Ebytown Food Co-op 2002 Fall General Meeting

7 pm, Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Huether Hotel Board Room, Waterloo

Present: Ashok Thirumurthi, Maria Hatzipantelis, Caterina Lindman, Karin Kliewer, Sarah Anderson, Andrew Barker, Steve Ohi, Matt Corks, Dave Watson, Don Weber

Board Portfolio Reports

Store Manager (Ashok)

• we've completed a major store redesign, fixing both the front and back of the storefront, with the help of several work days
• Bill Wharrie has recently finished fixing a problem in the store software so that pre-orders are now possible again
• we have also had a better after-hours sales system in place for a while, which is going very well
• regular training sessions have been held, but not as well attended as expected

Member Relations (Dave)

• we need more co-co's: Steve Izma has been too busy with the WLUSA strike, which pretty much just leaves Rolf Laber
• the lists of active, working members have fallen apart, there are only five or six people in total on the lists now
  • the 56 William street household will now take a co-co shift again
  • proposed: that we reshuffle members into three cells: working often (call weekly), working occasionally (call monthly), and non-working (just call for the AGM, etc) (the idea was approved)

Administration (Matt)

• been busy rewriting various forms and web documents around the co-op
• have compiled some sales stats for the co-op, available on the web

Purchasing (Maria)

• Organic Choice has folded, leaving us with just Grain Process, ONFC, and National Grocer (occasionally)
• we'd like to sell more barter goods (the bread has been selling well, but we need more products like that)
• Maria will attend more barter fairs (and would love volunteers to help with this!) in an attempt to get more barter products
• we have new labels for goods (originally designed by Kathy Mortimer)
• fair trade coffee is back
• we've been having problems with ONFC-- we seem to be low on their priority list, so we get shorted (and don't get called ahead of time)

Community Relations (Steve)

• we donated food to the Sierra Youth Coalition for their sustainable campuses conference (although it's unclear if we were recognized for this)
• we should focus on a few big events
  • community feast
  • dandelion festival
  • barter fairs
• we have a new flyer

Finances (Andrew)

• we're still in the black, a few thousand in the bank
• books are in good shape (in large part thanks to the new after hours system on the computer)
• please check and sign off on any receipts you see while in the store

Committee Report / Market Strategies

• this committee was started in 1999 after a large, facilitated visioning session which called upon Ebytown to move to a better location and hire staff
• after this, various people looked into getting grants, but our books weren't in shape and so we couldn't do an audit
• Linda Nagel suggested hiring two people: one for membership development, and one for handling fundraising and grant proposals
• our books are now in good shape, so we can audit the current fiscal year (calendar year 2002) (thanks, Andrew!)
• Karin and Sarah have been looking into three funding agencies: ONFC, Trillium, and the Community Economic Development Technical Assistance Program (CEDTAP)
• Karin and Sarah need more people to help them with this work, primarily in three areas:
  • business plan
  • cleaning up the books and preparing for an audit
  • community outreach

WCRI Construction Update

• WCRI has submitted a plan to the City of Waterloo to tear down each of their buildings in turn and replace them with six storey structures instead; this will go before council in December or January
• Ashok will attend these meetings, and has put himself on a list to receive updates from the city as these plans progress
• it looks now like our building (A4) will be demolished in two years
• it's unclear now if WCRI will let us stay, and we probably aren't at the top of their priority list in planning the construction
• if we stay, we'll probably have to start paying rent, and we may have to be zoned properly (which we probably aren't at the moment)
• at this point, five options are available to us:
  • close the store
  • convert to a buying club
  • find a new satellite location, but stay where we are for now
  • stay in a retail location at WCRI and pay rent
  • move to a full retail storefront
• more work is clearly needed to shape Ebytown's future (but everyone who showed up is already very busy with the co-op!)

Membership Survey Presentation

Maria presented the findings of her survey of the membership and gave those present two handouts on her results and a statistical summary of some key findings.

In brief, member's future visions for Ebytown include:

1. active membership
2. new location
3. community outreach focus
4. improved inventory
5. sound organizational structures

Updates

• the Community Feast went okay, but there were only about 100 in attendance (as opposed to 200 or so in the past)
  • it wasn't a vegetarian feast, not sure if we'd do that again
  • there was less media and publicity work done than before
• Fair Share Harvest decided not to do a drop at Ebytown in order to have one large location and not two small ones