A few days before I withdrew from an active role at TPS, I attended a board meeting as the head of the IT committee. The strategic focus of that meeting was around making TPS commercially sustainable. A few months back, TPS had been unable to meet its tax obligations to the local council. Donations from supporters and a last-minute re- negotiation of payment terms with the council had saved TPS from closing down on that occasion. Hence, the board was determined to avoid a similar crisis in the future. There was no mention of evaluating how the shop was measuring up on other objectives such as promoting environmental sustainability. The reason given for not focusing on other objectives was straightforward. If the shop could not become commercially sustainable, there would be no resources to pursue any of its other objectives. A key member of the TPS board mentioned at one point during the meeting that what drew him to TPS was its disruptive business model that challenged the status quo in UK grocery retail. He was excited about the challenge to make TPS a commercial success despite its unusual business structure. But listening to him and other board members during the meeting made it evident that environmental sustainability was certainly not a priority focus at the board and management level of TPS, at least at that point in time. The store still offered sustainable options in product categories where there was a perceived demand from its customers. However, there appeared to be no concerted effort to promote sustainable food consumption among members. The management felt that the store must sell products that its customers were keen to buy rather than try to push more sustainable options without a clear and expressed demand from members and customers. This made business sense and the store, first and foremost, needed to survive as a business, at least as far as the management was concerned.
Not long after I stopped being an active member of TPS around October 2011, TPS faced another financial crisis in February 2012. It once again found it difficult to pay business rates that were due to the Camden council. Only a generous grant of £20,000 from the Fredericks Foundation and an online fundraising campaign that raised around £7000 saved the co-op from closing its doors. In an interview with the Fredericks Foundation website team (2012), Kate Bull, the CEO of TPS, reported that the sales at the co-op had increased by 53% in the second year. She revealed:
In two years we've created a business with £1.2m turnover from zero, with gross profits of £368,000. We started with no cash and we've never had an overdraftÉ
This year we have a loss of £92,000 after overheads, but I think next year we'll make a surplus.
In September 2012, Kate Bull stepped down from her position as the CEO but continues to be a member of the TPS board of directors. David Barrie, the other founder has also stepped down from being a member of the board and is no longer playing an active role at TPS. Arthur had stepped away from being an active member already after the first year, though he participates occasionally in pop-up catering events organised by TPS. The product buyer from the founding days of TPS has also moved on, and a number of other people with whom I had worked are no longer members of the co-op. Also, I found out from the TPS website (2013) that in order to further incentivise members to volunteer their time for the shop, TPS management has decided to offer 20% discount to those who do their shifts regularly instead of the 10% it offers to non-volunteering members. The co-op also offers 10% discount to reward loyalty of staff from a couple of local business organisations as they contribute greatly to the shopÕs revenues. At the time of writing this thesis, TPS has survived for four years and is now operating under a new leadership team.
Next, I focus on key challenges faced by TPS in promoting a sustainable food consumption practice within its community and compare the TPS experience with four other co-ops in the UK to broaden the discussion and understanding of the potential of community-based food co-operatives in encouraging pro-environmental food consumption.
Chapter 5
SUSTAINABLE FOOD CO-OPS: CHALLENGES AND POTENTIAL
Now I canÕt go out and drag people in by their collar and say, Ôlook youÕre a member É help usÕ. They are likely to leave. Some of them are doing 68 hours a week and some of them have young children and some of them have health issues and so forth. But our community is going to become healthy again by participation.
Founding Member of a Co-op
In this chapter, I explore findings on key challenges from the in-depth case study of TPS in conjunction with other research output on community-based co-ops to more broadly evaluate the potential of food co-ops in fostering an environmentally responsible food consumption practice at the individual and community level. First, I bring into this discussion evidence collected through interviews with key informants of four other co- ops in the UK. Second, in each thematically focused section, primary evidence from this study is further analysed with reference to previously published work on consumer food co-operatives. Finally, I consider ways in which the seven co-operative principles can be built upon to further the specific objective of encouraging environmentally sustainable food practices.
5.1 Profiles of four other sustainable food co-ops
Engaging with TPS for about seven months as an active member helped me learn about its successes and challenges in encouraging sustainable food consumption. When I became a member, TPS was still in its first year of development and the organisation as a whole was learning from its operational experiences and from the feedback it was receiving from its various stakeholders Ñ members, customers, funders, neighbours, supporters, and suppliers. Despite being a member of a few of its working committees, I had only limited exposure to the impact the co-op had on its members and customers. I was not part of the core management team and I did not have access to sales data. Nevertheless, the opportunity to get a close look into the workings of the co-op did present important lessons. In the rest of this chapter I discuss those lessons and compare them with evidence collected from four other co-ops. Before I proceed with the discussion, however, I present a short profile of the four co-ops: Stroudco, The True Food Co-operative, The University of Brighton Food Co-op, and the Transition Pimlico Food Co-op.