How to start and run a successful organic co-op program using your desktop tools and a website

This “How to” comes after some hard lessons learned from helping my wife’s family run a small meat market / grocery store that had an organic co-op running out of it. The challenge was not always the technology, but getting the person running the co-op to use the technology. If your goal is to run a co-op that is streamlined for you and easy for your co-op members then this “How to” is for you. If you are afraid of technology then keep using your notepad and post its, and good luck because as soon as your co-op grows it will grow unmanageable and your members won’t stay active if they feel like they can’t rely on the processes. Co-ops I believe are as organized as those members running it. My motto is “Work Smarter – Not Harder” and you can use technology to accomplish this. Possible Co-Op management solutions are: 1. Run and manage your organic co-op completely by email with Things to have 1, 2 (minus Yahoo website account) 3 and 4 2. Run and manage your organic co-op completely by MS tools on desktop and a Yahoo built website. 3. Run and manage your organic co-op completely using a just your computer with internet access and browser and a monthly service account with a “Software as a Service” provider that has an application that takes care of all your organic coop application needs. I have not personally found one, so as a techie, I have decided to build and provide one for your needs. The website will be called myorganiccooperative.com and I would greatly appreciate it if you would send me an email or comment below expressing your interest level. Until it is ready, please fill free to use this how to article:)

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• 1. A desire by all involved to “work smarter not harder” by learning technology in order to streamline your co-op processes. 2. Organizational skills. 3. People skills. 4. A computer with Microsoft

1. Determine want organics are available locally. You can do this by first getting a list of available organic produce in your area from local certified organic farmers found at local farmer markets or from a local organic produce supplier. Build a network with those you talk to who know organics or grow them because they can be your resource for suppliers.
2. In an email to all or your friends and acquaintances, introduce your co-op startup to include estimated start date and list your findings of local available organic produce. With list, ask your email recipients to respond with selecting the organics they would most likely order if in the co-op. If they want to join ask them to provide needed contact info (First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone,City)
   Request help from a few very organized potential members that can help you put with future order processing and management.
   Lastly, give them a time when you will put together your findings and the member list so that they know not to sit on the email too long. Be sure to thank them for their interest and responses to your survey and lastly ask them to please pass on your email to their friends who they think would be interested in joining the co-op.
3. Collect member list of those who want to join. Contact members that want to help with the process and determine their role and duties up from with some incentive like no sign up fee or reduced basket price.
   Place contact information in MS Excel with column headings. Create a Distribution group list in your email contacts found in either MS Outlook or ISP email and then upload the list by mapping list columns to contact fields.
   Note: Depending on the size of your list you may want to further categorize members into smaller distribution groups. Your contact list in these Distribution groups becomes your Customer Relations Management system. By later including notes, sorting on location, name, ect. Also, most members don’t want to see other members email and you don’t want them to have a means to communicate with each other via email but only in a controlled blog that you can run from a page in your website. MS Outlook has a way to hide other emails in Distribution group list. See Hide Email in Help.
4. Analyze and prioritize organic popularity list by counting number of occurrence of organic items listed as most likely to be ordered.
5. Build your baskets in a MS Excel spreadsheet by first listing all of your available organic items in Sheet 1
   • Rename Sheet 1 to “OrganicsListYYYY_MM_DD” to identify your first available organic co-op week. (Every week you will include another Sheet to your Excel file either by copying and pasting from previous week sheet and modifying list or by scratch. This is done so that you can begin to track what is available each week from your suppliers and their prices.
   • Column headings should include Produce Name, Category (fruit or veggi), Measure it is available or how it is sold to you (lbs, ounces, bunch, ct) Wholesale Price, Smallest Unit Price and Popularity.
   a. NOTE: (smallest unit price can be determined by dividing the wholesale price by the number of items in the measurement of that produce. For example, let’s say the wholesale cost of a 5lb bag of apples is $5.00 and has an average of 30 apples in a bag. The smallest unit price per apple would be approximately .17 cents each). You can insert a formula into the Smallest Unit Price column so Smallest Unit Price = wholesale price/number of items. If you want to build in cost to run the co-op for weekly expenses such as gas to pick up produce or to cover any unanticipated expenses this is also where you would do it by adding to your formula. So lets say you want to build in a 20% markup to cover weekly expenses to run the co-op , your new Smallest Unit Price formula would be (Smallest Unit Price = (wholesale price/number of items) + ( (wholesale price/number of items)*.20 ) so a .17 cent apple will now cost your members .20 cents. You can choose to mention this to your members up front at signup to include any membership fee to help your startup cost.
   
   b. If you get the available list from a supplier have that supplier send the list to you in a spreadsheet and have them list the column names the same as you do in your spreadsheet and in the same order if possible so that you can easily copy and past list into new sheet each week. Sort your whole list by category, then by produce name then by Wholesale price. For your first list, take your email responses on what your members would like to see in their baskets/boxes, and in the “Priority” column, prioritize separately the top 10 most popular fruits and veggies. In other words, if Cherry tomatoes showed up the most for veggies give it a priority number “1”, If Cherry tomatoes was the least
   mentioned veggie then give it a “10".
6. • Decide your baskets/box sizes and prices, for example.
   i. Small Basket ($28) contains 4-6 fruits and 7-10 vegetables
   ii. Medium Basket ($38) contains 5-7 fruits and 8-12 vegetables
   iii. Large Basket ($48) contains 7-9 fruits and 9-13 vegetables
7. • Based on your sorted list of fruits and vegetables by smallest unit price and popularity, determine what makes up the baskets. Total all the smallest unit prices for each basket and make sure it does not go over the price of the basket price.
   Note: Most organic co-ops use baskets or boxes with a set number of fruit and veggies in various sizes with set prices. If you have trouble, you can go on line and find organic co-op websites to see how they set up their own baskets or boxes. Also, organics often parish more quickly than regular produce and if you order in bulk to distribute into the baskets/boxes, some items don’t arrive which means you need to determine alternative items based on popularity, price and availability.
   
