Creating a thread to discuss the food coop. Something that was discussed in the meeting was the tendency for group chat organising to be hard to keep track of/mean members not in the group chat miss the chance to have input on projects until they’re already quite fully formed.
Essentially the food coop was in discussions a while ago, but hit a bit of a stall, and we’re trying to revive and move forward with it.
Location was a key thing, as in where is the food dropped of/picked up from. I think Pineapple house could be a potential place - is local to where we will likely be starting + means the food coop is accesible to more people (e.g if people dont want less known people picking up food from their house etc). Welcome thoughts on location ofc.
I think key questions are
Are we aiming to recruit local people straight away? Or is the aim to get it going with friends and comrades first?
What day/how often should we be aiming to start for?
Whats the mechanism for ordering food/people choosing what they want to buy etc. Where and how is this information collated?
Do we start with non perishibles only, or do fresh food orders?
In answer to your questions, I think we should set a date for a big shop and suma delivery, maybe a Friday afternoon, order it to someone’s house and all meet and collect together.
I’m happy to organise the fresh food, we need someone to take on suma, a place to host and people to cook food for us to share as we plan further.
If we could do it before Xmas would be amazing, but I think organising for mid Jan start would also be good.
I do Suma orders for work and they’ve recently upgraded their ordering process so people can submit their own orders to be delivered to the same address and pay online for what they’ve ordered. That wouldn’t work for ordering wholefoods in bulk, but could simplify parts of a food co-op order. What happens here is we do an order for the building then people add stuff on and each order gets a separate invoice to pay.
The problem with ordering to somewhere like PH or BFoE (or to someone’s house) is storage. I’m guessing PH face similar issues around storage and people would have to be on it with picking stuff up. Don’t want to end up having to pay somewhere for storage for uncollected food! Mani’s suggestion for people to meet and collect together is a good one.
Hey Just wanted to say this was discussed at a recent Paula’s house coop meeting.
PHC’s thoughts
can provide a lockable outdoor space for collection (can keep food covered with a tarp - which would need to be purchased)
want to install a key code on the gate for easy access
want to be part of a Suma order before xmas
In that meeting I noted a number of issues with previous iterations of suma purchasing and we think the easy access in a non essential space will help make the process less annoying for residents of PHC.
Additionally there is the issue of upfront payments, refund, reconciliation for substitutions and general accounting.
So therefore I want to develop a proposal for a suma purchase and coop creation with a few founding presmises:
membership for first iteration members is £25 per household - withdrawable on leaving the co-op. This provides a float and will help fund the keylock installation (Euan can do this and we can pay for the hour or two it will take to get it all set up, and tarp)
Payment for purchases is uploaded by each household in advance - no payment orders don’t go through.
10% surplus added to order total at £250 minimum order this would generate £25 which can be spent on paying someone 2 hours of living wage in order to keep the payment spreadsheet up to date and process the order with Suma, and check off Items when they arrive. For larger orders any surplus could stay in the open collective and be used if we want to expand our operations (such as hosting a webapp or buying equipment to split large bulk orders down).
Also Ben wants to join and buy some nuts. I think it would be good to have households and then allow individuals from households to run their own accounts if they want to buy personal items. Open to someone persuading me that membership should be to individuals not households as I see households throwing up unforseen issues. but objectively it does make sense in terms of pick ups and stuff
Ah, think I misunderstood. I thought PHC was Paula’s House and PH was Pineapple House! Hence comments about being charged for storage.
That all sounds really sensible to me. Especially payment in advance & deposit for membership. Just one query about households vs individuals - what if a household is just one person? Is this only for multi-person households? As someone who lives alone, grocery shopping as an individual is already super expensive, hence the appeal of a food co-op.
Reconciliations/refunds for stuff that’s out of stock has been the biggest issue I’ve had with administering group Suma orders at BFoE, although I have to say Suma are way more reliable than Lembas in terms of stock.
Another issue with getting multiple orders to the same addressis that Suma load pallets based on what fits in their vans and don’t sort stuff out between different orders and I can see that getting a bit complicated in terms of sorting out stuff for collection.
I would also say that some secure/watertight plastic boxes would probably be good for keeping stuff dry and away from wildlife. I can recommend some that I use on my boat to store food outside.
If we’re using PHC for storage, does that mean that initially the food coop is made up of people known to us?
The reason I ask is I believe some people are keen to use the food coop as a way to reach local people, which I think is good to a) provide cheaper, good quality food to people who might struggle to access it and b) potentially get them involved in coop brum and increase our capacity as an org. I don’t mind if that’s a medium term aim, and this initial run is focused on getting the processes working properly. I do think we should be working to that aim though. (I appreciate we probably need the away weekend to cement policy + aims more broadly before we do something like that.)
