We Need Your Help

Yes, We Need Your Help
Folks – This Coop is in trouble. It is down to two days of operating capital, which is less than a grocery store needs to cover checks and pay the hours of the workers. Its clear after years of losses ($733,000 last year) that the General Manager has no background nor understanding in running any business of any type. They continueda to lose more in the first quarter of this year.
How could this occur?
The problem has developed incrementally over time. An analysis has revealed that the unifying theme, that has yielded this unbelievable
debacle, can be attributed to a membership which has grown accustomed to the poor management and (almost nutcase,) individuals who have been able to find a job and ride on the momentum of such a large company (30 million in revenue yearly) without causing enough detectable damage to cause alarm. That situation has changed. The ship sails on under the power of “community good will” while this phenomenon of “incremental incompetence” has gone on for decades.
Unfortunately, now, Murphy’s Law has caught up with the Coop in a big
way. The company is out of money. The two people primarily responsible
want to hock the building and borrow money to cover their mistakes.

These two individual have extra large ambitions in our community – and are hoping
the great ship will simply float out of the difficulty – and their catastrophic mistakes will slide under the radar. This may or may not happen, but it is not in the favor of the members who actually have shares and “own” this Coop. It has taken these two incompetent
people making really dumb moves year after year, for three years, to get us to this critical point. The General Manager espouses glowing fluff in the press but the numbers don’t lie.
This cannot go on for much longer. They are trying to hock our building. The debt owed to members is probably greater than the asset value. Just a few short years ago we were MILLIONS in the black.
We need your help. If you care about this Coop, please pay attention to this website. We will be publishing the real facts and timetable for the recall vote. Please leave an anonymous comment, such as “I’m in “ in the
comments section, or simply subscribe to the updates.
The Arcata Coop has had different slogans as the years go by. The slogan, cooked up by the current General Manager and CEO at present is: “Keep the Coop Weird.”
That’s fine, but “Food for People – Not for Profit” was the one we adopted when I, and other “old school” folks like me put alot of capital and time into getting this thing started. “Weird” is cool, but UNREAL is not. This is a business, not a zoo for pretenders.
Please help. Please Care. Please Pay Attention.