of a "customer" category sounds like something we're all more or less aligned on doing in the short term and is simple enough. The other proposals to drive expansion with building deliveries etc. we definitely do not have consensus on right now and needs more discussion by the group. Not appropriate to bring to a binding vote yet IMO.

Background

The mission of the coop is to provide access to cheap, high-quality, local food to the residents of Ward 2. As a secondary benefit, the coop desires to provide a social environment for its members.

Problem

The size of the active membership is about 5-10 per week,

  • Luigi - Do we mean 5-10 people purchasing produce each week? Or people attending the weekly meeting? We have more active members overall, so I'm trying to understand what we're referencing here.

and our weekly purchases from the farmers market are an average of $68.35. While these purchases help the regular members of the coop, they come with two problems:

  • we are failing to meet our mission of providing food to people, and
    • Simon - This isn't the full extent of our mission, so it feels a little weird to use it in this way. The mission leads with community driven, which I think is an important thing to keep in mind when considering this kind of growth. The way this is used here makes it sound like if we don't provide food to everyone, we're failing, which obviously feels absurd.
    • Luigi - Agreed. I wouldn't say we are feeling to meet our mission. If anything, I think we have been meeting the mission, e.g., I can personally that I have benefitted from cheaper food and household items because of this group (and I think others have too). So I would remove or reword.
  • the farmers are less interested in working with us and giving us discounts because we are failing to bring business to them.
    • Simon - want to flag that a number of us raised this as a concern when we started this relationship with the farmers, that we couldn't do large quantities of produce purchasing, and that we didn't want to jeopardize any relationships with farmers on the road to growing and pretending we can commit to more than we can. I'm worried that this is being used to create a sense of urgency. If only a small part of of our members are buying things through Meso and from the farmers market, we should consider that maybe it's actually not as high of a need as we might think? I think a large part of that average is coming from our egg purchases rather than produce, and maybe we need to re-evaluate how we buy those if it's not satisfying to the farmer?
    • Luigi - Do we know this for a fact? Like have farmers directly told us this and refused to work with us because of our size? If not, I would remove. I understand the sentiment is that we might be limited in receiving discounts due to our size, but that is not what is written. Suggest rewording or removing. 
    • Hadley- agreed. Would be good to understand whether Chicano sol has concerns about the order amounts in terms of continuing to work with us (I’ve heard different things from different people at different times about this)

The major hurdles involved in shopping are the geographic restriction (Ward 2),

the requirement for a separate payment of monthly dues, and the requirement for a pickup at a specific time and place behind a locked door.

Sale History
Date Sale
11/16 $0.00
11/9 $12.05
11/2 $137.10
10/26 $20.80
10/19 $134.90
10/12 $33.10
10/5 $110.60
9/28 $0.00
9/21 $132.10
9/14 $21.40
9/7 $55.85
8/31 $161.55
8/24 $29.00
8/17 $14.05
8/10 $137.90
8/3 $90.50
7/27 $66.30
7/20 $86.49
7/13 $7.00
7/6 $0.00
6/29 $84.50
6/22 $71.00
6/15 $98.40
6/8 $76.30
6/1 $102.50
5/25 $93.60

Solution

To increase shopping, this proposal recommends that we open up access to the Meso app to any resident in DC, provided they are willing to pick their order up from the Lutheran church on Sunday (or other negotiated pickup location). Those who shop through us and do not pay dues will be known as customers, in contrast to dues-paying members.

  • Luigi - Members can also be customers, so I don't think this is the proper way to delienate. We later say "non-member customers", so perhaps "member customers" and "non-member customers" might be the way forward. 
  • Jon - Member vs. customer is fine in my opinion - it's clear enough that members can also shop, we don't need to overcomplicate the concept. Important to note that Members are expected to contribute labor and dues are part but not all that's expected of folks.

Geographic Restriction

In order to alleviate the first hurdle of geographic restriction, this proposal recommends lifting the geographic restriction entirely and allowing anyone to shop through the coop.

  • Simon - I don't think we have, or have ever had, a geographic restriction? As far as I'm aware anyone can come and shop. e.g. Mia and David don't live in Ward 2. Recognize that maybe the confusion here comes from having ward2coop.com as our domain, but that was an SEO decision made by a member who's not here anymore. We also own greensandbeansgrocery.com if we think that will help. 
  • Luigi - Agreed. This section should be removed. And I agree with changing the wiki website URL (and in general ceasing use of "Ward 2 Grocery Coop" and similar wording moving forward).

