State of the Co-op, January 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 January 2022. Below are the highlights.

Despite the month being cold and dark, as with every January, the teams were busy with year-end inventory and prepping for our annual audit, as, yes you guessed it, every January. We are making progress towards hiring people onto our teams, but this has not precluded us from modifying the hours at our Hanover store as a result of employee availability.

All that said, January was a respectable month and has gotten 2022 off to solid start.

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

Sales

Grocery, Produce, Dairy, Meat, and PFD continue to provide strong sales growth. Supply chain issues continue to be a factor. Consolidated food store sales were approximately $6.3 million for the month, slightly ahead of the $6.2 million in January 2021. For the month, sales exceeded budget.

Financials

Customer visits for the month were 110,831, slightly ahead of last January’s visits of 105,000. Average basket size is approximately $57.01, down from $59.27 last January.




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 66,000 gallons, compared to 63,000 last January. Sales of our non-gas business was slightly ahead of budget for the month.




In Other News

I am pleased to report that, thanks to the diligence of our Finance team, our Co-op achieved a “clean audit,” meaning the financial statements were free of any misstatements and were strictly maintained in accordance with the standards known as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). 

Thank you, and congratulations, to all who were involved throughout this annual process, for a job well-done!

And just in case you are wondering, for fiscal year 2021, we will report a savings before tax and patronage (SBT) of approximately $254,000, and a net income (SBT less NH business profits tax and Federal Income taxes) of approximately $37,000, all of which will be reinvested back into our Co-op.

On another positive note, the leadership team has been earnestly reviewing the information received from our third–party consultant on competitive, market salary data in our region. There are a lot of data and ideas to digest. We had a very robust discussion this morning, with more to follow. I will keep you updated as we progress.

Wrap Up

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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