About The Show:

“Our work begins with an approach that is grounded in curiosity and learning.”

- Shane Hart

In today's episode, we dive into the fascinating journey of Shane Hart, a creative and branding consultant who helped revitalize a local Co-Op in Fayetteville. Shane, with his deep roots in the community and a personal connection to the Co-Op, was eager to tackle this significant project.

To understand the Co-Op's essence, Shane's team engaged in months of research. They spoke to a diverse group of stakeholders—board members, customers, vendors, and farmers—to grasp the unique history and values that defined the Co-Op. 

What emerged was a revitalized brand that strikes a perfect balance: honoring its community-focused legacy while also attracting new members and shoppers. Shane's commitment to the project stemmed from recognizing the Co-Op's iconic status in Fayetteville, and his vision was instrumental in reestablishing it as a beloved institution.

Today, thanks to this thoughtful approach to branding and community engagement, the Co-Op remains an integral part of life in Fayetteville, successfully adapting to the evolving food market.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• Delve into the importance of community involvement in the realm of Co-Op success.
• Realize the diverse benefits that arise from supporting local farming and craftsmanship.
• Grasp the obstacles faced in branding and marketing co-operatives and effective methods to tackle them.
• Understand the impact of compelling narratives in engaging potential members.
• Explore how to adjust to evolving circumstances while preserving your Co-Op's cherished past.

All this and more on this episode of Ozark Natural Foods The Co-Op Podcast.

Important Links and Mentions In This Episode:

• Listen to Ozark Natural Foods: The Co-Op podcast to learn about the history and standards of quality of the Co-Op.
• Check out Black Box's website to learn more about their creative and branding consultancy services.
• Become a member of the Co-Op to support the community and have access to exclusive benefits.

This Episode is Sponsored By:

Ozark Natural Foods

Connect More With Ozark Natural Foods:

• Grab our Newsletter 
• Email Us at Info@ONF.Coop
• Connect With Our Facebook Page 
• Join The Facebook Group
• Connect With Our Instagram 
• Connect With Our LinkedIn Page
• Learn more about the History of Food Coops

We get by with a little help from our Co-Op Members and Friends!

Please consider rating and reviewing our podcast on Apple Podcasts or your Podcast player of choice. A little Love goes a long way. 

ONF – COOP – BLACK BOX

ONF Open [0:00]

Welcome to Ozark Natural Foods, the Coop Podcast featuring stories and information about the largest food Coop in Arkansas based in Fayetteville and serving all of Northwest Arkansas. The Coop has been around for 50-plus years, providing community and encouraging a love of food that is good for us and our planet. Learn our history and standards of quality. Meet our Coop members, employees, and vendors and understand why being locally focused is vital to our food, products, and economy. The Coop has leveraged Cooperative economics here in Northwest Arkansas to bring the freshest and the best food to our whole community. Listen to Ozark Natural Foods, the Coop podcast today to learn why.

Randy Wilburn [0:58]

Hey, folks, and welcome to the Ozark Natural Foods Coop Podcast. I'm your host, Randy Wilburn and we have a great episode in store for you today. We are sitting down with Shane Hart, a Principal and Founding Partner of Black Box to learn more about the relocation and rebranding of the Coop, which took place actually not too long ago. Black Box is an organization that the Coop has worked with for a number of years and they continue to work on a number of initiatives and projects. And so we thought it would be great to get Shane on the episode to talk a little bit more about their work and efforts on behalf of the Coop and what they're trying to do to help extend the brand. So first of all, Shane, how are you doing?

Shane Hart [1:42]

I'm good. Thanks for having me.

Randy Wilburn [1:43]

Why don't you tell the audience just a little bit about yourself and how you got connected with the Coop and when I say yourself, I mean Black Box and showing how you guys got to working together.

Shane Hart [1:53]

So Black Box has been around for about eight or nine years. I sort of refounded it when I moved home after 25 years of working on either coast and around the country on all kinds of branding and creative projects from really large companies, really small companies. And our goal has always remained that we are a creative branding consultancy that brings together all of the touch points of a brand so that people can connect with it in a holistic and interesting and deeply engaging way. So our work begins with an approach that is sort of really grounded in curiosity and learning and research and discovery and then grows through the creative iterations and presence of the brand. And then beyond that further activates the brand in a way that people and its various audiences and customers in the case of the Coop can see it as this whole thing that speaks to them in a consistent way.

Randy Wilburn [2:47]

It's one of those things where the average consumer doesn't necessarily see that whole piece happen, the sausage making as we like to say when it comes to the marketing and branding piece of it. Do you remember your first interaction with the Coop?

Shane Hart [3:04]

I do, and to your earlier point, actually, if we do our job, great, they don't see it.

Randy Wilburn [3:08]

It is.

Shane Hart [3:10]

Randy Wilburn [4:25]

I’m curious, was this your first opportunity to work with the business model of a Coop, or had you guys done something with them before, or maybe you've had experiences with Coops in the past?

