Information for SIFE
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INFORMATION FOR SIFE
2007 - 2008
We endeavour to achieve the following:
- A clear understanding of what our capabilities are financially, as a not-for-profit group. This includes allowed surplus, possible tax benefits and available concessions.
- To have appropriate systems put into place regarding ‘good business practice’. This includes charting growth, projecting profits, analysing stock sales & losses etc.
- The most effective and user friendly systems set in place for maximum membership involvement in the running of the shop.
- Consolidating systems to achieve the most enjoyable and effective board meetings and involvement of the management collective.
- A strong focus on utilising more volunteers from the membership base in interesting and productive projects.
- The further incorporation of more bulk foods, fewer packaged products, more sustainably-grown and local produce. (This can be achieved through volunteer research.)
While keeping the mark up at the same low margin it is foreseen an increase in surplus will come from:
- Increased membership
- Selling of hot drinks & juices (once we are in new accommodation which meets the appropriate health regulations)
- Increased sales of bulk items (especially to student residences)
- Reductions in costs (e.g. stock losses)
The extra income would ideally be spent on the following things:
- Upgrading and improvement of working conditions for all staff/volunteers. (fans, rubber mats around till, fans/heating, furnishings, kitchen facilities)
- Upgrading of store equipment (airtight food containers), as well as new machinery & kitchen appliances (eg. juicing and coffee machines)
- Increases in paid staff wages to appropriate award rates, as well as increase in staffing to meet core organizational requirements to be as effective a community organisation as possible.
Once all these goals are met, if there is any excess surplus achieved (above what we need for general running costs and for an adequate buffer/reserve) we could look at allocating money to other community groups/projects or charities, or simply reduce our prices or increase our discounts to members or to working members.
Expected Increase in Turnover
With the new membership intake via new student interest at the start of the year as well as the interest and publicity for the new location, we expect the new membership intake and turnover to increase at a manageable level.
One goal is to increase student awareness of the Co-op which should in turn lead to an increase in bulk food sales to students living on campus, especially those soon to be living in the new student accommodation under construction nearby (with a lot more to follow in this area). This will be achieved through a variety of marketing strategies.
History
In 1975 a former student approached the ANU Students Union with a proposal for a health food shop on the ground floor, in the space now occupied by the bike shop.
He said in return for not paying rent or utilities, he would set up a store which would employ students (at award rates) to pre-pack (into paper bags) retail quantities of dried fruits, nuts, seeds, grains, etc out of bulk boxes (and the like) which he would obtain from wholesalers.
These prepacks would be kept on shelves behind a counter which he would staff and from which sales would be made to Union members. He would take an award wage for a shop manager, interest on the capital needed to buy scales and bags and the initial stock, and pay anything left over (I'm not sure if he called it "profit" or "surplus" or something else) to the Union.
The proposal was approved, and the shop opened early in 1976. For a variety of reasons it failed, and closed its doors mid-year.
A group of former employees and customers called a meeting to try and save it.
At that meeting it was proposed to recast it as a co-operative, run by a new society (the ANU Nutrition Society) to be affiliated with the ANU Students Association:
- all labour would be voluntary (no-one would be paid a cent)
- all capital (for bins, scoops, inventory etc) would come from membership fees
- the Union would continue to charge neither rent nor utilities, and would continue to allow the ANUNS to have access to its back dock for deliveries
- any surplus would go back into the co-op
- rather than prepacking, members would serve themselves into their own containers from bulk bins.
Affiliating the ANUNS gave us access to fee-free banking through the Westpac Bank, then in the concessions area 100m away, and to some free use of ANUSA office facilities like phone, photocopier, and newsletter production (quite a costly exercise in the pre-computer era!).
Members who could not donate time often donated equipment like scales and cash registers (our first -- the shop had been run out of a shoebox!) or timber for shelving.
This business model eliminated just about all of the old shop's running costs, especially labour, to say nothing of the inefficiencies, double handling, waste of packaging, accelerated deterioration of packed-up stock etc. The two-thirds of the shop previously partitioned off as a storage and pack-up area became part of the shopfloor, with most stock now "stored" on display in bulk bins for members to serve themselves from (and the balance on overhead shelving). The range could be expanded beyond the capacity of point-and-be-served shelving behind the counter.
We calculated that a mark-up of just 10% on landed cost should cover losses from spoilage etc, and our minimal running costs (mostly stationery!).
Unfortunately this underestimated our actual costs -- we were naive about theft (mostly snacking) for one thing -- and after a crisis meeting in 1977 we raised the mark-up to 15%, became less trusting, and gradually hauled ourselves back from the brink.
By the end of the 1970s we had moved twice into larger premises, initially to those now occupied by the newsagent-stationer in the Union building, and then to a wing of what is now the Drill Hall Gallery, with our own loading dock opening directly onto a separate storeroom.
We had also grown to be, according to an American PhD student travelling the world researching co-ops, the largest retail purveyor of health foods in the southern hemisphere.