I think it’s worth discussing what the aim of the food coop is for CB. Is it mostly to provide cheaper food to CB/food coop members? (I think that’s legitimate if so).
Or are we looking for it to have a broader benefit for the network? E.g is it a service we can begin to provide to local people and generate income for the org? (If so I appreciate there’s things we’d need to consider as far as cost/fairness, but for instance punch up generates a surplus for the network while being a low cost service for people to access.)
To be clear, I have no issue if the plan is to help local people set up their own food coops independent of us as opposed to CB helping run them, but just want to have the discussion.
I get these are maybe not immediate concerns, but Imv it’s good to know where we might be aiming for.
I guess as far as pallets with orders mixed up, perhaps we have a crew to organize the first order, and assess if it’s a reasonable task for the person being paid for a couple hours to do?
Yes - as of right now it would be people known to us. I think its worth trying this out to some level to see how it goes. The longer term option seems to rely on a stronger organisational system and a dedicated space independent of someone’s home.
Absolutely - for Paula’s House the aim would be to bulk buy high-quality items from Suma as we already recieve a veg box from Riverford that meets our produce quality needs. If we were able to buy high-quality organic produce direct from farmers, that would be great - but from our research, that option isnt particularly available here in brum outside of Riverford.
While I am in general support of a model that is trying to distribute veg generally, that wouldn’t fit our needs as a co-op.
As a bit of a side point… I’m not sure if this has been done but its really worth talking about how this went down previously (i.e. when Paula tried to create a food co-op) and what can be learned. Feels like the wheel is being reinvented here and would be worth us mapping out how to improve on this process generally.
I will also say that Paula’s House is open generally to supporting some kind of “known-persons” food-coop in various forms, we just wouldn’t want to be the sole responsible party stuck with the admin.
Would be very up for reading/discussing previous work, wonder what the best way to do that is?
Sounds to me that maybe there’s a couple things here, that this sounds like a known person specific project, and maybe efforts to create wider south brum food security are a different proposal/project? Although I’m sure there will be crossover/knowledge sharing.
I also wonder what this food coops relationship to CB is, affiliated project? Division?
The history of the food co-op is with Sean (and partially with Mani from their stint with CT) so would be good to have a meeting to set some kind of foundation for history and then work from there based on needs/interests. I don’t know where you all are at with these discussions of course, thats just my two cents - as we seem to be talking around a few different ideas at the moment. Would be good to start off with a minimum viable product and move from there to see what it becomes.
I’m keen to be a part of any of these chats moving forward - if there’s a signal chat, can you link me to it via DM? Thanks
I see so were talking about two different things. There used to be a collective suma order, I’m not sure if this was ever formally a food coop? I was part of it both at federici abd gung ho. I would simply call this a buying group. Useful, but not actually gonna meet most peoples needs cheaply. I understand some people get riverford, but thats not for everyone and i think we can do better.
The proposal discussed at the food coop meeting in the summer was about having a cheap weekly, high quality veg option and a (probably monthly) suma option to supplement for ambient and household goods.
This would take advantage of the surplus food generated by my work and create a grassroots base building project that could eventually network and grow into serious food security infrastructure, hopefully with food hubs and cafes and composting and more.
I think I agree with @Mani a Suma bulk ordering group is a different thing which we should totally do and could be a part of a future network of food co-ops here but I think we need to discuss the project as an actual strategy as I laid out here: Co-op Brum stratergy for 2026 - #2 by kawaiipunk
The strategy being that this will be a public organising project aimed at increasing Co-operation Birmingham membership to around 50-100 people by the end of 2026 with a functioning food co-op split into 10 household groups (with a bigger groups for SCD). Perhaps SCD can be used as a distribution hub for these groups and the first households group.
This will help build a co-operative democratic culture that will give the community a tangible benefit and alleviate poverty. We can then investigate spreading our activities beyond Stirchley into neighbouring areas, starting by inviting groups from other areas to visit us and see the project in operation.
This will be the main organising strategy I will advocating at the Away Weekend.
The learning from the Coop Town handbook is basically that each food co-op just be street based and split into a new co-op at 10 households. I think it would be unwise to ignore these experiences for the actual strategy.
I think it’s critical we go and visit the current food co-ops in operation. They might have even changed or evolved since @Mani was involved.
However starting a Suma bulk ordering group is a good idea which I support. The actual neighbourhood food co-ops could join and receive good from that as well.
However if we are just going to do a Suma bulk ordering group for existing members and not aim to do broader co-opeative neighbourhood based organising down the line, I would be highly critical.
Hence comments about being charged for storage.