Shane Hart [4:36]

No, we've never worked with another Coop. We work with non-profits. We work with arts and culture organizations, and certainly, we work with retail brands. We're not category specific, we work across all industries. We've never worked with the Coop model before. However, I was aware of the Coop model personally, and I was very well aware of the Coop here in Fayetteville personally, because my family's from here and I spent all my summers here as a kid. I lived here with my partner early on. And I think I probably visited and shopped in at least two if not three Coop locations. At this point, I know I'm dating myself.

Randy Wilburn [5:11]

So you've got some history basically. That's cool. Well, I mean, clearly that helped you in your part of the process as it pertains to understanding it. I would imagine one of your jobs as a brand and a marketing person is to fully understand and immerse yourself in the world of your client.

Shane Hart [5:31]

Yeah, that is our job. And that's where all of our work begins. It is a deep understanding. And we also test a lot of the preconceived notions that brands and businesses and organizations have about themselves because we all come with that, right? So we look at how it sits contextually in the marketplace, how it sits more broadly. We look for those points of differentiation. So yeah, a deep dive into brands is where all of our work begins and you can't get at the Coop without getting into the Coop.

Randy Wilburn [6:01]

Were there any surprises that you recognized right away when you started working with the Coop, or was it pretty smooth sailing throughout the process of helping them with the rebrand?

Shane Hart [6:13]

There are a lot of questions there. So first of all, there's never smooth sailing when you do a project that expands over three to five years and that sort of thing. And there are also always unique challenges when you're working on a brand that has been around as long as a Coop that is so much a part of the community and that has so much investment in it by the community. So the surprises were and when I say it was rough, it didn't mean it was bad, but rough and there are bumps where you learn things and things are unexpected. There weren't things about the Coop business model that were so unexpected to me. But I think one of the things that I guess I knew, but I don't think I knew the degree to which and the intensity was the deep sort of emotional investment that this community has in the Coop. It makes sense that that should be so. When they reached out to us, I was really excited. And one of the reasons is we work all over the country. In fact, a few of our clients are here, but the opportunity to work on something in your hometown that is so iconic, it’s a treat. So for someone, especially who's gone away, applied their creative skills and experience across the world and the country, and then to come home on one of the earliest projects that we worked on, to me was so iconic. And I think is so iconic to Fayetteville, we would have done it at any cost. I think there are certain things about certain businesses and entities in every town that just define them. There's no east village without Katz Deli. There are just certain things that have deep, deep investment by people in the community. Some of those are businesses. Some of them are cultural institutions, and some of them are places. And so, you can't have a Fayetteville without the Farmers’ Market in the square. You can't have it without Dickson Street, and you sure can't have it on a Friday night without Maxine’s. So there are things about Fayetteville which is such a colorful and terrific community that make it what it is. And many of these things are institutions like the Coop. So from its starting days in a little white house to move around town. The Coop represents this arc of history in Fayetteville that is really, really interesting. From early folks coming here as a part of the back to the land movement and hippies, if we can use the word, and say, we want a different model of meeting our food needs and meeting the needs of our community. So beginning there and watching that evolve over time. And as I would come home, and go away, and so on, and so forth, and see that it continued to exist. When they reached out to us, I was like, this is iconic. This is such an opportunity. We worked on the rebranding of Fayetteville itself for experience in Fayetteville. And we did those things in reasonably close proximity, and to get to do those two things, but particularly the Coop just had deep resonance. So when you get to touch something that's iconic when you're in my business, you want to treat it with tender loving care on the one hand, and then on the other hand, you want to really interrogate what is its meaning within the community? How can I better articulate that and how can I make it alive and vital today as much as it was when it first began?

Randy Wilburn [9:37]

And I would imagine that certainly, anything that you do is never done in a vacuum, you have to elicit support or solicit support and feedback. What were your interactions, if any, like with the members of the Coop who maybe you had a chance to speak with just before you embarked upon this project?

Shane Hart [9:58]

I would need to reach back to my team to confirm this, but we began discovery, which is our period of learning when we begin any project. I believe our discovery lasted almost nine months on this project between that and coming back for some further learnings. It may have even lasted as long as a year. And when we do that, and in particular with the Coop, again, an iconic institution here in Fayetteville where there are lots of stakeholders. They are stakeholders who consider themselves stakeholders who we might not even define as stakeholders because customers here become stakeholders in a way that they often aren't with other retail institutions. So we did long periods of understanding and working with and talking to and questioning the Board members, new members, potential members, certainly the team, and the staff. We did a lot of benchmarking around the country, particularly in the grocery space. We have worked with Whole Foods historically too so we have a fair amount of learning about the natural food space. We spent a lot of time researching and benchmarking other Coop business models because there are fewer and fewer of them today. And then there's the cultural work that we do and the cultural research. And then there's a psychographic and demographic research we do because not only do we need to speak to the current customer base, and members of the Coop, but we want to attract new folks. So we want to understand how younger people, different generations view the Coop. I always joke that I can nail your generation if you live in Northwest Arkansas about what you call it. It’s Ozark Natural Foods to some folks. It's ONF to others. To me, it's the Coop because I grew up in the 80s. It's got all of these names and you can sort of date it when people became aware of it almost by what they call it.

