Building a worker co-operative. Advice on how Greencity Wholefoods coop got started from Scott Erwin

So Scott, great to meet you in person, or visually at least. Thanks so much for making time to chat with us. To be honest, this is our first session where we are doing live interviews like this to try to help develop education around co-ops and developing a co-op and also a lot about, you know, developing a grocery store, which you guys obviously know how to do. But I've had a lot of conversations as I learned about worker-owned cooperatives, like I think it was in 2020, May 2020 or so, and talked to a lot of different folks from the US and outside the US, and then I stumbled upon in your store when Jeremy Corbin— Jeremy, um, uh, what's his name?

Yeah, right.

Yeah, he got— yeah, he did that. He did the— he did this video with you guys, and I was just like, wow, this is, uh, this is amazing. Like, a cooperative, sort of similar to what we're trying to do, but they've been around from the '70s, um, so you guys know how to do this, and we're just sort of like learning. So that's what I wanted to connect with you, and hopefully this will be a good conversation for you, but hopefully definitely for our team and as we get started. And so that's, that's where we are. And just a little bit of background for— so you have context on what we do or what we're trying to do. So our vision is we're a worker-owned cooperative. We're considering becoming a multi-stakeholder cooperative. And we want to create a chain of stores, grocery and household goods, that are really highly focused on sustainability. You know, one of our core tenets being around minimizing or having no plastic, plastic packaging or plastic materials in any products that we sell. And then we also are trying to be thoughtful about the vendors that we work with in terms of their carbon footprint. You know, how are they— like the energy sources that they're getting powering for their products, um, you know, with their work practices. Are they cooperative? If they're not a co-op, uh, you know, do they pay their workers fair wages? Things like that. And so, uh, that's, that's sort of what— where we're coming. We haven't built any stores yet. We're just early, uh, in our development. We're about to, um, launch our own, um, like a holiday market, a sustainable holiday market. We're working with a lot of different vendors to do that. So we're just in the early stages and yeah, so that's where we are. And yeah, I'm gonna kick it off to you and just maybe you can share a little bit about Green City Whole Foods for Erica and then those who are gonna listen in. Brad is just jumping on as well and I'm sure Ulla.

Yeah, well, thanks for having me and nice to link up across the water.

Yeah.

So yeah, as you were saying, Green City started in 1978 and there was something in the water at the time because I think there was across the UK, there was ourselves, we had what's now Essential Whole Foods in Bristol, which used to be Nova Whole Foods, then you've got Suma Wholesale and Halifax and Leeds, and then you've got Infinity in Brighton. And all, all of these organizations were set up vegetarian, whole foods, flat structures, eco-pay, eco-say. So making— no matter what your contribution was, it was viewed equally, whether you were cleaning the floors or whether you were in the accounts department or whatever department. So it's just based on those ethos of Aye, there's enough bullshit hierarchy in the world, which aye, we don't need any more of it when we can do things on an equitable basis and share the profits amongst ourselves rather than to anonymous shareholders. So aye, we're part of a big wholesale family. Psuma are probably the, as far as I know, the largest flat structure cooperative in Europe. I think they've probably got over 200 members sort of thing now. So again, it was just bringing in those principles, say, the cooperative movement of democracy, autonomy, solidarity, concern for community, and that idea of community extends to our supply chain as well as our customer base, it's our suppliers, and I suppose it's about the workers and the people involved and treating them with respect and looking into the backgrounds of companies and seeing actually, is this something that we want to support and get further distribution or is this something Just the way that the world— you sometimes take on an ethical brand and then Unilever come and buy it out.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So yeah, so as I were, part of this co-op family, uh, and we all trade with each other, and, and, and we've also helped establish a fair amount of other co-ops on our way, so We helped set up Highland Whole Foods in the late '80s up in Inverness and gave them our customer base up there, which when you go to like breakfast business meetings, they go, you did what? You're giving customers away? But for us, it was like, well, actually, these group of people share the same values as ourselves and a far better place to service their local community. And, uh, I, uh, so that's how we, we helped set them up. We were also involved, uh, the early stages, a pioneer in the fair trade movement as well. So that's amazing. I know, yeah, a lot of the, a lot of the, the talk around just now, I mean, Glasgow's just hosted the COP26, I think. So a lot of the A lot of the talk is all about localism and cutting down carbon emissions sort of thing, but a lot of the, yeah, a lot of our producers and partners in developing countries across the world are some of the communities that are going to face the most harshest aspects of climate change. So for us, getting Fairtrade recognized as a framework Fairtrade recognized as a toolkit for alleviating some of the negative aspects of climate change is key. And the fact that, again, it's just that coming away from this idea of hierarchical vertical relationships to more looking on producers as partners, as equal partners, And that also, the framework also allows them to democratize the supply chain as well. If they're involved, 90% of our food is from smallholding farmers across the world, and these are formed into cooperatives. And the Fairtrade premium that is paid, then that goes back into a common fund that the community decides to use for whatever, whether it's education, healthcare, or even infrastructure. Like Karmakola, they buy cola nuts to make their cola, and they're based in Sierra Leone. But like, it was— they decided to build some bridges between their villages with the fair trade premium. So that's the type of like relationships that we like. And, uh, and also with that, we've been trying to disentangle ourselves from the, the, the, the crazy world web of supply chains sort of thing. So used to have what you would call the A, B, C, and D of food, which is basically 4 companies that controlled, uh, like grain pulses, legumes. All of those supply chains are like— used to be A, B, C, and D, which was ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Dreyfus. Hardly anybody hears about them, but they're, they're the ones that control distribution, vertically integrate the supply chain. So they own the farms, they own processing plants, they own milling plants, they own the shipping, they own the logistics sort of thing. So really clever how to stitch up a supply chain and control it. So, so we're trying to disentangle ourselves from some of these companies and try to develop short supply chains with local farmers as well, stuff that can be grown in Scotland. And so we've got like a supply, all our oats come from one farm and then we're developing that for different commodities sort of thing. So again, it's just about, yeah, food and supply of food is one that's always— it should be disrupted in the most positive ways that make sense to yourself and to your own communities and Certainly for us, getting short supply chains has been a key to that and also treating our overseas partners with real respect as well.

