July 2022 Newsletter

Check out our calendar for upcoming events and meetings!

Interested in volunteering but want to learn more? Join us for our first Volunteer Potluck & Orientation on Thursday, July 14th at 5:30pm under the pavilion at Gunn Park. Bring a side dish or dessert to share, pack along your favorite beverages, and join fellow Free Range Food Co-op owners for a fun evening of eating, learning, and getting to know each other!

RSVPs are required to ensure we bring enough supplies. CLICK HERE TO RSVP by July 7th. (Families of volunteers are welcome, just note the number of attendees in your RSVP.)

If you cannot make it, a copy of the presentation slides can be emailed to you afterwards if you select that option in the RSVP form.

The next few months will be a flurry of activity with multiple events, projects, and milestone development tasks happening. Make sure you're a part of the action by becoming a co-op volunteer!

RSVP

Upcoming Volunteer Opportunities

One tabling volunteer is still needed at the MacRostie Art Center's annual Downtown Art Fair

Saturday, July 9th: 12:30-4:00pm

Join us on the lawn at the Old Central School where you can share our booth with local artist, Susan Clandon. Come have fun representing your co-op while being surrounded by local art and artists!

Volunteer

We are looking for an owner with a tractor and trailer/hay wagon who would enjoy driving our float in the Tall Timber Days parade

Sunday, August 7th: Parade line up at 11:00am, & parade starts at 1:00pm.

We also need FRFC owners to ride on or walk with the float during the parade, and tabling volunteers for our booth from Friday - Sunday (various shifts available).

Volunteer

Tabling volunteers are needed at the Grand Rapids Farmers Market

Any Saturday throughout the summer & fall season. Can take one or both shifts:

7:30am-10:30am

10:30am-1:30pm

We are looking for a volunteer or two (bring a friend or family member!) to sit at our small FRFC booth during the Saturday farmers markets.

This is a fun, low-key opportunity for you to interact with other co-op owners, introduce new people to the co-op, and visit with our local farmers market vendors!

Volunteer

Friendly Reminder: If you haven't done so already, please complete the brief volunteer survey sent out to all owners. Tell us how you can help build your co-op!

Volunteer Survey

Site Selection Update

Oh, the question all FRFC owners ask… “When on earth (and where on earth) will we find a site?!” And the answer? “It’s complicated!”

Our Site Selection team includes directors and FRFC owners with experience in business ownership, realty, and construction. We are also contracted with professional consultants with experience building food co-ops across the nation who are guiding us through this process. The team is working diligently to select the best possible site for our future store. This is a lengthy process, and we appreciate your continued patience! We had a promising potential site this spring but we could not secure a long term lease to ensure a stable future for the co-op's store, so we unfortunately had to pass on that opportunity.

Our team is now looking for other existing sites as well as considering the possibility of a new build. Each potential site must meet a multitude of criteria including size, distance from main roads, ease of access, and cost of building/renovating. Each potential site is also “tested” in our financial pro forma and reviewed by a market study specialist to be sure the projected sales will sustain the business in the long term.

The steps to ensure the best possible site are time consuming, but are necessary to the success of Free Range Food Co-op for decades to come. If you have experience in real estate law or project management during store construction, these skills are still needed on our site selection team! We welcome you to email our Board Chair, Brandon Otway, at brandono.frfc@gmail.com if you are interested in joining the Site Selection Team.

Have you ever asked yourself, "Why we don't start with a smaller store and grow over time?" Tune in to next month's newsletter for the answer!

"Volunteering for FRFC is an exciting opportunity to join other community members in the goal of providing products locally grown and raised while supporting the local economy. I also like that we will be reducing the environmental impact of long-distance food transport. It's clearly a win-win!

I encourage others to find out how they can assist the co-op at this critical time in the journey to our very own grocery store!"

-Peggy Brennan, owner #848

Woohoo, it's almost election time again! We are accepting applications to welcome 4 new directors to our team during elections in October - will one of them be yours?!

Candidates should be committed to:

The mission & vision of Free Range Food Co-op
Attending twice-monthly board meetings
Being an active member on a co-op team & attending its monthly team meetings
Contributing at least 10 hours per month to co-op work (including meetings)

A board term lasts for 3 years (or less if you are filling a vacancy) and provides opportunities to:

Represent and engage with other co-op owners
Grow your existing skills and cultivate new ones
Expand personal and professional networks through co-op development

Email freerangefoodcoop@gmail.com to request a meeting with a current director for more information.

Learn more about the board of directors

Why will we use owner investments and donations to raise the funds needed to open our store? Because co-ops aren't like other businesses (we know we're weird--we're ok with it!). We have the ability to raise capital from our owners. It's this unique structure as a co-op that makes us awesome--and allows owners a unique opportunity!

Preferred shares are just one piece of the fundraising pie that will allow us to adequately fund the build-out of our beautiful grocery store. Preferred Shares are non-voting stock which may yield annual dividends. This is not a get-rich-quick investment, but rather an opportunity to truly invest in the future and well-being of our own community. Planning for our Community Investment Campaign is underway, and we'll have more investment opportunity details in the coming months!

Book Club

Thursday, July 21st

6:00-8:00pm

Longyear Park pavilion in Coleraine

"Material: Making and the Art of Transformation"

by Nick Kary

"In Material, Kary takes readers along with him to visit some of the places where modern artisans are preserving, and in some cases passing on, the old craft skills. His vivid descriptions and eye for detail make this book a rich and delightful read, and the natural and cultural history he imparts along the way provides an important context for understanding our own past and the roots of our industrial society."

Pick up this book and join our book club! Anyone is welcome to our discussion on July 21st regardless of how far you got through the book.

We’ll be making our next FRFC Book Club selection at this meeting, so come with your book suggestions even if you did not get a chance to read this one. Our group reads books from a wide range of topics and all community members are welcome!