WHERE DOES YOUR FOOD COME FROM?

Like Many Counterparts, Bozeman’s Community Food Co-op Finds Strength In Numbers

By Kelly Dean Wiseman, 11-16-06

“What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”
-Abraham Lincoln


With the holidays approaching and October being National Co-op Month, it seems like a pretty good time to give you an update on our national “virtual chain" that shows the gathering strength of the healthy food movement in the U.S.

What's a Virtual Chain?

The Community Food Co-op in Bozeman is, like many others, a member of the National Co-op Grocers Association, the NCGA. This is a group of about 120 co-ops large and small nationwide who share similar missions and business practices. We have banded together to form essentially a cooperative of cooperatives to give us added strengths and advantages in the marketplace.

To better compete, we actively share a marketing program (“Co-op Advantage”), non-core purchasing strategies (such as credit card services, deals on office supplies, and more), as well as paid support staff to assist us in working together better.

Most of our communication is done via e-mail and conference calls, and a few times a year, large or small groups of us get together to solve problems and share ideas.

The big news this year is that we have signed a national contract with our shared common distributor, UNFI, which in our primary customer area that reaches across Montana, eastern Idaho and northern Wyoming, means the big, red, Mountain Peopleʼs trucks that come here four times a week.

A national contract with a common distributor is a big, big deal.

It means a lower cost on food for our Midwest and East Coast sister co-ops, and better long-term security for our Western co-ops. It also means we are now the second largest natural foods chain (behind Whole Foods) in the country.

Before participating in a group of very different co-ops, however, it was important for all co-ops to assure that we remained locally autonomous. We didnʼt want some group from out of state to tell us what we had to carry on our shelves, and we didnʼt want some committee to supercede our own local governing body—our co-opʼs board of directors.

So we structured all programs in the NCGA to be purely optional. The fine print in our Co-op Advantage flyer is that not all products are available in all stores, and we mean it. Our own buyers get to vote, each month, on what they want featured, and they meet in person regularly to discuss product mix, availability, and what is and isnʼt appropriate for our stores. Some months there is something in the flyer not available in our store because we either donʼt like it or our members donʼt want it. The security we gain from our new contract filters through on a lot of levels. We are able to leverage over $700 million in purchasing power from our distributor, instead of about $5 million as a stand alone store.

As a bonus, were have access to storng support staff to assist in product merchandising, national marketing, better service, and a whole lot of other key factors. For one thing, we are now assured that the cost of goods for any additional stores we decide to build will be the same as our current store, a critical element in a rapidly growing organization.

But it goes even deeper. Co-ops banding together is what builds the cooperative movement. Some wise and savvy people worked hard to build not just another private store, but one structured for the sole purpose of serving its member/owners. In Bozeman, with what has become a much larger organization than anyone realistically expected, not everyone gets exactly what they want. But we all get a voice, and we all get to vote on the leaders who decide our long term direction and vision.

You and I donʼt get that if a person or family owns our access to food. Our founders knew this, and we should all be thankful they chose the path of cooperation over privatization. Our co-op would be a very different animal had all major decisions been in the hands of a select and unaccountable few. Now we have not only the strength of our hometown voices, but also the power of nationwide cooperation with likeminded folks. And thatʼs something worth celebrating.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Kelly Dean Wiseman is the general manager of the Community Food Co-op in Bozeman, located at 908 W. Main Street five blocks west of downtown.

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