Cool, great, amazing. Just one thing I wanted to tell the team. So guys, at the end, if you have any questions for Scott, we'll make some time for that. But just to keep going with this conversation, Scott, I know you've been with Green Market since— for about 25 years, 26 years. Just could you share a little bit about your backstory, how you got there, what brought you to the co-op movement, and what's kept you there all these years?

Yeah, that was a— well, go back a wee bit there. But, uh, I, I first came across— I was in a, uh, I was bizarrely a monk.

Oh wow.

For a year I was a— I stayed on a, an island, holy island off of, uh, it's a wee tiny island off the Aran. It's owned by Tibetan Buddhists, sort of thing. And I was one of these disillusioned teenagers that had traveled a bit about the world and I didn't really want to get into a 9-to-5 job and work for the man and do this and that and just destroy what I was enjoying at the time, which was autonomy, freedom, and just getting to basics. So I ended up on there, this wee island, and we were buying our food from Green City. So it was one of those, I was reading the back of peanut butters and honeys and going, a worker co-owned and controlled by its workforce on an eco-pay, eco-say basis. And I was like, that sounds all right. So when at the time there was a lot of stuff happening in Glasgow, a lot of exciting things about stopping motorways coming through the city and creating, uh, like there was a, a, a free state, uh, uh, that was, uh, developed from those anti-motorway protests that was based in Pollack. And I, so I, I was getting excited about that, so I was like, to hell with this monk malarkey. I'm coming to Glasgow to join some of the action here. So, uh, so I, from there, I just then, uh, applied. I think I applied twice before getting a job in Green City, and they've not been able to get rid of me since.

So that's awesome, that's great. I'm actually, I'm actually an avid meditator myself. I meditate for 2 hours every day.

And yeah, good man.