And I think that was certainly an effort that was not taken lightly and a lot of work went into that. When I hear a year just to go into a rebrand that means there's a lot of thought, a lot of consideration, a lot of time spent with everybody that you could talk to that could give you the type of information that you need before you embark upon, here's what we recommend you do.

We became aware early on that there was a deep awareness of the Coop among a small group of folks and a deep commitment. And by small, I mean, tiny, there was awareness among the community at large to a pretty great degree but there was a really tiny, avid, devoted group of folks who made up the core of what I really do think is the Coop. We learned a lot from those folks but we also learned as we started talking to other people who weren't among that group that is so invested and working with the Board and shopping there regularly or even members that they didn't really understand it. They didn't understand what a Coop was. They didn't necessarily understand a lot about it. Some had not even been exposed to it physically because of the old location. As college has shifted its complexion over the years, fewer people passed it, especially younger folks. And so, it was a broad range of people, one with deep history and background and when I say deep history, I think we have Board members that go back to the late 70s when we started doing that work with them, and then others that had no exposure at all. And so it was very, very broad, even the name. Because, as I mentioned before, people call it different things. It’s a problem for a brand when people don't call it the same thing. I always answer when somebody calls me Shane. My first name is David. If you call me David, I will sit there like an idiot and not answer. It's still my name but on the first day of school, it's always awkward. And so, when you have a brand that has deep ownership by a lot of folks, but at the same time, it's called a different thing by a lot of folks. We knew that we needed to clarify that and so we made the decision early on, among other strategic decisions to go, we're going back to our roots, we're calling ourselves the Coop, and we think that this is the best way to introduce the Coop business model to people. We always encourage clients to say what they are. Ozark Natural Foods was a mouthful and ONF, an acronym that was meaningless. The Coop really meant something. It had, and we can talk about the creative process later, but it also had the benefit as I always say, we love the creative business to have four strong characters so it had that going for it too. But I think the main thing that had to go for it is it forthrightly said this is who we are. Whether you understand what that is or not give us an opportunity to tell you the story. That's another job we have to do but we decided to go back to the name Coop for a reason.

It is interesting to see and you know, I find myself sometimes even as involved as I am with the Coop, sometimes fumbling between one name and another. [SH - I think you're not alone]. And I think that's the way that it is. I think one thing that has helped, though, and I was talking with Mike Anzalone, the General Manager about this is that the location of the store now is so prominent. I mean, Lafayette and North College in Fayetteville is one of the most trafficked intersections.

I mean, in terms of numbers, right? Also, it's a great cultural intersection of Fayetteville. I mean, basically, the core of all of those iconic things that make Fayetteville Fayetteville again, you're right there at the nexus of all of that. I don't know if you're aware of this but when we were first engaged by the Coop, it was not the plan to move. The original plan was to renovate, reuse and adapt the Evelyn Hills location and that was the working plan for quite some time. And I know that you're going to be talking to Chris Baribeau and Leanne from Modus, the architectural firm with whom we collaborated so closely. They're great partners, and they've been great partners for the Coop too. We spent months actually working on the store at Evelyn Hills with the assumption that's where we were going to relaunch. And it wasn't until more than a year later somebody else can tell you the date that Mike reached out to me, and he goes, so I have some news. And he says what do you think? And I'm like, it's amazing. What are you talking about? In a way that IGA which had formerly been Marvins IGA and had been a grocery for so long, there is something really fantastic about, again, taking this destination for grocery that has always been there but then fully transforming it with something new that was embedded in the community that felt welcoming, but it was still a destination for food, but fully reinvented with better food and experience that invited the community in the intervention that Modus did. The brilliant intervention and introduction of the front porch, I think speaks volumes to what we were trying to achieve there.

When you drive down North College, whether you're going North or South on North Colleg, between Dixon and Lafayette, you can't help but notice it, especially on a beautiful spring afternoon at around lunchtime. I mean, the place is packed.

It's amazing, right? It's so welcoming that soaring porch and everyone welcome above the door and that sort of thing. One of our first learnings actually was when people were being asked if they were members, and we can talk about the Coop model at some point, but membership for many implies exclusion and one of the first things that we wanted to do was to immediately say both in terms of the experience that one has of the physicality of the space, the location, the way we were renaming it, the way we were starting to talk about it. Yes, there's a membership and there are good reasons why but everyone's welcome. Member or not everyone's welcome. This is a place for community, and community is probably one of the most overused words in my work today in branding and marketing. It's like we're creating a community. Are you or are you just selling some stuff? Most times you’re just selling some stuff. [RW - It's a buzzword for sure]. The Coop can fully own it and wrap its arms around it and embrace it because, without the community, there is no Coop, so it's one of those places where it goes without saying. The Coop is the community.

I'm curious to know given that you did get a chance to connect with a lot of the stakeholders. Did you by chance talk to any of the farmers and any of the suppliers to the Coop? What in their words, did the Coop mean to them?

