In the winter of 2003, recognizing that Honest Weight Food Coop’s continued success was making the store begin to burst at the seams and that the Coop had not had a long-range plan since moving into 484 Central Avenue in 1995, the Board of Directors began to develop a strategic planning process. Because of the amount of work involved in developing a strategic plan, and because this development can take special skills, the Board decided to hire a consultant to help with developing the strategic plan. Board members Lynne Lekakis, Ginny McEwen and David Seaman, and Operations and Administrative Coordinator Cindee Lolik interviewed candidates and selected Duke Fisher of Bainbridge to work with the Coop on strategic planning. Fisher was introduced to the members at the April 2003 Annual Meeting and the strategic planning process began.

In the June 2003 Coop Scoop, David Seaman wrote a Director’s Chair column entitled, "What is strategic planning… and why do it?" Seaman noted that without a (strategic) plan, the Coop was always in a reactive mode. He wrote, "Preparing a strategic plan is a way to bring together the collective values, thoughts and goals of all the constituencies that comprise the Honest Weight Food Cooperative. Having a plan that all of us are invested in and agree to, in general, will allow decisions to become proactive rather than reactive." With a strategic plan in place, "We will be able to ask, ‘Will this decision bring us closer to our stated goals or farther away?’" Seaman included a call for help and participation in developing the plan.

Coop members were apparently excited about strategic planning, because in the July-August 2003 Coop Scoop, the News at a Glance column reported that the Strategic Planning committee had so many new members that they decided not to take more members at that time. The committee members divided themselves into working groups to flesh out various aspects of the planning process: how to get information from members, location issues, marketing survey, financial issues. In her Director’s Chair column in that same issue, Lynne Lekakis noted that the Strategic Planning committee was working hard at colecting information. She called on members to participate in focus groups and in the survey.

Work on the strategic planning process began in earnest in the summer. During July and August, a number of focus groups were convened to discuss the issues facing the Coop and how members, shareholders, general shoppers, and staff felt about how the Coop was doing. Coop members led four "general" focus groups, each attended by about a dozen people. In these sessions, participants talked about what about Coop — both as an organization and as a store — they liked and disliked. More specific focus groups, some led by consultant Duke Fisher, others by Coop members concentrated on product selection and criteria for product selection, on the issue of meat, on environmental issues, on member labor, and on balancing cooperative goals with business needs. Fisher also led three or four focus groups for staff and one for the Collective Management Team (CMT). The goal of all of these focus groups was to gather information about how people felt about the Coop, to learn what people saw as the challenges and needs of the Coop, and about where they wanted to see the Coop heading.

Meanwhile, the Strategic Planning committee conducted a written survey of members, shareholders, and general shoppers. The survey asked questions about many of the same areas explored in the focus groups. The survey was mailed to all (working) members, to a random selection of shareholders, and was given out in the store to a random selection of general shoppers. A summary of the survey results was published in the February 2004 Coop Scoop. Board member Lenore Gensburg wrote that summary and also collated all of the comments from the 335 returned surveys. As she noted in her article, "We will be using these data for a long time as we think about the future of the Coop."

During the summer, the Coop also contracted with Peter C. Davis of Cooperative Development Services, a cooperative support group, to conduct a market study for the Coop. Davis specializes in market studies for possible location changes. He reported his findings to the Board and CMT in late summer. Some of his findings confirmed what we already knew about Coop shoppers — that they come from a wide area. He felt that based on the regional base of shoppers, the current location is a good one. Like many members and shoppers, he felt the current specific site had some serious problems in terms of parking and the store lay out. He noted that the Coop is doing about $1,000 of business per square foot, and that that is usually the point at which businesses like ours think about expanding their space. The Board had asked him to discuss the feasibility of opening a second, or satellite, store. He recommended against this, saying that the logistics of staffing two locations were likely to be too difficult for Coop to handle.

The last piece of the strategic planning process to date was the strategic planning retreat held on September 19 and 20 at the UAlbany Alumni House. About 30 people, including the entire CMT and six Board members, as well as general members and other staff, devoted an entire weekend to the future of the Coop. They used the information gathered in the focus groups and in Davis’s market study to begin to plan for the Coop’s future. (The results of the survey had not yet been compiled.) As noted in the News at a Glance column in the November 2003 Coop Scoop, the Board felt that the retreat "had been very successful in terms of building relationships, learning to listen to others, and working on group process." They felt it was less successful in terms of dealing with specific issues, but attributed this to a lack of time.

Following the retreat, there was a bit of a lull in the strategic planning process, due in part to the holiday season. There were some specific results, however. In November, members were asked to vote on four questions about the Coop’s mission and future direction. These questions, developed by the Vision group of the Strategic Planning committee, covered a few of the things that were mentioned consistently in the focus groups and at the retreat. The questions, paraphrased below, were:

The Strategic Planning committee recommended that members vote yes on these items. As noted in the February 2004 Coop Scoop, all four of these questions passed; the first two nearly unanimously. These votes gave the Board and CMT a good sense of how a good-sized group of members sees the Coop and its future.

Thus, the stage has been set for continued progress on strategic planning. The Strategic Planning committee has subdivided into a Site Development committee (referred to in the February 2004 Coop Scoop as the Building Search committee) and a Vision committee. The Site Development committee is re-establishing connections with the Central Avenue BID, collecting financial information and exploring methods of raising capital from members/shareholders and/or from loans. They are exploring options with the current building as well as with to other locations. The Vision committee has identified five priority areas — infrastructure, community building and education, building, site, and products — and is developing action plans within those areas. Look for the April Coop Scoop for more details of the Vision committee’s work.

Progress continues on other fronts. The Product Manual group (a subgroup of the Strategic Planning committee) has joined forces with the Nutrition committee, and has surveyed the department managers to determine priorities for products carried in each department. They are now working through a first draft of a product manual. The Finance committee is examining the Coop’s finances to determine, if it is decided to seek a new building, what the Coop might be able to afford. Cindee Lolik, Operations and Administrative Coordinator, is contacting the landlord about options for the future at 484 Central Avenue, our current space.