Awesome. Well, great. Glad to hear that. Well, you mentioned a lot of things when you were explaining what, you know, Green City does and how you guys work together. One of the, you know, things that I was curious about entering this conversation, you sort of highlighted it a little bit, is how do you work with different suppliers? We're in the early stages of finding out who we're going to work with. You know, like we're reading articles, we're, you know, seeing things about people, what they're making, and, you know, taking notes of who we want to work with. But obviously, you guys are, you know, one store, you have some other partner stores, but I'm imagining, you know, you have sort of similar landscape as we do, where it's, you know, there's these big chains that like, you know, they work with distributors and they order so much that they have, you know, a price advantage. How do you guys working directly with certain suppliers, And then, like, how does that— how do you do that actually? Like, just the logistics, I imagine, is challenging to manage a lot of different individual suppliers. And then additionally, on the price side of things, how do you guys compete with the bigger chains? You know, do your customers not care as much because they believe in what you're doing, or are there certain things that you do to help you be competitive pricing? So two questions there.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, we are strictly wholesale sort of thing, so, uh, the landscape's changed. I mean, we, we pretty much were— we came about from just market demand with commodities, so like your grains, your pulses, uh, your proper old-school whole food sort of thing. And then as the market changed and the whole food side of things developed into like a There was like an umbrella organization that then gets set up called like the Scottish Health Food Retailers Association, and that linked in with the growth of health foods, which at the time was our— probably when I first started— was our main market. As, as times developed, then we've just responded to what our customers have been asking for certain things. So we diversified into a lot of catering customers, working with institutions like universities. We got some contracts with local authorities, that's like the councils. And then the retail side of things where we've actually seen where in the '80s we were quite niche. But now you find that the mainstream is coming towards where we were 30, 40 years ago, sort of thing. So, so that's created its own challenges. And, and the UK landscape of food is pretty abysmal. Like, we, we've got a really pretty— it's getting better, but we've got a pretty poor connection to the land and how food is produced. Uh, so, so you've got that difficulty and, uh, basically 90% is shopping is through the multiples sort of thing. So we've got Tesco, Sainsbury's, uh, Asda, Morrisons, and then you've got the two discounters that came on board in the last 10 years, Aldi's and Lidl's sort of thing. So you've got 7, like companies that control— yeah, control that. We've made, from the, the get-go, we, we made that conscientious decision to, um, not supply multiples because we, we, we've drew a line in the sand for our side of things to basically say, actually, there's food positivity and there's, there's real negativity in terms of how culture and money flows go on. And the multiples are all about extraction, so the, the profits then go to anonymous shareholders. Where for us, the independent trade is, uh, when you look at money flows, it keeps the money in the community. So, you know, like, we've got companies like Breaks Brothers, which are like based in the Cayman Islands, sort of thing. So these, these companies get they'll extract, get council contracts and stuff like that. Then like for every pound that's spent with those type of companies, you're talking maybe 8 or 9 pence that's kept within the pound in the community. Yeah, and that's through wages. The rest disappears into the black economy. So we've made that conscious decision to specifically deal with independent trade. And there's a toolkit that was developed by the New Economics Foundation called LM3, which is Local Economic Multiplier. So again, sometimes these things, when you get into the nitty-gritty of your supply chain and where the money flows goes, then sometimes, like, for every pound spent with a company like us or a family-run or independent-run business, that can multiply and return like £1.60 back into the local economy. Compare that with your 10p sort of thing. So again, it's like looking at money flows and ownerships of companies sort of thing. So as I said, we're part of that family, wholesalers, that we And we've also got 56, 57 members here, sort of thing. So you get 56, 57 pairs of ears, pairs of eyes that are looking at the market, looking at changes and seeing actually, right, this company has been bought over. Do we continue to sell them or do we try to find something else? Yeah, so it's that type of thing. And one of the real things that we were proud of was when, it was at the time again, when the health food market was quite a tight, it's changed now. It's like you've got all your Holland and Barrett's and all your big boys in now sort of thing. But at the time it was quite independent run. One of the things that we were proud of was that we employed someone at the get-go when we heard about GM Foods coming into the market. And we thought, actually, this is about control of the food system. This is about 3 or 4 chemical companies basically putting patents on things and, and basically hammering farmers. So we helped establish a trade body called Genetics Food Alert, and then we got all the other wholesalers involved. And this was at the time when the only thing that was genetically modified with soya. So we managed to organize the whole health food trade across the UK and make that— get that commitment that actually we wouldn't sell and nobody else would sell this stuff. And so from those conversations, you had all your small supply of soya milks like Plamil, Granose, uh, they were going, yep, we can get identity-preserved soya, no problem. Uh, but the, the bigger boys like Alpro, Provemil were like, nah, well, this is the future, you either eat up or not. Uh, but as we were getting named guys around the table, we were getting every other— all the other wholesalers that was involved in soya and milk at the time. That was the main thing that was coming into the UK, TVP.

