ALFALFA HOUSE COMMUNITY FOOD CO-OP

MEMBERS’ MEETING
WED 22 May, 2019

1. Attendance and Apologies

Attendance (MC): Tom Bartels, Ashton Roskill, Bruce Diekman, Kirsten Lunoe, Cam Burgess, Caroline Brakewell

Attendance (Members):

Apologies: Steve Catt

2. Approval of Agenda

That the agenda be approved.

Moved: 

Seconded:

Carried by consensus

3. Part 1
Leadership team Member Briefing

ALFALFA HOUSE COMMUNITY FOOD CO-OP

MEMBERS’ MEETING AGENDA
WED 22 May, 2019

PDF version of Agenda + Appendices 1&2(click on the 3 blue links below)
Members' Meeting Agenda 22 May 2019.pdf 
Appendix 1-Donations split & GST payable (v2).pdf
Appendix 2-GREATEST AREAS OF VOLUNTEER NEED 22 May 2019 (v2).pdf

Structure of the evening:
The evening will consist of 2 parts:

In the interest of time, we will ask members to please reserve questions until after the end of Part 1.

PART 1 (1 hour 15mins to 1hr 30mins):
The leadership team (MC & Management) will discuss these 3 main areas:
1) Results and recognition for the GROW ALFALFA fundraising campaign
2) What has been happening at Alfalfa House since the Special Members Briefing meeting
3) Where to from here?

PART 2 (30-45mins):
Member Q & A
We encourage all members to send your queries before the meeting to the Alfalfa House email: marketing@alfalfahouse.org
If we run out of time, or your question isn’t answered during the meeting, please send your questions to the marketing@alfalfahouse.org email after the meeting.

We will endeavour to put together an FAQ list after the meeting.

Agenda items:

PART 1
1) Results & recognition for the GROW ALFALFA FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN

       a) BIG THANK YOU
       b)Summary of money raised (See Appendix 1)
       c)What we have done with funds raised and why + what we plan to do.

2) What has been happening at Alfalfa House since the Special Members Briefing meeting?

         i) Solidifying our Leadership Team

• New Store Manager: Maurice (former Store Manager) headed the Fundraising campaign.
  
  
• The MC elected 2 new highly specialist MC Board members with needed expertise (adding to our previously 5 member MC Board):

• Kirsten Lunoe (highly experienced in retail management, transformation, and retail analysis).
• Ashton Roskill (highly experienced management consultant and experienced in holistic restructuring of businesses in financial trouble).
  
  Without these two new members, our previous MC and management would not have had the capacity to recover in the way we did.
  
  ii) Adding Discipline to operations in 4 ways:
  
  1) Financials
  2) Roster Adjustments
  3) Stock Management
  4) Customer Experience

3) Where to from here?

1) Basics to get to a sustainable future:
i) Increasing foot traffic in the store, and;
ii) Increasing basket size.

2) GROW ALFALA strategy

• Rethink (internal processes)
• Reconnect (with volunteers & members)
• Renewing (our strengths & points of difference)

2) WHAT DOES VOLUNTEERING AT ALFALFA HOUSE MEAN TO YOU?

SEE APPENDIX 2 Areas of Greatest Volunteer Needs

3) THE PARK SLOPE CO-OP MOVIE

There are a lot of great ideas we can use from the American Co-op experience and culture. The big takeaway is having committed and reliable volunteers.

4) Transparency

(i) We need to communicate with each other more effectively. A lot of great work happening behind the scenes.

(ii) Centralisation of information to facilitate transparent operations & decisions.
Big underutilised (FREE) tool we use is Confluence. We need help building its capacity.

5) Review of the Discount Structure

(i) This will not be discussed tonight, other than to earmark the need to have a discussion in the near future to re-think how this can best operate.

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3. PART 2 MEMBER Q&A

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