The Drill Hall southern wing, while rent free from the ANU, required us to start paying for our utilities, but it had the added advantage of having Radio 2XX as neighbours in the northern wing -- a weekly 15-minute spot called Food for Thought gave us our first marketing beyond word of mouth.
We continued to pay utilities but no rent when we moved across Kingsley Street into our present premises at the end of 1983. We did however make an annual contribution to the collective costs of our neighborhood, the ROCKS (Residents of Childers and Kingsley Streets): rubbish removal, cleaning and basic maintenance, consumables for the common toilet etc.
In time those who clung to the pure co-operative model of running everything on volunteer labour were outvoted by those who wanted to reward co-ordinators with points they could trade for food, and then to pay the bookkeeper (and then the manager) a wage, raising prices accordingly (and suffering a decline in both turnover and membership, despite having doubled the market by expanding into organic greengrocery).
1. PRIMARY ACTIVITY OF THE COOPERATIVE (from our Rules)
1.1. The primary activity of the Cooperative shall be to trade in food and other items in the Cooperative shop that promote its objects, which are:
1.1.1. to provide, where possible, food in bulk, i.e., without packaging, at an affordable price;
1.1.2. to encourage participation in the running of the Cooperative;
1.1.3. to provide a supportive environment for employees, coordinators, workers and members;
1.1.4. to promote organic produce;
1.1.5. to encourage and support the production of local produce;
1.1.6. to promote healthy, happy, sustainable and environmentally friendly living in the region;
1.1.7. to promote environmental responsibility; and
1.1.8. to inspire and encourage community participation and involvement in these aims.
Philosophy
Or perhaps ideology, if only to highlight how strongly some co-operistas feel about the ideas which underlie the Co-op's structure.
We have always been a broad church, albeit of the pagan variety! People joined for a variety of reasons, often not remotely philosphical, unless making ends meet is a philosophy. I'm pretty sure that when we had a membership of over 1200 (some have put it as high as 2000), most of our members were here just for the cheap food. They preferred us to the prepacked commercial alternatives because we cost them less, and for those resident on campus or who passed by the Co-op shop going to or from work or lectures we were convenient too. Back then we were not just much cheaper than the health food shops (and those were the days before there were health food sections in the supermarkets) but for many staples like rice and rolled oats (which we sold out of 200-litre drums, refilling them sometimes more than once a week) we were cheaper than the supermarkets (since those were also the days before Home Brand and other generics). We became justly famous for unprocessed bran at 4 cents a kilo (say 12 cents in today's money).
But those who volunteered their time or equipment or special skills (and there was no extra discount to be earned by doing so back then) mostly did so out of more than just a desire to see their source of cheap food survive.
Back then, as with most student activities many of those who did most of the work were socialists, and many of them of the revolutionary variety -- Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyites etc. For those of us who found socialism even more repellent than capitalism -- the latter based on greed, the former based on bludging (which is just greed for a living at someone else's expense) -- there may have been endless fun to be had teasing the innumerable factions on the Left when it came to the Students Association, but when it came to the Co-op (and many other examples of student activist attempts to make a better world) the unifying need to see the Co-op survive and prosper overcame all ideological differences. Who cared if the socialists thought they were building a microcosm of a future workers' state, so long as the Co-op got built. For that matter, who cared if the anarchists thought they were building a microcosm of a stateless state (or at least a relatively rule-free one) or if the economic rationalist faction saw it as evidence that freedom of enterprise included freedom to build a collective enterprise (one where co-operation was voluntary and not compulsory).
Back then, the radical environmentalists bent their opposition to all things artificial to accommodate those who couldn't afford organic. For that matter, the radical health nuts bent their opposition to all things processed to allow white flour and white rice (and smiled with satisfaction when they were outsold ten to one by the wholegrain alternatives). There were vigorous debates over pre-packed this or sulphur-dried that, but in the end the Management Collective reached consensus. (Helped to quick decisions by the John Talent meeting rule that any extension of time required unanimity!)
Then there were those who were in it for higher service, often as an adjunct to some spiritual practice. Many saw the altruistic basis of the Co-op -- giving without thought of reward -- as the source of its magic. Others saw it as a source of personal growth (a somewhat less-than-altrusitic altruism!) or at least as a chance to bump up against others who saw the world rather differently and to find common ground with them.
There was a moral dimension to being part of the Co-op for many members: for vegetarians, for environmentalists, for harmony-seekers, for inclusivists -- for those putting people (and sometimes animals) before profit, looking to enrich their community rather than themselves.
The values the Co-op embodied (and perhaps promoted) were those non-commercial values the market ignores. While it has its effectiveness in allocating scarce resources to those able to make the most efficient use of them in producing the goods and services consumers demand, the market is just an aggregation of individual human choices, and just as prone to failure as any other human activity. And it fails most egregiously when it comes to the environment, burning our planetary capital in a way no capitalist should ever contemplate, failing to plan (in a most unbusinesslike way) for a sustainable future life.
There are just as many arguments among co-operistas as to the alternative, or even if there is an alternative -- perhaps as Churchill said of liberal democracy, capitalism is the worst system in the world, apart from all the others!