So yes, we talked to vendors brands, all of these are stakeholders, dozens of groups, farmers, and of course, farmers that are involved in the farm program that the Coop does, which is a brilliant program that we're going to spend a lot of time talking about this year for those who don't know about it. It meant a few things to them. One of the things it meant was that they could farm year-round and sell stuff year-round. And I know that sounds fundamental and basic, but having thriving small, privately owned farms is not a given anymore. We live in an industrial food environment. We live in an industrial farming environment. My family has a multi-generation dairy farm that still operates. I get it and understand what small farms are like to operate, and it's hard. It is extremely hard for small farmers today. So one of the things that it meant, and again, I know it sounds fundamental and basic almost is it meant that they had a place to sell their goods and the things that they grew and that's not a given because them getting in the doors of another grocery, especially if it's a national grocery chain. If not, impossible, because just supply chain logistics that can't supply them regularly, the nature of the way they grow, and the volume at which they grow, it just simply doesn't work for them. In fact, it works against them. So we've had a robust farmers market for many, many years. We've had it, and it's lived happily and almost as a partnership in many ways. The Coop allows those small farmers and those small makers and vendors a venue to sell their goods, which are local, higher quality in most cases, and more desirable for their impact to the environment. Also, they taste better. So it meant it was a place for them to sell their goods and bring them to market on a regular basis, which, again, many communities just don't have.

And I think that is one of the strategic advantages that the Coop has and it's also strategic the way you walk into the building, and you're greeted by fresh flowers on one side, and just an explosion of color in the produce section that's right there.

I knew was highly intentional. Marketplace, the fresh area is always intended to be the focal point when you came in. We always wanted to say, and again, Modus helped work this out in a brilliant way. We wanted for people to walk in the door number one to feel incredibly welcome. And number two to literally overcome with all of this fresh goodness in front of you and then to realize that a large portion is grown here in your backyard, literally. We did a bunch of work when we were trying to understand how to demonstrate the Coop’s role in the community and we stopped counting. We can do some better math on this someday. That’s roughly 67 cents of every dollar that you spend at the Coop goes right back into our community. You can't do that anywhere else.

We talked about their recirculation of the dollar and that's one of the things Mike and I mentioned when I interviewed him for his podcast episode, and we talked about the importance of that and I think that gets lost with people sometimes. And it's no knock on Whole Foods or Natural Grocers but most of the time that money comes in there outside of what might get paid to the employees that work there. The rest of it goes out of the community fairly quickly whereas the Coop model and the Coop itself, this Coop, that's not the case.

No, it's not. It touches two things, right? It touches quality and culture, and it touches feasibility, viability, and revenue and those two things aren't separated. And so on the one hand, the Coop, the way it operates, from whom it buys, how it exists in our community, and so much more. I mean, dozens of degrees of dollars go back into our community. It's really simple and to say this, but there's a very real return to our community. That means our schools are better. Our roads are better. All of those things stay right here at home and that's incredible. And then there's what I call the cultural contributions. And those are the things that the Coop is able to make do to help small farmers thrive and grow. This has always been an agricultural area. And it's great that we have small farmers that are able to thrive and grow here and have a place to sell. It's a gathering place for our community where people know each other by name. And even if they don't, they feel welcome and they feel at home. It's impossible to put a dollar amount on those two values. Then there's the opportunity of ownership and that's both a real thing that you get to own but there's also the sense of ownership. We always tell clients that you're looking out there for customers who can love your brand, so much so that they feel like it's their own and that they identify with it. Coop brings that to life in a very, very real way. I think these values that it brings to the community are literal and financial, and play out in the quality of life that we have here on the one hand, and then there are the cultural contributions from the way that the Coop is able to engage with the community and bring things to the community and serve as a platform for community conversations and for farmers to bring stuff to market and makers to bring things to market, and so on and so forth. And those things often are difficult for us to put a value on but we feel them, and we would certainly feel them if they weren't here.

You're absolutely right. And as I think about it, I know that we esteem the things that we hold give great value to and I think the Coop is one of those which is why people are so vocal about the Coop in one way or the other. We've run into our challenges and let's just say that, of course, social media can sometimes be a good thing and it can be the bane of our existence. But I think all it does is amplify the fact that there is a real connection with this community in the Coop that you don't always find with these types of businesses and organizations.

Not at all. Remember, the opposite of love is not hate it's apathy. When people are really vocal about the things that they don't like which has happened, and when you have a community that actually owns you, they have to have a voice. We've been through many Board meetings. We've been through many things over the years. We've worked with the Coop now, three, or four or five, I can't remember and some of those things have been challenging. How do we talk to our community about certain things in challenging times like COVID, for example? [RW – Or where we are right now with the inflationary challenges that the Coop is dealing with]. Right, all of those things. There was a moment during COVID and also many of the social justice movements that were swelling at the same time where we had to have conversations with our community that were tough. And all of us did in all of our businesses and the Coop was faced with that same challenge, but it was uniquely challenging because of the depth of ownership and commitment that people felt around us. That's tough on the one side. The flip side of it is it shows this sort of deep amount of care and that's the thing that we want to focus on. We're not going to get all the answers to things like a global pandemic all the time. We're definitely not going to get all the interest to things like inflation right now all the time; super complicated. But what we can do is engage with each other from a place of care and concern, and transparency. And so the Coop, it's a tenant of the Coops that we've really tried to reinforce over the last few years is this notion of radical transparency, even when it's tough, or maybe more importantly, mostly when it's tough.