Uh, and making sure that there was no— there were not GMO like soya.

Yeah. Yeah, so the next time when we met with everybody, then it was like, what, uh, you're either— you can, you can be outside the circle, but, uh, you'll find yourselves disappear sort of thing. So, so from there, that helped, uh, uh, come in with— that helped push the moratorium in the UK and the EU. Uh, so we're at a different situation now that the UK is out of the EU and they're desperate to hang any trade deal on any bargaining tool. So we'll see how that goes. But for me, that was a good indicator of how like 20 people at a lunchtime meeting can actually like change the power structures within food. By organizing and doing it for the positive. So, yeah.

So how did you guys exactly do something like that? You guys saw this occurring in the market, you didn't think it was good for your customers, good for you, and then you started connecting with other sort of similar companies like you guys And did like some sort of regular meetings? Like how did that all work together? I'm just curious, like I definitely see that there's a power in cooperation and collaboration. You know, we're in the process of organizing this holiday market that I mentioned and just connecting with these folks. Like we see that, you know, bringing a bunch of different vendors together, we may be all small, But coming together, we can organize a nice event that's great for the customers, but it's also great for us as businesses. So I definitely see that power of collaboration. But I'm curious, how did you guys actually do that? And how do you— is that something you guys do continuously at this moment where it's like, you know, we have a forum or we have some sort of email group or something like that? How do you, how do you collaborate on such initiatives like, you know, GMO? Or the avoidance of GMO soya?

Yeah, I mean, that, that was a, it was a wee while ago, but in terms of how we communicate generally, uh, there's a lot of, uh, like cooperative, uh, type apps like Lumio, and there's a lot of like the UK cooperatives are in there, and then they'll share best practice or bad practice and looking at pitfalls sort of thing. So it's just about sharing side of things, and there's loads of toolkits developed by like Cooperatives UK, Radical Roots, again more a grassroots organisation. And again, these, it's about open source and just sharing these, and you can get any of these wee subgroups that I think you see focusing on Scottish politics or focusing on governance sort of thing. So yeah, I suppose it's just about that openness and that willingness to show the world your warts and everything and say, this isn't working. But, and then you find, well, here's a route. You find that actually a problem shared is a it unburdens you, and then you actually realize, actually, there's, there's 5 other companies that have had this exact same problem. And then it's through that solidarity and that understanding, the cooperation and the willingness to share stories, then that's how we go about. And I think there's for In terms of like retail side of things, then I think it would probably be worth your while to speak to like places like Unicorn Grocery. Again, they are based in Manchester, but they've got a real good— again, like on their website they've got a thing called Grow a Grocery. So it's an open source basically going, here's how we did it, here's, here's each of the stages, how we developed our USP, how we market ourselves against the multiples. And so they developed like this toolkit that's really useful for how do you compete against the big boys, you know. And it's just looking at these supply chains because you'll find that A lot of like your multiples and stuff, they operate on this just-in-time basis sort of thing. So which, if you get slight tweaks in it, like with Brexit, or for us, like between the Brexit and the pandemic, there has been massive amounts of empty shelves sort of thing. And that again is about, because there's no inbuilt resilience into the supply chain sort of thing. That's where local shops, local independent shops, are developing their own networks and looking at who's out there. If I'm in the city, then what farmers are in the outskirts of the city? How do we feed our cities in a responsible way and create resilience and the the supply chain. And it is, it's that, it's learning to be less, uh, like wanting asparagus, uh, every day of the year and thinking more seasonally and promoting that seasonality as well, uh, so that people get into the, the right rhythms. And I suppose, uh, again, that ecosystem then it's like, what magazines, what networks do you want to promote within your stores so that you're engendering the similar culture that these are as a setup sort of thing, that you want to reflect your values into everything that you do, and then it helps plant those seeds for your customers to appreciate and your customers to say, That's different from Walmart. Yeah, because you—

I know you guys also, um, I think you only sell vegetarian, uh, and you're just saying you're, you're basically focusing on mostly seasonal, uh, you know, locally grown, uh, vegetables and so forth. Um, I imagine for a set of customers that can be challenging who, you know, maybe want to eat meat or or maybe they do want asparagus all year round or whatever the vegetable is. Um, how, how do you— how have you, uh, navigated that considering, you know, they can go to their Walmart or they can go to somewhere else, Aldi or something, and get all those type of products all year round? Does it, uh, do you have a set of customers that are just like, yeah, we, we believe in this ethos and we're gonna come here no matter what? Or do they see you as like, maybe we'll get a lot of our stuff here, but then we'll also have to get some of our stuff elsewhere?