Monthly Dues

Instead of dues, the coop reserves the right to institute a percentage surcharge on each order for non-member customers. This surcharge would be raised in the future if a need is assessed, but based on the greater need for increased order volume than for increased coop funds, this proposal recommends a 0% surcharge to start.

Only dues-paying members would be able to vote at coop meetings.

Customers would be able to vote in non-binding surveys that the coop may decide to issue.

  • Simon - why start with a 0% surcharge? Maybe I'm misunderstanding but why should non-members get a cheaper price then members, especially if they're not paying dues as well? Why would anyone become a member under this proposal? Also, as we discussed, paying dues isn't the only requirement towards voting, it's also labor. Might be something good to clarify in a different proposal.
  • Luigi - Is the idea that we stop having dues, members get access to non-surcharged items, and non-members pay a surcharge to shop here?
  • Jon - It's confusing to me as well to start with 0%. I would say let's start with a reasonable but meaningful markup like 5-10% for customers and we can always adjust if that proves too big a barrier for people.

Pickup

Currently, the coop requires groceries to be picked up at the 6pm Sunday meeting.

  • Luigi - I think grocery pickup and shopping can be done also on Wednesdays, right?
  • Hadley- groceries can technically be picked up any time! We just recommend by Wed to make sure they don’t get taken/removed by other groups 

This proposal recommends working with individual apartment complexes to bring in their residents as customers and to deliver their groceries to a single location.

The orders would be split out by customer and delivered as a group to the location, coordinating through an order captain. The order captain's role is to facilitate the receipt of the orders and the dissemination to the residents; the delivery agent is not expected to hold onto orders if they are unable to get ahold of the order captain.

The selection of which apartment complexes we choose to support is an opportunity for the us to build relationships with those groups and ensure that we aren't taking on more customers than we can support.

While having coop members perform the delivery is an appealing way to keep costs low and maintain relationships with the order captain, food delivery is a job that is fraught with hazard and requires serious capital assets for each volunteer (cargo bike, car, van). Based on the experience of W2MA's grocery deliveries — and how they are shifting to pickup due to the difficulty of volunteer-based delivery — this proposal recommends pursuing a way to pay bike couriers (who already have the capital assets of cargo bikes) to do the deliveries. This proposal also recommends instituting a delivery fee to fund deliveries to apartment complexes.

  • Simon - I think this would be very cool if it existed! I think it makes more sense to pilot this successfully for several months with a couple of buildings before bringing it into how we Do Things As a Co-op. I don't know that a proposal is needed to start that pilot project and I'm not sure why it would benefit the pilot project for it to be part of this co-op? Honestly it feels like if there's legs for this you're constraining yourself by having it be part of a slow moving co-op that primarily moves on a consensus basis. Like, why not just start trying to do this? Why do you need The Co-op to do this?
    • "Based on the experience of W2MA's grocery deliveries — and how they are shifting to pickup due to the difficulty of volunteer-based delivery" I think this is a misunderstanding with what was going wrong with the W2MA delivery process. We had enough volunteers to do the deliveries, but at the time of delivery not everyone who had ordered was there to pick up, causing food waste. I don't see how paying couriers will fix this. This feels like it's better fixed by offloading the problem on the building captain from earlier in this proposal.
  • Luigi - In general, I love the idea of working with apartment complexes. I'm not yet a fan of the following idea (order captain, paying bike couriers, etc), but I'd love to talk about the idea and see how we can pilot institutionalizing order delivery or pickup with buildings. Si and I live in the same building, and he's already been doing this (at least for eggs) so we can definitely learn from that, expand offerings, and go from there.
  • Hadley- agreed! I’m also interested in working with apartment complexes (but more on a pilot basis to start and only if we determine we have the bandwidth for it). I’m also not quite sold on the bike messengers at this point. I’d suggest we try it out with 1-2 buildings with our members and then determine if we need the bike messengers

Conclusion

We are failing to meet our mission of feeding people. By allowing non-members to shop at the coop and take advantage of our budding relationships with the farmers at the market, we'll be able to feed more people, both in Ward 2 and beyond.

This proposal recommends:

  1. Eliminating geographic restrictions for members and customers
  2. Adding a surcharge to non-member customer orders, starting at 0%
  3. Working with apartment complexes to bring their residents in as customers and to add their complex as delivery location
  4. Pursuing a way to pay bike couriers to do the grocery deliveries
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