Certainly, that goes without saying, and I think anybody listening to this can appreciate some of the challenges that the Coop has been through and still continues to go through and they don't have the backing of outside of its members, that is the backing that it has. We don't have a Jeff Bezos to fall back on or a multinational corporation or anything like that. This is ours.

And for every single individual Coop there's as many stories about that Coop as there are members and then every Coop is different. So there are literally 1000s and 1000s of different stories, narratives about what Coops mean to the country, to communities. There are Coops all around the world. They're not unique to little cute college towns. They're all over. There are Coops that are big and small. There are Coops that are just a few 100 members and then there's Coops that do 10s of millions of dollars in sales every year and are dominant stores in their communities. And so they're all different and they all have a different role to play in their community. I think different Coops will approach their work in different ways. We mentioned earlier we are a Food Coop. We are a consumer Coop. We're not a producer Coop. We’re not a financial Coop. There are lots of different types of Coops. Credit unions are Coops. There are electrical Coops like Danielle mentioned. Half of the State of Arkansas gets us electricity from electrical Coop. REI is a Coop and so there's producer Coops as well. Grassroots local producer Coop that we have here, some of the best meat that you'll ever have. But we are a consumer Coop and that's what we do. Consumer Coops have been around since the 1840s in England and the United States. And I have gotten to work with a lot of different Coops around the country as a Board Consultant, specifically talking about governance. But then also just seeing how they interact with the community. What conversations are they having there? There are similarities. There are some things that happen at every Food Coop in particular. But there are also things that are going to happen with every group of people getting together to try to make something complicated and messy work. I mean, those sorts of things that you'll see at local school board meetings. You might see those things happen at your Food Coop too. With ONF, since we've been around since 1971, we are yes, a Food Coop, but we're also an institution and that's something that I take very seriously, personally about our Coop, but also about what Coops can be in their community is that they have a role to play that goes beyond, even the Cooperative principles. And it goes beyond just selling whatever they sell. They are a pillar of what's best in their community in a lot of ways. And there are cities like Fayetteville around the country that have had Coops there. I mean some cities like Vermont had Coops since the 1920s, and 1930s and they're still in business. They still have this essential role to play in their community and are one of the things that center the cities that they live and exist in.

I have a question for you. Should Coops including ours grow? Should they get bigger, or should they stay somewhat, you know, something that you can get your arms around? And I think of that because there are Coops like PCC out in the Northwest, they're 17 locations. I don't know that Ozark Natural Foods could ever get to that size but should Coops be content to stay a certain size, or should they aspire to grow?

A community chooses to have a Coop and it's different from other businesses in lots of ways but that's really an essential difference as well. A big corporation could come in and decide they're going to put a business in your town, but the only way to have a Coop it's the people who decide to have it there because they have to organize, they have to do the fundraising, they have to get the thing going, they have to keep it going, and they have to shop there. But that happens because Coops meet a need. So how does the Coop best meet that need? It could be that a Coop meets the need by being small. It only sells certain things or the community only needs it to do certain things. They like this aspect of it. They don't want it to do this other thing and it could be successful. In the American economy of the 21st century, it's hard to be a business that doesn't change and grow and expand. So if your Coop is trying to meet the needs of your community, stay competitive, but also stay a really good employer, be idealistic, and be a purpose-driven business, that's a phrase I borrow from Illuminate, which is the organization that allows me, it's a Coop of Cooperatives, they allow me to consult different businesses. But if it's going to be a purpose-driven business, then it has to find a way to be a successful business and that often means growing. Growing sales in this particular moment in America with inflation the way it is right now in the grocery sector, outstripping inflation rates, even in other parts of the economy, groceries are getting more expensive, faster, and everything else, we have to keep up with the prices. We have to keep up with price selection. We have to be really, really careful and that really means selling more groceries and we aren't. We aren't going to be able to keep up if we don't sell more groceries and have enough money coming in from those sales to pay for the store. But to get back to this question, is growth essential for Coop? I think there are different ways to think of growth. Think of your skin. Your skin grows constantly. You're not getting bigger all the time but you are definitely growing new skin. And so growth-like change is happening. If you are a thriving organism, if you're not a thriving organism, you're not growing new stuff that is a problem. So a Coop has to think of itself as ever-changing and adapting to the needs. The needs of the organization, but also the needs of the community. If a community doesn't have a need for a Coop anymore, it's really simple what happens, there's no more Coop, and you don't shop there. And that could be because the community changed to people that really loved that Coop or needed that Coop, maybe they don't want it anymore, or it could be because the Coop as an organism didn't do the stuff it needed to do to thrive. And so if it is thriving and is meeting the needs, it's going to be a nice healthy Coop that continues to grow and change, and depends what that [inaudible 33:29] looks like, now that's up to the members of that Coop. It could be becoming this multifaceted business, it could mean going into different sectors other than just selling groceries. Lots of Coops do that. That beautiful Coop that's up in Philadelphia that's expanded into multiple locations, the Weaver’s Way Coop, they are in everything from auto repair to pet food sales to all sorts of other things. I've known the Board members of that Coop for a long time. I knew them when they were just a little café and just a grocery store. And now they're doing all these other things in the last 10-15 years since I've been involved with Coops I've seen them do all that. You could take the approach of controlling that supply chain. You mentioned supply chain issues earlier, there are Coops that also do that. We are going to step in and fix these problems. We're going to make sure our products are getting there, and we're going to pay our truck drivers better and we're going to get food to other places and we're going to sell food or distribute food to other businesses, not just our Coop grocery store. So there have been examples of Coops expanding out and doing that. And there are Coops in Europe that do every single aspect of the vertical integration of what makes them a business. So how aspirational is your Coop? How much does it want to do? But then back to the question, is it meeting the needs? Is it meeting the needs of the members?