Yeah, I mean, because we, we, we do a bit of chilled and frozen, so we've got like cheese and yogurt and all your, uh, alternatives to meat sort of thing, uh, ice creams and stuff like that. But we don't get any fresh fruit and veg, uh, we just stick with the mainly dried and tins and package sort of thing. But for us, it's like, yeah, it's again, just we treat it as an ordinary business and looking at what our customer demands are sort of thing, but still having that framework, who we are. And that's, we compete on having a good service and good products. And it is then trying to bring those brands in to reflect your values sort of thing. So, so for us, we're probably like the premier wholesaler of a fledgling Scottish independent brand. So it's like we're like the first port of call if somebody's— some entrepreneur or innovators out there that are bringing in your fermented goods, your kombuchas, and doing something different, but they've got a product, but then they're looking how do you upscale sort of thing. And that's where we come in. It's like we've got the distribution network, we've got the supply of the retail and the cafes already, got trucks in the area anyway. So that's how we built our business, is actually just through feeding those smaller players in the Scottish economy given them a route to market. And we've helped ourselves by diversifying into different elements and then marketing towards those specific elements within the marketplace. So I think we—

What do you mean by that precisely? When you say diversify into the different markets or—

Well, you've got certain things like your cafes and restaurants. They'll have a specific— 5,000 product lines, sort of thing. So there will only be probably like 1,000 lines that will be specific to that market. So it's segmenting your market, then you can target your audience a lot better, sort of thing. So for us, it's no longer— it's easy having 1 or 2 products or like a set type of product for 1 market, but when you're— when you've got different segments, then it's like, how do you approach each of these individually and keep a hands-on relationship with them? So, but as I said, it's— it's by normalizing vegetarian and vegan foods and the mainstreaming of whole foods and these type of products, it's a double-edged sword. But you've got the mainstream coming into it, but We've also seen in the last 5 years there's probably about 60 zero waste shops that have opened up across Scotland, sort of thing. So that's helped again, where it's again just people doing the hoppers, coming in with their own bottles and jars and filling up, sort of thing. So that's been really, really helpful. And there has been some movement by the multiples into those, but I think it's still such an alien concept to the majority of their customer base that I don't think it's taken off the way they would have liked it. But certainly the independent trades, there's a phenomenal amount of new additions to the high street and even like more your city centres like Glasgow. Which again is predominantly all multiples, like most cities are. But I've been looking at more your information from property estate agents like Savills, and then they do reports on that on a quarterly basis. And it's been encouraging to see 90% of new businesses within Glasgow city centre are all independents. So that's a good measure of— there is confidence in there and the people aren't just taking up a franchise or working for a multiple. So I think that's been quite a nice wee statistic that we can be proud of there, but there's still a lot of work to do. And as again, for us, it's like we involve ourselves in like any trigger points or any elements of democracy so that you can have a say in. Then obviously we try to have our tuppence worth. And so we join like the cross-party groups in Parliament for fair trade, organics, uh, and food generally. So, uh, and then we're also part of various trade associations, so like the Federation of Small Businesses, Scottish Wholesale Society, Co-ops UK, uh, I'm involved with local, just like, uh, like Glasgow Food Policy Partnership. And so it's just, again, involving yourself in all these different organizations so that you can have a coordinated point of attack to say, actually, yeah, how do we get rid of poverty? How do we provide a food system that is like open to all sort of things? So you've seen, again, we're still part controlled by Westminster, but there is some levers within the Scottish Parliament So the Scottish Parliament, they've got a lot more forward thinking in terms of the Greens sharing the power base with the SNP. And so they are now trying to come away from measurement tools like GDP and look at like the wellbeing economy. And also we're trying to enshrine and to legislate into law because Scotland has a different law system from England. And, uh, so legislate for the right to food and the right to optimum nutrition. Have that legislated for so that then that provides a base work that, uh, if the government's failing on that, you can say, well, you're breaking the law here, you know. And then so we've got a lot of that going on in Scotland. It's like Scotland's quite feudal, uh, we give like quite medieval in our approach to land. We've got the lowest amount of landowners per acre in the whole of the Western world, sort of thing. There's 500 people that own 50% of the land, sort of thing. So yeah, so we've got a lot of work to do. There's, uh, there was quite— we're probably about 30 years ahead of England in the conversation, uh, because the Crofton community kick-started the push for some reparations from like when the Highland Clearances happened, where people were kicked off their crofts and replaced by sheep. So there was a wee bit of— we've had a bit of a political agenda for that for a good 40 years now. And so now we've got a situation where England's just introduced it last year But we've got like a community right to buy, which used to be just for crofts, but now it includes any asset, whether it's rural or urban sort of thing. So communities can then come up with business plans and say, we can do this, we can use this asset better than it's currently being used at the moment, apply for funding from the Scottish Land Fund, and buy that off, whether it's private or whether it's council-owned sort of thing. So there's some exciting things happening there in terms of redistribution of wealth and redistribution of assets, but it's really underfunded. But it's certainly ignited some people, like the thoughts, potential that there is within people's minds. So that's, that's positive.

