The Challenge Continues

Our goal of $120,000 weekly sales is within reach - we all need to dig in to get us there.  You, as a committed member of our community, are the key to this.  We all are. 

If CreekSide is to succeed, it will take all of us and more to make it happen.  How?  By each of us telling our friends and neighbors that our community matters to us, and that perhaps the strongest thing we can all do to support our community is to Shop CreekSide First.  No message CreekSide sends will have the same impact as a message coming from you. 

These are some of the things we need to say:

1.  The longer-term financial survival of CreekSide Co-op requires sustained weekly sales of at least $120,000.  Our goal is to achieve this starting the first week of March.
2.  Our community can do two things to get us there
   •  Rediscover CreekSide - make a renewed effort to find $20 or more of your existing food budget that you can spend at the Co-op each week.
   •  Share CreekSide - Share with friends and neighbors your love of our community and the quality of life that the Co-op brings to all of us.
3.  CreekSide Co-op is run by your friends and neighbors, doing their best to create a community center where we can run into friends, get quality food, much of it local, at a fair price, and make our little corner of the world better.  
4.  CreekSide is already the anchor in our re-energized community, just like we envisioned it.  We can’t afford to lose it.
5. We all see ways in which the store should improve.  CreekSide is committed to continuous improvement and has made huge strides since it opened.  The best and only way for it to get there is for it to reach financial stability, and right now that is up to all of us. 

Tell your friends.  Tell your neighbors.  Post to social media, send an email, or bring it up with people when you are with them.  Like the CreekSide Facebook page and share (not just like) the posts there with your own message.  Now is the time!

The Energy is Growing!

What a week!  There has been more activity and energy focused on CreekSide Co-op than ever - At the store, in our conversations and on social media.  Not all of it positive, and some of it downright false, but healthy debate and committed action are driving up store sales, which is exactly what we need right now.  Keep spreading the word!  Keep talking about what you love about CreekSide and its impact on our community, now and in the future.

Our campaign to bring CreekSide to financial stability by the end of March is right on track, and with all of us continuing to work together we’re more convinced than ever that it’s going to be successful.  We just need to keep shopping and sharing to make it happen.  (We are still meeting many committed Creekside shoppers who don’t know about the Declaration of Interdependence, so be sure to ask people and forward them the link if they haven’t officially signed on.

There are big changes going on in the store this week.  Several of the grocery aisles have been rearranged to better meet our needs and buying preferences.  One big change already is an expanded cookies and crackers section.   The biggest change of all is that the shelves closest to the hot bar have been removed to make way for an exciting new store area.  More news as it’s revealed!

This positive movement has gotten us thinking about how far the store has come since it opened over two years ago.  The product mix has been adjusted pretty dramatically.  The produce area is so much more open, a pleasure to navigate and look at.  Adjustments in deli, rearrangements of cases, many new products in prepared foods and on the hot bar.  And as many of us know, major pricing improvements.

While these changes were implemented by CreekSide’s staff, they were driven by all of us!  All the suggestions - in the store, over email, at meetings, on Facebook and other social media, and even on random blog posts - are heard and considered.  Nothing changes overnight, and no one suggestion is necessarily the clear path to success but the store does continue to improve because it is our community store, sensitive to all of our needs, and perhaps most of all responding to what we buy.  

Which brings us back to the passion.  People talk about CreekSide because they care what happens here.  Let’s keep making sure we get to keep talking about it long into the future.

CreekSide’s Future — Determined by Us During the Next Three Months!

As a community, we will determine CreekSide’s fate by the end of March.   

Over the last several weeks our dedicated community has made CreekSide a priority - thank you to everyone who has played a part in ensuring that CreekSide can cover operating expenses and not run out of cash in the short term.

Now the harder work begins - bringing weekly sales to a consistent $120,000.  Before long we will need to resume paying our debt obligations, and without higher sales that will not be possible.  This will only work by rediscovering new ways to shift our shopping to Creekside and  encouraging our friends and neighbors to share our passion for our community.  CreekSide is not just another shopping choice but the primary choice for sustaining our families and our community.

Seven years ago we had a crumbling building on a struggling street, with a vision for how things could be different. Now we have a vibrant community center on a block now supporting three new restaurants, a community arts store, a book shop, a performing arts space, and a renovated train station hosting events most days of the week, plus fresh activity for the businesses that existed before.   

What happens now is up to all of us.  Are you ready to make this work?  What will you do to help get us there?

• Find products you may have overlooked in your visits to Creekside and give them a try
• Schedule casual business meetings in the co-op
• Like CreekSide's page on Facebook; Share CreekSide's postings
• Have you tried our Instagram widget?  Include #creeksidecoop in your comment and your image will show up on our home page within a minute or so!
• Share a CreekSide Video via email or your social network
• Read and sign the Declaration of Interdependence and encourage others to do so.  

Will You Make Community Your New Year's Resolution?

Our CreekSide Coop's survival depends on more than a rally. It needs enough of to make a commitment to building our community by making CreekSide our primary market and sharing our passion with our friends and neighbors.  

We need to get this message to more folks in our community.  The key is to Rediscover and Share - find what makes you most passionate about CreekSide and our community and let others know.  

Some of us have been out knocking on doors to talk to our neighbors about CreekSide and have found that many still don’t know that:

- Everyone is welcome at CreekSide - you DO NOT have to be a member to shop

- CreekSide is NOT expensive.  While CreekSide doesn't have the buying power of national stores, particularly for certain mainstream brands, for the most part it is similarly priced for similar quality products, and often LESS expensive.

So, please share your passion for community and CreekSide widely.

* Bring a friend to the co-op.

* Give a CreekSide Gift Basket

* Share a CreekSide Video via email or your social network

* New! Post to Instagram and include #creeksidecoop - your image will show up on our home page!

* Like CreekSide's page on Facebook and share CreekSide's postings 

We can do this - if we each take responsibility for inviting and welcoming others to join us as we create our community's future.

We are off to a Great Start!!

Because of you this campaign — we prefer to think of it as a movement — is off to a very promising start!

Our near-term goal of sustained weekly sales of $120,000 is now clearly within reach, but we can only get there with YOUR continuing help -- shopping and spreading the word. (Please visit this useful page with actions you can take to help get us there. )

Each of us has challenged ourselves to

• Rediscover Creekside and the great products it has to offer, and
• Share our love for our community and CreekSide Co-op with our friends and neighbors.

Committing to our CreekSide Co-op is a recognition of our collective interdependence - we need each other to make all of our lives better by building the community that we want. 

Thank you for being on this journey with us!