Randolph Co-op Faces
'Fork in the Road'
By M. D. Drysdale

The dairy cooler at the Randolph Cooperative Market features farm bottled milk from the Strafford Organic Creamery. In background, Co-op employee Becky Bohnyak checks the shelves. (Herald / Tim Calabro)

The Randolph Cooperative Market is facing a financial crisis that could force it to close within six months if business doesn't pick up substantially, the Co-op's council members and manager said this week.

The co-op, which began as a buying club in 1974, has always been cash-strapped, and its 2001 move into the former Merrimaids building on Pleasant Street was "clearly underfunded," council members said. A precipitious decline in October sales has brought the matter to a head, and new manager Patty Pendergast called an emergency meeting of the board last weekend to urge measures which could save the Co-op, which is about a $1 million a year business.

Pendergast and several board members were interviewed at The Herald Tuesday.

"We are at a fork in the road," said Cynthia Liepmann, vice president of the Council which runs the store. "We need to take serious steps."

"It's not that this area can't support a co-op," said Kory Hirak, who was elected Council president this summer. "It has and has continued to do so. But the compounded problems have brought us to a crossroads."

Enthusiasm

Council members expressed continued enthusiasm for the store's future—if it can make it over this hump. The co-op has a fully-committed board, management and store staff, Hirak said, and she's confident that Randolph area people will reflect on the value that the co-op has brought and will come out to support it.

"We're ready to do a lot more work," said Hirak, who noted that that board pitched in this summer with hands-on work during a few weeks the store was between managers.

"But we can't do it alone," echoed council member Lisa McCrory. "We're reaching out."

The upcoming holiday season is looming as a key six weeks, Hirak said. Like all retail operations, the Co-op does a larger percentage of its business during those weeks, and it's particularly important this year.

"The holiday could make us or break us," was Pendergast's blunt assessment.

To that end, the store has scheduled holiday bazaars every weekend starting in December. It's decorating with "more spirit and pizzazz," according to McCrory. The Co-op is also fundraising a hoped-for $10,000 to make sure the shelves are thoroughly stocked for the holidays.

Council members hope that the public will not only flock to the store for merchandise but will decide that Co-op gift certificates would look great under the Christmas tree.

A Business, or Not?

Hirak admitted that part of the co-op's problem is that the organization has sometimes been run "less as a business than as a vision and a philosophy and an idea."

Like many co-ops, the organization has also occasionally benn riven with ideological and operational dissent about what kind of business it should be. That included a near-coup in the latter years on Weston Street.

From 1976 to 2001, the co-op operated out of much smaller quarters on Weston Street. The Pleasant Street builidng is three times as big, allowing for a much larger inventory, as well as a café.

It also brought higher costs—and $190,000 in debt when the organization purchased the space (the first floor only) a couple of years later.

Sales volume at Pleasant Street has "essentially doubled," said longtime Council member Sandy Stephen, "but costs have more than doubled."

As a result, the co-op finds itself burdened with the "dinosaur" of long-term debt, Hirak said, though she and others were unstinting in praising the cooperation of Randolph National Bank, the prime lender.

The Town of Randolph Revolving Loan Fund, administered by RACDC, has also provided important loans, they said, most of which have been paid off.

Debts to Vendors

In addition to the long-term debt, Pendergast said, the Co-op has accumulated about $170,000 in debts to its vendors. For some time, the smaller vendors suffered the most, including small businesspeople and farmers. One dairy in Randolph Center, for instance, was owed $6000.

Pendergast, who was hired Sept. 1, brought a strategy of trying to pay off the smaller vendors more quickly. But that resulted in a larger debt to the co-op's largest supplier, United Organic Foods, which provides most of the grocery items. United Foods has issued an ultimatum demanding to be pre-paid for every delivery, she said.

Then came the dramatic fall-off in sales in October.

The store had been grossing about $90,000 a month, or about $1 million annually. But in October, receipts fell to $70,000.

"It was a shock," Pendergast said.

Eventually, she estimated, the co-op will need something like $120,000 in sales per month. Certainly it needs more than $100,000 months in November and December.

"People have to decide if they want a store that supports their neighbors and where money stays within the community, and if they want that kind of healthful food," she declared.

Failure is something that none of the council or management wants to think about. Some community members, they believe, think a new, smaller co-op could emerge from the ashes of the present one, if it dissolves, but that won't happen, Council members said. Bankruptcy would "rip off" local farmers and other suppliers, and would make it impossible to secure good deals with major suppliers and lenders, Hirak noted.

"Everything will be on the basis of cash up front," she said.

The co-op will follow up the holiday season with a special membership meeting and a membership drive, Hirak said. "A" memberships are a one-time $90; other memberships are available for lower-incme people, and "C-shares" cost $200 and are considered a straight investment in the co-op.

The general public, of course, is welcome to shop in the store, but members get a small discount.

The members are also the backbone of enthusiasm for the organizastion, and it is to them that the council and manager are turning in this crisis.

"The only way we are going to turn this around is that all the members and the community come back into the store," Pendergast said.

"If all the members would spend $100 a week here, it would turn us around just like that," she said, deftly snapping her fingers.