Taking Steps Toward Our New Future

Dear CreekSide Community,

We have a plan, and have already taken important steps toward creating the store that will make us all proud and continue to be a foundation for our wonderful community!

Through the efforts of our community and staff, with support from our board of directors and Uplift Solutions, the non-profit food market consulting group brought in at the beginning of July, we have identified and begun to address the most critical steps toward providing you thebest community food store possible.

Valuable changes have already been made to the physical layout of the store, enlarging our produce department, expanding our pre-packaged bulk food, and concentrating more of prepared and artisanal products in one area.

We continue to build on these changes every day and in the coming weeks you can expect to see:

• expanded prepared foods department with improved selection and presentation
• expanded ready-to-go snacks and meals
• new products
• improved customer service
• increased quality assurance

Behind the scenes we are also implementing new strategies and procedures in order to:

• reduce costs
• better manage purchasing, budgets, staffing, and more
• improve management and leadership

All of these changes will allow us to better deliver on the promise of CreekSide Co-op as our community store, anchoring the overallElkins Park East revival, as we head toward our third anniversary in just a few months.

CreekSide's board of directors has made significant progress toward developing a comprehensive refinancing plan to secure our co-op's future for many years to come, and we expect to be able to share those details in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, we need your support.  As happens throughout the retail grocery industry, sales are lower in the summer, which hits a store of our size particularly hard, on top of the challenges we've faced in the past.  Please keep CreekSide foremost in your mind when you consider food purchases - every dollar helps!  We know that many of us get our groceries from multiple food stores - we just ask that you pleaseShop CreekSide First.

Thank you, and See You at the Co-op!

CreekSide Co-op Board of Directors, Staff, and Volunteers

We Need Each Other

We have made some great progress over the last two month towards our goal of sustained sales of $120,000 per week.  We are truly grateful to live where “a real sense of community consciousness is palpable…and residents are committed to building a better, more integrated and connected neighborhood,” according to apartments.com.

And we have not reached $120,000 in sales yet.  If we can’t get there and stay there as soon as possible then even with the potential refinancing, the survival of our store, and the strength of our community, may be at stake. 

Let’s look at some CreekSide numbers from last week, Feb 15-21. 

•  Total sales last week were $108,893.  
•  282 of our member households spent at least $100 during the week (and some much more). 
•  807 of our member households spent at least $25 during the week.  This includes those who spent $100 or more.

We are happy about every dollar that gets spent at CreekSide, and grateful for our shoppers’ support!  We encourage our community to shift these numbers upward enough to reach our overall goal.  

A powerful and fun way to help boost those numbers is by sharing what you love about CreekSide.  What better and easier way can you do that than with a picture of yourself with your favorite CreekSide product?  We call it the #shelfie, and you can learn more about it here.  We’re going to keep a count of #shelfies shared each week, so let’s see how many we can get going! 

Can we have more than 282 households spend more than $100 this week, and more than 807 spend more than $25?  Can we start sharing our shelfies in a significant way?  We need each other to do this - our quality of life depends on it.

Building and Sharing Community

The CreekSide Community commitment is headed in the right direction again, with sales climbing and renewed ways to share what we’re doing with friends and neighbors.  Please continue to find new ways to shop CreekSide, and share your commitment.  Our positive word of mouth is the best way to make our community store successful. 

This past Sunday, two member families held an Open House to introduce CreekSide Co-op to new people, or reenergize current members.  The open house was a fantastic success by all accounts, generating at least one new member and renewed interest overall. 

Dedicated CreekSide volunteers offered their time to help the hosts plan and implement their party, making the end result a cooperative and fun event.  We hope many more member families will step forward to have a community-building party like this one.  You can find instructions for hosting your own party here.

From David & Jenny Heitler-Klevans – Co-Hosts of our first Open House:

“...Fifteen people attended on a chilly afternoon to share food, friendship, and information about the co-op....Overall, it was a great way to meet up with neighbors, talk about the co-op and warm up a winter day. “

From Neil Wernick, member-volunteer:

“…guests seemed to discover the connection between the two reasons for being there...what it means to be a member of the community and a member of Creekside.” 

From Suzan Fine, member-volunteer:

"I think people showed great interest in what we had to say.  It was a good act to take on the road!” 

What other ways can you think of to build and share community?

Sustaining Community is a Daily Habit

There is only one thing that can make our community store sustainable, and that is enough revenue to cover all of our costs.  We are not there yet.

How do we make that happen?  Longer-term there are many things, including continuous improvements within the store, reaching new shoppers, and finding whatever additional cost reductions we can.  Short-term, it is up to us to continue to Rediscover ways to shift our food spending to our store from elsewhere, and to Share our commitment to our community and its anchor store with friends and family.  Our collective word of mouth is the strongest and quickest way to advertise while we continue to build strength.  We cannot let up on this commitment.

The great news about our potential refinancing is so exciting, and if we are able to make it happen it will make it that much easier to make our monthly debt payments to the new lender.   

This news does not mean we can let up on our campaign to Declare our Interdependence by committing to spending as much of our food dollars as we are able to at CreekSide, and to bring in other shoppers by sharing our commitment with them.  If we want our co-op to survive - and thrive! - we have to continue to support it, after good news or bad.  

And if we want to encourage a new lender to replace our existing mortgage, we have to continue to demonstrate our commitment to CreekSide, now and in the future.

 Maybe it was a sense of relief from the good news about the refinancing, or the great week we had previously, or simply a slower week after a strong week, but sales returned to levels we haven’t seen in many weeks.  Are we ready to turn this around?

 

According to noted behaviorist Dr. Jeff Kaplan, the most successful approach to changing a habit is by taking small steps toward a new way of doing something.  Perhaps you can get started, or continue, by looking at your shopping list for the week.  Pick one or two items that you usually buy elsewhere, and decide to find those items at CreekSide. 

For the next 30 days, buy another item at Creekside that you usually buy elsewhere and each time you run out of something or need something special at home, think CreekSide first.  We’ll be posting encouragement in our social media along the way.

Why CreekSide Membership, and More Great News!

Our Declaration of Interdependence campaign continues to grow!  More and more of our community members are Rediscovering our CreekSide Co-op and Sharing their love of our community with friends and neighbors.  Thank you to everyone who continues to spread the word about how important CreekSide is to our collective future.  Your efforts are paying off - please keep up the great work!

Here is a great item to share, about CreekSide Co-op membership and what it really means. It’s not what many people think it is - you may be surprised!  Now is a critical time to be a CreekSide member-owner and invest as much as you are able. 

The refinancing news is a great reason to increase our efforts.  We expect the refinance to reduce our sustainability sales level but not by so much that previous sales levels would be enough.  Please continue to rediscover CreekSide and its many treasures, and share your love of our community, with CreekSide as its anchor.

Thank you for everything you are doing!