   If you decide to give the co-op members a weekly list to choose from to build their own basket/box instead of pre-built baskets/boxes orders then you need to really streamline the order process because it becomes even more labor intensive. A later step will go over how to capture orders on-line via a modified free shopping cart.
8. Save your MS Excel basket building file with a name such as “Weekly Organic Baskets
9. Create a Paypal Personal account and request your organic suppliers to do the same if they don’t already have one
10. Create a Yahoo Website account and download Yahoo SiteBuilder to your computer.
    
    Using the Yahoo SiteBuilder page and form templates, build a website to include a Main Co-Op Page, Co-Op Sign-Up Page, Contact the Co-Op Manager Page and Basket Order Page.
    • Main Co-Op Page should have brief background of Co-Op.
    • Sign-Up Page can be made from a template contact form with Default subject line of “Co-Op Signup”. Link the signup to your isp email account so that you get those contact form emails.
    • Co-Op Manager Page can be used to address any issues with orders or membership.
    • Basket Order Page can be a representation of your basket list that you created in step 5. Include near the top of page in big red letters the week that the order page is meant. For example. Order Form for Week March 3-7, 2008. Include a contact form on page with default subject line of “Organic Co-Op Order” and have members copy and paste there basket selection into the comment section of contact form. Also have form sent to your email. Also on page, include a comment that you can pay at pickup or pay now if the member has a PayPal account and include a url link to PayPal signup page so that the member can automatically pay you for the weeks’ co-op order by sending money (the cost of the order) to you. The Co-Op Order page should encourage members to get the Paypal account because this will help streamline their payments to you and then your payments to your organic suppliers if they agree to receive payments via their PayPal Account. PayPal members can add funds from their existing bank accounts then just transfer the order cost to your account. You can keep track of who paid you by viewing your PayPal History page which includes, payments received by date range and from who and the amount.
11. NOTE: If you want to give the co-op members the on-line ability to custom build their basket/box orders from the Order Page, several detailed steps below are needed.
    1. Obtain free shopping cart code from on line resources such as www.paypal.com (free but then you pay a small processing fee right out of your account) or www.nopdesign.com and then modify code to suite your needs and paste code into your Order Page.
    2. If you use the paypal shopping cart you get what you need to track orders.
    3. If you use the nopdesign.com free shopping cart you order submission sends confirmation to the co-op member and yourself in which you can confirm and fulfill the order and all orders are sent to a blank cvs file on the web host server. The file just grows with orders and then you need to track your orders by opening that file, sorting on dates, customer name, and produce name. Two ways to open the cvs file are:
    a.Export a copy of it to your desktop using Yahoo SiteBuilder tool
    b.FTP the file to your desktop using a FTP tool like Filezilla.
    4. The values you will most likely use for your shopping cart from your Organic Basket items list you developed in Step 5 are the Product Name and Smallest Unit Price.
12. Test all functionality of website and make sure it is ready for use. Ensure all fake orders are received by you and members receive some kind of confirmation of order either by you manually or by the order form itself.
13. Send an email out to your Co-Op members using the Organic Co-Op distribution group you set up in Step 3. Include your website url in the email and let them know the timeline for ordering (order up until such date and time) pickup location, pickup days and times as well as other useful information that will make their experience as personal, informational, easy and helpful as possible.
14. After order time window is over for the week, determine you total orders for by either opening up order emails that have the pasted baskets orders in them and paste the contact name, contact phone number and basket order into a new MS Excel spreadsheet which you will use to total all fruit veggies to order for co-op as well as begin to track weekly orders by organic produce item. Once list is accumulated in spreadsheet, total items in lbs, counts, bundles, ect depending on what makes up the basket, then total prices to determine what you should have in your Paypal account balance for the week.
15. Compare customer orders in spreadsheet to those reported in weekly history of your PayPal account and validate that they in fact paid into your PayPal account or if they indicated in the order that they plan to pay at pick up.
    Tally PayPal balance for that week and Tally outstanding payments.
16. Follow Up and assist members if member indicated they will pay by PayPal and had not done so by your order time. If needed walk member through the sending money process using the “Send Money” tab in PayPal so that there won’t be issues the following week.
17. Membership fee and that 20% markup should cover the cost to make bulk order to Organic suppliers. If not, reimburse yourself after all pickup payments are complete. Contact Suppliers and submit your bulk orders. Contact your key helpers and arrange time to distribute produce into baskets/boxes.
18. Pick up or have produce delivered to your basket order processing location. You have either paid before had via your PayPal account or will pay by personal check at pickup or delivery after you deposited needed fund from your PayPal account.
19. Have key member helpers join you in basket order fulfillments.
20. On member pick up day/s have key member helpers join you in member pickups and designate one person to collect payments. Make sure all member contact is greeted with a smile and be personable and time conscious as you maybe still fulfilling basket orders.
21. Follow up with a phone call to members who have not picked up by their stated pickup date.
22. Repeat Steps 5-22 on a weekly basis and begin to track available produce and your orders over time to help you in your future improvements to the process.

Tips & Warnings

• •Have fun •Stay on top of all contact with members. Follow up!! •Technology is your friend. •Stay consistent in your processes. •Remain professional with dates/times that are set for pickups and deliveries. •Reward members for their loyalty to the co-op by incentives.
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