The Co-op Food Stores

added 02/21/08

by Ken Davis

Cooperative Principle 5: Education, Training and Information
Cooperatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their cooperatives. They inform the general public — particularly young people and opinion leaders — about the nature and benefits of cooperation.

Consumer information in today’s world is readily available and often of questionable value. Information is power, and information strategically chosen by profit-mongers and power-brokers often serves their best interests at the expense of consumers.

Consumer vulnerability inspired the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers—28 weavers, tradespeople, and working-class artisans—to open their cooperative consumer-owned store in Rochdale, England, in 1844. In an era when dishonest shopkeepers used iron filings to add weight to tea leaves sold by the pound, these early cooperators recognized the value of consumer education and made it a cornerstone of their cooperative philosophy. They sought to educate their members through lectures and discussions and included a library and reading room in every store they opened. Providing trustworthy education, training, and information became a principle to be followed by all true cooperatives over the next 164 years, and our co-op is no exception.

I came to the Co-op as a new employee in mid-November 2000, fresh from the tumultuous world of corporate marketing. Almost immediately I noticed the dramatic differences between the two entities. It’s easy to sound self-righteous about such a thing—to portray Cooperative Principle 5 and those of us who attempt to adhere to it as metaphorical Davids in a world of giant mass-marketing Goliaths. But from my experience, the analogy is justified. People are the same all over, of course, with a mix of nobility and fault that’s present irrespective of whether they work in a cooperative or a corporation. But the contexts themselves are as different as can be and, from my experience, the former at least strives to be more noble than the latter.

For example, at the Co-op, sharing consumer news and information falls under the term “Education” rather than “Marketing.” As part of those education efforts, Co-op employees strive to inform rather than influence, to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, so that our members and shoppers have the information they want and need to help them make their own choices. In other words, spin-doctoring is not part of the cooperative culture, while in my corporate-communications role, our work was proudly prescriptive. The spin was in.

Take one example of a message I was charged with producing as a corporate communicator. It went something like this:

In order to facilitate a paradigm shift in our current resource personnel conservation-strategy protocol, we will be initiating a selective reduction in the facilities management line for the benefit of key company stakeholder groups.

People were about to be fired—custodians to be exact. The message was delivered in a semantic judo that purposefully set clarity on its ear.

At the Co-op, things are done differently. In addition to providing staff with training that enables them to do their jobs better, our Education Department produces a myriad of communication pieces for customers, including brochures, posters, displays, a company website, and the Co-op News you are reading now. This department is completely separate from Merchandising and Operations, and its mission is solely to share consumer news and information—even if that information does not always sing the praises of the products we sell on our shelves.

In her “From the Editor” column in the July 2003 issue of the Co-op News, Co-op Education Director Rosemary Fifield put it this way:

How can co-ops do this? Unlike investor-owned corporations, co-ops are not in business for the purpose of returning money to investors. They exist to serve their members, who are both customer and owner. In my role as Education Director, I am hired to provide well-rounded information that makes my employer—the Co-op member and owner—an informed consumer capable of making her or his own choices in the marketplace. By doing that, I meet the Co-op’s mission as defined by our founders and the Boards of Directors that followed them; a mission that distinguishes us from investor-owned competitors who seek only to sell products; a mission that makes our co-op a vital part of our community and its future instead of just another grocery store selling food.

In the same column, Rosemary points out that this philosophy has been in existence since our organization was founded. Consumer education has always been of primary interest to members of the Hanover Co-op, she writes, originating with the founding families in 1936.

The Hanover Consumers Club edited, mimeographed, and delivered to all members, by bicycle, two informational bulletins per week, one dealing with the history and principles of cooperative societies, the other giving information about goods and services. Seeking to stretch their Depression dollars, members shared information on where to find the best value for everything from silk hosiery to skate sharpening. They even held tasting parties to assess the quality of various brands of products and reported which canned peaches had the most fruit and which had the most water.

Can the corporate world follow this same philosophy? Can it communicate ethically as well as effectively? Of course. And some corporations are famous for doing so. But by their very profit-driven nature, corporations have a financially vested interest in the information they share, which can’t help but put extreme pressure on any attempts at objectivity. In contrast, a member-owned, not-for-profit cooperative is more liberated from such pressures, making trustworthy consumer education an important part of the cooperative difference.

“To tell the truth, when I first came here years ago after working years in the chain stores, the first thing I thought we should get rid of was our Education Department,” says Tony White, Director of Operations for the Co-op. “That’s what years of the chain-store mentality will do to you. It’s all about profits, about keeping costs down to drive profits up. Today I feel completely different. I think education is the most important thing we do. Selling food is what makes us a grocery store. Selling it ethically and providing trustworthy information along with it is what makes us a cooperative.”

To be continued in the next Co-op News. Coming up in Part III: “A Different Way of Merchandising.” Interested in learning more about co-ops before then? You can start here, visit our lending library upstairs in the Hanover store, or email us your suggestion or question.