state-co-op-feb

State of the Co-op, February 2022

To Our Community,

This week at the Co-op Board of Directors meeting, I presented a brief overview of the Co-op’s operations for the month ending February 2022. Below are the highlights.

February was a classic New England month – cold, dark, and snowy – which resulted in a slight impact on our businesses for the month.

Other noteworthy events during February include the Co-op auditors’ presentation of the 2021 Financial Audit.

I am pleased to report, but not at all surprised, the Co-op was given an unqualified opinion, otherwise known as a ‘clean report.’

In addition, we continue to make progress towards hiring people onto our teams. Our bi-weekly new employee orientation sessions are fuller than they have been in quite some time. This month we also began a very comprehensive review of the market salary analyses conducted by the third-party consultant we engaged. There are a lot of data to parse through and our work continues apace in this regard. We are still on track for announcing any changes to be made by our April 1st target date.

The graphs below reflect data for sales, customer count, basket size, average price for gas and gallons pumped for the years 2019 through February 2022.

Sales

Grocery, Produce, Dairy, Meat, and PFD continue to provide strong sales growth. Consolidated food store sales were approximately $6.1 million for the month, slightly behind the $6.3 million in February 2021. On a year-to-date basis sales are broadly in-line with budget.

Financials

Customer visits for the month were 107,133, slightly ahead of last February’s visits of 105,000. Average basket size is approximately $56.79, down from $59.19 last February.

Gasoline

Gas prices began the year at approximately $3.46 per gallon or $1.22 more per gallon than this time last year. For the month, we pumped close to 72,000 gallons, compared to 64,000 last February. Several snowstorms resulted in sales of our non-gas business being slightly behind budget for the month and year to date ($11,000 and $9,000, respectively).

Wrap Up

As always, thank you to all our members and shoppers for your support. We will talk again next Thursday. Remember to be kind to one another and to yourselves, and we look forward to serving you in our stores and at the curbside.

Onward and upward,
Paul

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Paul Guidone

Paul Guidone, CFA, spent the better part of four decades in the investment management business here and abroad. He held positions ranging from analyst through Deputy Chairman and Group CEO, at organizations such as Citigroup (US) and The HSBC Group (London and Hong Kong). He joined the Co-op in 2016 as the CFO and in 2018 became Strategic Advisor to the General Manager. Paul was appointed by the Co-op Board as interim General Manager in March 2020 and General Manager in September 2020. To contact, email PGuidone@coopfoodstore.com.

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