And you got to keep asking yourself that and checking in., [Cross-talking].

At every one of our Board meetings, we read our end statement which is what is the change that we're going to create in the world? What is our impact? So you have to check in on it.

You shared a lot here. What are some of your biggest concerns for the future of Coops in general? One of the things that you mentioned was that bigger companies can come in that are corporate-run companies. I can think of one that begins with W and ends with F, Whole Foods. They came into this market and really gave Ozark Natural Foods a run for its money. The difference is that with us, the Coop, being that we really are a local-based business. I heard a statistic earlier, and this may or may not be 100% accurate, but it sounds like it's right. Sixty-seven cents of every dollar is recirculated in our community from the Coop and that's a lot.

We're six cents at Whole Foods. Every six cents for every dollar goes back to the community there.

So 1/10 of the amount of money we collect that actually comes right back into the community. That's important. We've used that statistic to talk about different communities in terms of the dollars that they spend economically, and why it's important to be able to recirculate that money in your local economy.

You asked about what's worrisome for a Coop and what the future looks like and part of Whole Foods being, and since you did the WF, I'll go ahead and name it. Whole Foods is owned by Amazon. I'm not here to say that that's necessarily a bad thing because people need products, and anyone who has an Amazon Prime account, and by that I mean, everyone, because everyone does at almost at this point, the ability to order things and have it delivered right to your front door. I mean, that's pretty good and it gets there pretty quickly and there are lots of efficiencies there for that. And the reason that direct ordering, curbside delivery, and all of these different innovations are happening is that people want them. It's consumer-driven. And so those are technological innovations. Those are logistical innovations that are streamlining. Its corporate consolidation that does make certain aspects of the businesses more efficient. And it's tough for a Coop to compete against that. And more than tough, it's impossible. We're not going to compete against this multibillion-dollar efficient corporate structure for things. So we're not going to be able to do Amazon Prime type of delivery with Whole Foods. But what can we do besides that? Well, there are lots of things that we can do besides that. One thing, we can make our money mean more in the community. That's something you referred to. We can focus on our customer service. We can really highlight the value of our organization. We can be a local business. People want local just like they want efficient delivery of their products. They also want authenticity and local flavor, and they want to trust where their products come from and trust the people selling it to them. That's something we can do really well. This is a really tricky time for Coops and not just Ozark Natural Foods, but any Coop, partly because of corporate consolidation in lots of different aspects. Whatever area of business you're in, we happen to be a grocery Coop and it's tough right now. Outside of Whole Foods, you have grocery stores like Kroger that are expanding, and consolidating as well that sell way more organic food and natural food than Coops do, and that's all Coops. So whereas in the 1980s or 1990s Coops might have sold a lot of or maybe even half of the organic natural food, it’s no way close to that now. And so we're losing on that aspect of it. If you think of it as competition, which maybe it's not, maybe it's just getting good stuff to people. But then also with the way prices are and people's daily living expenses going up, to be a small business that specialized like ours, it's really tough to do that too. So there are lots of things to worry about. Actually having the money that you get through margin at your store to pay all your bills and pay your employees well, that's really, really tough. There are lots of opportunities all the time as well. One of the things right now that we see in the United States, I think is you see different needs highlighted. I mentioned earlier that Coops exist to meet a community need. There are other needs that are coming to the surface. As Danielle mentioned earlier the importance of addressing food deserts of getting food to people that need it. There are Cooperative solutions for everything but there are definitely Coop solutions to getting food to people that need it. There are Coop's solutions for controlling rent or addressing people being priced out of their neighborhoods. There are lots of different Coops around the country that are doing that, as well as other great organizations, whether it is going into trailer park communities and introducing the Cooperative model so that people can actually control their own destinies. They are looking at high-rise apartments and taking models that have been very successful in cities like New York for years and bringing it to, I don't know, college towns in the Ozarks that have rapidly increasing rental rates. They are Cooperative solutions to meet our needs. In the 1970s a need in the Ozarks was natural food, and bridging the gap between the farmers market and the store and our Coop did a brilliant job of addressing that. And going forward, what are the big needs in our area and around the country and what are ways that we can address those needs that are not just sending rockets to the moon?