Great. Um, this is all very interesting that you guys are involved with all these different orgs, and yeah, I can imagine that that's helpful for, for your development and the community development. Um, that said, I, you know, you guys are obviously been in this, uh, industry for quite some time, uh, but it sounds like you've worked with, uh, some newer organizations that even help some set up some of them. What advice would you have for us? I mean, obviously the US landscape is a bit different than Glasgow, but like, curious to see— I'm sure some of the cooperative components that you're aware of still would apply for us, or, you know, some of the grocery components still would apply for us. What things have you seen be successful or not, you know, or or worker co-ops that are trying to start their own set of stores stumble upon?

Yeah, the worker co-op structure, it can be— it depends on how it's managed, and there are different ways of— I mean, I'm not sure whether you were thinking of a flat structure or whether you were going to have a tiered structure sort of thing. But so there are, I suppose, it is just at the initial stage, it's like getting a feel of what skill set you have, where are the possible where do you need to develop skills or where do you need to bring in skills or if you can have outside help. But again, there's not always a one-size-fits-all. We've got some really successful tiered worker co-ops like the Edinburgh Bike Co-op, which again— What was the name again? Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op. They deal just in bikes and cycles, so they're their workforce is really happy. They all get paid a certain rate, but then the board of directors take on the majority of the, the, the, the planning stuff and the strategic side of things, and they, they see it through, and, and everybody's happy in that regard sort of thing. But for us, like, it's in our DNA, as it is in, like, the other whole food cooperatives is like actually the likelihood here is ever forming a tier. We've got a management team and HR and we vote on these sort of things, but they're all paid the same rate as everybody else sort of thing. So, but I think again, it depends on like what the— I suppose it's understanding what the expectations is, is like when you're in a worker co-op, it can sometimes easily fall into just, I'm a warehouse, that's it, you know. And it's like, actually, you're meant to be able to see systems and understand the full ecosystem of how, how everybody interacts and how your performance impinges on profitability and the viability of the business that they end up sort of thing. So It is a difficult one to keep that spark going and to say, well, actually, here's the time for your director hat on and here's the time for your worker hat on. And, but I think getting those structures in place and the right people in place to oversee those, then what you don't want to do is end up where it's like you've got a meeting with 50 people and you are talking about operational stuff, uh, what color the door's got to get painted. And yeah, I think there is a tendency, especially at the startup, a worker co-ops and stuff, is that you can get, you can get into micromanaging everything, and you can, uh, you can get bogged down with the all of these things that are operational that should just happen at a team level sort of thing. So having that strong structure and having a good chair person as well is essential because, as I said, it depends whether you pay yourself in meetings. Some people don't pay, but certainly I— you don't— like, for us to have a 3-hour meeting with 56, 57 people, it costs the business quite a lot of money. So again, there is a lot of the buzzwords going out the news, like sociocracy and doing things in a sociocratic element. So that can have real positive influences because once we're at a stage where you've got— it was easy to do like with the GM decision where it was like a lunchtime meeting, we need to pay someone £2,500, £3,000 to set up this campaign. Agreed, everybody's agreed, that's easy. But once you start getting into like there's 56 people, then you've got 56 different opinions, I think. So sometimes you'll have the usual group dynamics, you'll have like people like myself who just blabber on forever, uh, and, uh, get sick. I even get sick of my own voice. So, uh, yeah, it's, I think Sometimes like the, the quieter people are sometimes the most thoughtful people, uh, so you want to be able to extract that thoughtfulness out from them, uh, and sometimes like group dynamics and like when you've got a full general meeting, people tend to get a herd mind. So it's like, all right, the majority is going with that, I'll go with this. So when you get to break things into sociocratic elements and smaller circles to discuss policy or to discuss future planning strategy or whatever, then that allows those quieter voices their chance to be heard. And then you're getting around a circle where you maybe have like 6 people in your circle, 5 of them agree, one of them won't. But then it's like, how do you then get that one person in? It's like, well, will they agree that actually they can see some benefit in it and they wouldn't stop the procedure going forward. So you think so, so there is like different toolkits there that's like, I think the sociocratic thing has really been quite popular within UK.

