LAEV Coop Meeting 12/8/08
Present:
Dave A. -Facilitating
Jocelyn,
Melba,
Michelle
Lara
Lindsey notes
Alex
Andrea
Anne
We discussed in this meeting using 110 office space, the online survey, updating the list of cell leaders, bulk containers, and keeping new spaces added to the LAEV Food Coops use clean, organized and supervised.
Bulk Orders:
We can order bulk food in every two weeks, on average we order every four. Planned a bulk order soon. We are still trying to hone the bulk order system. We still need someone to manage the bulk order system.
We discussed where the seed money for creating a bulk-store for the LAEV Coop. Should we use the markup money? Or should we initiate a membership fee?
Ordering bulk and then selling it will make waste– we will need to have a markup to accound for that.
We need to locate:
Scales
Scoops and Containers
We need to determine:
If the veggie and bulk coops will be separate or together.
Mark-up status:
We have about $200 in markup money to spend.
For labor of bulk orders, instead of adding another vegetable sorting cell, we could add a shift of just bulk workers.
For the bulk order, we need to determine what people will buy. We have a spreadsheet detailing our previous bulk orders, and we can reference those when making our orders.
What other products can we provide? Raw Milk. Onions. etc.
Do we want to officially combine both food coop and bulk coop? Alex mentioned he hasn’t been drawn to the bulk order because he sees it as separate.
We have a 3 month agreement to try using the space for bulk orders, to see how it works.
5 things from Dave :
1. Sounds like we want to join the two peices (no consensus)
2. We should keep at least keep part of our markup for administration and float costs.
3. charging the membership fee. (for legal reasons and to build capital)
4. 3 month trial.
5. And survey.
Consensus: add the questions of the membership fee to the survey, with explanation that we would like to start adding bulk products to the food coops mission.
With more captital from the markup, we need to find a financial secretary for the food coop. Who will it be?
Consensus: We want to use the slush fund for administrative and perhaps as investment in our bulk addition. But we want to keep $100 set aside at all times to compensate for the few times we’ve been coming up short when we pay for the vegetables.
How do we help people who can’t afford a membership fee?
Survey… From Rebecca
Bulk room… I propose contact 3 other food coops.
Review practices and laws
Logistics proposal. Ron put together recruitment for bulk order.
Couple things for suggestions:
How long have you ben a coop member?
How frequently do you order?
If someone is a sporadic participant?
Do we want this to be about Produce?
Adding Bulk stuff questionaires?
Too many questions. Eliminate a few.
List of ten things. Produce section with 3/4ths of the questions,
and a bulk section? 5 things.
Farmers section?
Question about more variety of produce and other foods.
Not on a cell people to put it on survey monkey. Fewer questions. Easy survey monkey. Ask ron to find someone.
4 sections– Coop. Farmer. Veggies. Bulk. Choose the top 3.
Ranking a new way.
Anne is handling it.
Moving forward on the survey.
Next Meeting: 2nd Sunday. 11th of January. Dave will Facilitate.