NCG Guest Speaker

In last month's newsletter I mentioned the Board of Directors have a focal area around food inflation. We are kicking off our discussions on this with a special guest at the August board meeting. Tony Alongi from National Co+op Grocers (NCG) will present on Inflation in Grocery and Co-ops. Tony gave me a sneak peek of his presentation. It really is full of very interesting information, including ideas on what Co-ops can do to help with this problem.

Some of you may not be familiar with NCG.

"NCG is a business service cooperative for retail food Co-ops located throughout the United States representing 147 food Co-ops operating over 200 stores in 38 states with combined annual sales over $2 billion and over 1.3 million consumer-owners." (ncg.coop/about-us)

NCG provides a lengthy list of services for Co-ops, but one that is top of the list is negotiating pricing with grocery distributors like UNFI, our Co-op's main distributor.

Tony has a fantastic background in the food Co-op industry. He has held Finance and Management leadership roles in several Co-op organizations before joining NCG in 2020. His current role is the Central Region Co-op Resource Manager. He works very closely with Gary and the staff.

The Board hopes you will consider joining at least the first part of the August Board meeting to hear from the expert. Our next board meeting is on Monday, August 15th at 6:15 pm. The link to the meeting will be posted on the website and Facebook one week prior.

We look foward to having a great audience for this discussion!

Please Note: The August board meeting is being held of the third Monday of the month due to the way the calendar falls. Our normal meeting day of the second Monday did not give the store leadership or the board enough time to prepare and review all reporting.