I think you summarized it perfectly and laid it out for what the Board does, and how things are done from that perspective. Because again, I think a lot of times people don't realize the sausage making that takes place behind closed doors with a Coop Board. It's not as cut and dry as we'd like to think. And I think for anybody listening to this, it's one of the reasons why we encourage involvement at the Board level, and we encourage participation. We encourage people to raise their hands and say, hey, I've been coming to this Coop for the last two years and I want to be a part of the solution of helping this Coop continue to grow. And one way you can do that besides bringing your dollars into the Coop is to be a part of the Board; run for the Board. [SH – Or talk to us]. Exactly. We have people come, not all the time, but quite frequently, and then in addition to those individuals that come, those members, we also bring in subject matter experts in our area to give us the lay of the land and what we can expect. So we're not just sitting there in a room talking to each other, we do that but we also bring other people in that can give us some clarity of where this area is going, and how we can remain relevant through that change.

And I think one concern that I see for the Coop for the future is being a competitive employer in this landscape. So ensuring that our staff members are compensated accordingly and they're compensated enough so they'll want to stay at the Coop so we don't have that high turnover. So where someone can feel confident in the work that they do and they want to build upon that and stay there. And it's hard, it's hard to balance that by making sure people are compensated accordingly. The profit margins are where they need to be and we're serving the needs of the community. It's all on the Board's work. We aren't responsible for wages at the Coop, but we sure have a responsibility that the General Manager is empowering the right people and making sure that staff relations are where they should be. So I think just staying competitive and organic and natural food is not cheap. You can thank some of your farm subsidies for that, that's a greater conversation for another day. But good food isn't cheap and it's hard to maintain that level of affordability because people need to see the value in the products that they're buying.

There are lots of problems right now, not just in the Coop, of course. Everyone that reads the news, everyone is trying to buy gas, although I paid 2.49 for gas.

At the time of recording this gas has gotten cheaper than it was just a few months ago.

Certainly other things are more expensive. If you're trying to buy a house right now, good luck. All that to say, when there are lots of problems when there are tricky things, things that seem too complex, you need better ideas, you need new ideas. And so that's why we encourage people, as you say, Randy, experts to come to our meetings, but anybody from the community, tell us what you think. That's not going to be a Board decision maybe that night or in the next couple of weeks but it certainly goes into what I like to describe as a hopper of ideas. There's a hopper of ideas where the best thing is going to pop up and that's the thing that we're going to see. And if we have more ideas, that means more things in the hopper, that's more stuff that we can consider. And it's more ways for us to give direction, and also evaluate the success of the Coop because we have to be improving. We have to be meeting needs.

And you talked about growth earlier, and for us, when we were in Evelyn Hills we got to this point of our monthly sales that it was just stagnant. And we realized that no more growth was really going to happen at that location. So that was a lot of the motivation to move to our current location and build that out because not only are we in a more walkable area, the accessibility is greater, but there's more opportunity for growth there. And as Josh said earlier, it's figuring out what the need is in the community. So for some Coops, it may not be buying a new location and building it out because that's very expensive, or it can be at least, but it's figuring out how do you serve your community, your high-need communities that can't just go in and get the groceries there? How do you continue to serve them and ensure that their needs are met? So maybe that's what growth looks like. It's looking inward and to your community and not just expanding outward.

You're so right about that. And I think that is the challenge that the Board is faced with is helping the GM and having these conversations to move things forward. Because I remember there were a lot of people that actually were against the moved location, not necessarily on the Board, but just in general. People were like, why are we moving? [Change is scary]. Change is really scary but now I think in hindsight, you're like, this was the best thing since sliced bread. This building is beautiful. We've been on the shortlist for some national awards, and people like hanging out on that patio. There's a lot to see and a lot to do. I think, honestly, in terms of our new location, we have created an environment where we have been welcoming to everyone for a variety of reasons. You've got the people that just come up and grab a scone and a coffee every day on a regular basis. You've got people like Josh that come and get all kinds of meats that are available. And then everybody in between. You have the people that come and get the compost and other gardening materials that they need out of Homestead. We are meeting a variety of individuals’ needs right here in the community at the corner of Lafayette North College.

One of the things about that location that we're in is it's so beautiful. The Modus Architects and the work that happened to make it look the way it does. It was a locally driven idea. It was a local solution. It was a Coop-led thing with a bunch of community partners. It's really a beautiful thing that happened. And I say that in part because I've heard from people it's like, oh, well, this is the Coop looking slicker, or this is the Coop trying to be corporate, whatever that means, or this is the Coop doing this, or that. But this is the Coop putting everyone welcome right on the front door in an eye-catching space that's right at the heart of the city where we can do lots of things that we couldn't do in the past. We didn't have a big beautiful patio space where anyone could sit out there and study and get a coffee. We just didn't have that. We didn't have a community meeting space. It took a lot of integration and working with people and generating ideas in the conversations that led to that move. Go back a year, Danielle, and I probably would have been involved with a conversation that led to that six years ago.

Oh, yeah. I have been on here since 2012, 2013. I think in 2015, 16 we started.

So this isn't working where we are, what's our next move? But also, how is this community changing? How are we going to evolve to meet that need? That's how that beautiful space at Lafayette and College happened.

And what do we do when competition enters the market? So the staff, we knew the competition was coming years before they arrived so we had plenty of years to prepare.

And there will be more competition in the future.

There will be more competition in the future. There'll be [inaudible 48:29] economic changes or whatever that makes us continue to innovate.

Yeah, and I like to take the approach of there is plenty of abundance in the market, so if it's there, and your semi-viable business that welcomes people, regardless of what it is, people will frequent your business. If it's there and available, it's the build it and they will come mentality but there's a lot that goes into that.

I'd like to think that even our move alone to Lafayette in North College awakened our interactions with the university. Of course, granted, they being the students didn't have anywhere else to go during the pandemic so they ended up coming and hanging out in our space, and we were obviously happy to have them. But now they are a fixture up there when they could go and study on campus or something like that, they head on over to the patio or head on over to our open area there in the Tap Room.

And that's cultivating a new generation to the Coop, and that is so important for the viability. You're not always going to have the people that founded it shopping there. So at some point, you have to recruit and bring in new people that are going to continue frequenting your business and ensuring that it's profitable.

All those people that are shopping there, a lot of them don't know what Coop is. They think it's a grocery store. They think it’s a place where they can study. They have really great coffee. They think it’s this. They think it’s the place where you got to get there early because the parking lot is going to be full. Whatever they think about what it is they have a little bit of familiarity now with the Big C-O-O-P that's on the wall.

Well, and obviously, things like this podcast create more awareness about what we're all about. What is the Board and why you should even care that we have a Coop smack dab in the middle of downtown Fayetteville?

And we would love for every member to be involved in everything and come to our Board meetings. But the reality of it, and you all have touched on it too. That's not the need of every shopper. Some people just want to get in, get their groceries, and get the heck out. And then you have some members who really want to be involved in the committees and be at our annual membership meeting. But that's not for everybody. Everybody's busy, they've got their own life. So sometimes at the end of the day, the last thing you want to do is go to a Board meeting when everything seems to be working just fine. Why am I wasting my time? So it's just respecting our membership and their boundaries, and just creating a space or you're welcome to come if you want to, we'd sure love to have you. But that's not contractual with your memberships. You can sign up to be a member it doesn't mean that you have to come to all these meetings.

Lots of different ways to participate.

Just tell a friend to shop with a Coop there, you participate.

Exactly and that's half the battle right there. Well, guys, I appreciate you first of all, both of you guys, because working on the Board with you has been a pure delight.

It's mutual. Sir. It's a pleasure to have you as our President.

Yes, you have been so wonderful for this Board.

Thank you very much. It's a lot harder than it looks. But suffice to say, you know what they say be careful what you ask for because you just might get it and when you get it, it's like, oh my gosh.

There’s a reason I've not been volunteered to be President. You all have the gumption, would that be the right word. [Cross-talking]

I'm actually thankful for all of the Board members at the Coop because they give of themselves. I mean, they have families, they have businesses, they have jobs, they've got social lives, and they give of themselves to the Coop in just an unselfish way. So I really appreciate each and every Board member. I would encourage anyone listening to this to try to connect with even just one Board member. Get to know them and talk with them. You'd be surprised. I'm happy to sit down with anyone and have a cup of coffee and talk about the Coop and talk about some of the ideas of what we're trying to do and even hear some of your ideas of what you think we should do at the Coop because we're always open to that. That's not lip service, that is reality,

I've been on the board for 11 years and some of the best conversations I've had have just been with people wanting to talk about the Coop and it could be any number of things. I'll be at a music showdown on Dixon Street and I'm talking about the Coop. The outlet at some kid’s birthday party. Out on some farms and we're talking about the Coop and that's great. That's a pleasure and a joy of being on the Board.

Well, you do it so well. Even as an archivist, you're literally just a book of information.

And it's fine if people want to close that book sometimes. That's fine.

No, but seriously, though, thank you guys both so much for joining us on this inaugural podcast that we're doing for the Coop. We appreciate you sharing a little bit of your history and the history of the Coop and its Board and the importance of the Board so I want to thank you both for that.

Thanks, Randy.

Thank you.

Well, we appreciate you taking the time to learn more about Ozark Natural Foods, the Coop. This podcast was developed to highlight a community created more than 50 years ago with a focus on the love of food that is good for us and our planet. We have plenty of stories to tell so stay tuned for more. I'm your host Randy Wilburn and we'll see you back here soon.

Thanks for tuning in to the Ozark Natural Foods, the Coop Podcast. Whether you are new to the area and looking for a healthy grocery store, or you've been here for ages but didn't know the whole story about Ozark Natural Foods, the Coop, this podcast is one of the best places to start. For more information about the Coop, please visit our website at onf.coop to learn more. That's onf.coop@ozarknaturalfoods, the Coop, we mean it when we say keeping it local since 1971.