You guys, that's what you guys use? So, so I could see, yeah, we've started, started elements of it.

We've not like went full gung-ho into But I find that when we do the sociocratic elements, then everybody feels charged sort of thing. We went through a period where it was getting so like, where it was just basically the management team talking at the rest of the workforce going, here's the audited accounts and going through all of this. And everybody was like falling asleep, you know, it was just like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Am I getting a pay rise? That's probably why, you know. So yeah, so I think like that element, it has a lot more, you get a lot more positive outcomes. And I think that's again, even some like larger normal businesses are starting to utilize sociocracy just to actually have buy-in from their staff members and actually feel— give their staff members feel so that they have agency and that they have, uh, a say in the future, how they're working.

Got it, got it. Great. Um, guys, uh, I'm gonna ask maybe one last question. So if you, if you have any questions you want to ask Scott, like, just, you know, make a note and maybe you can ask. So the last question I was particularly just curious about is like, what, what advice or tips or tools any— like, what's like maybe the one or two top things you would tell us to do, um, you know, to, to get a sort of a grocery chain off the ground, uh, knowing some of the hurdles that you guys have gone through or seen of other people?

Yeah, I think again, it's just looking at the ecosystem that's on your doorstep, uh, so checking out who who are the innovators and who are looking, who are doing good things in a positive way. Again, like a lot of groceries, you've still got to be beholden to some larger distributors sort of thing. So the The more that you, uh, develop a positive relationship with those, like, and generally you'll find like you, you'll get like 60% from one and 30% from another and, uh, maybe like 10 or 20% from like your, your local supply sort of thing. So I suppose it is just—

oh, so you guys, you, you guys still also get a decent amount of your goods from from big distributors as well?

Yeah, well, it's more like commodity importers. Like, traditionally, like, when I first started, it was like community foods in London, but now then, as the market expanded and expanded, then we unfortunately— we are importing probably 65, maybe 70% of our organic commodities from Holland. From a company called Do It. Uh, so again, that's a— from a resilience point of view, it's not great. And but that's where we're developing, uh, shorter supply chains with farmers. And just, we still need to sort out a few middle bits because the majority of farmers just want to go, right, there's a ton of the core product, it's not been cleaned, it's not been processed, it's not been metal detected or anything. They've just got a ton bag of that, get it away from me sort of thing. So, so we're in a weird position where we've got like, uh, amazing fava beans that we then export to Northern Africa, then we import, uh, chickpeas from Northern Africa, and you're just going, what? I think we can do something a bit different. So I was just looking at the, the supply chain from a bird's eye view and going 'Actually, see if we can get the processing, the cleaning, the metal detecting. If we can get that middle part sorted out, then we can set up a separate factory to do that. Then that opens the door for a lot of different suppliers across— farmers across Scotland,' sort of thing. So for us, it's just working out that wee middle bit that can then open up a whole array of potential And it is that whole thing. We can grow stuff like quinoa in Scotland that's got the similar climate as like parts of the Andes that the quinoa has come from. So, uh, that is again just getting, uh, getting the, the farmers to catch up with where consumers are. And as I said, like, our farmers are quite, quite meat and dairy focused, and anybody that's doing pulses or anything else, it's like as a secondary thing, whether it's either to feed nitrogen into the soil or to feed the pigs or the cattle sort of thing. So for us, it's actually, well, we need to create that confidence in the farming community, say, hey, there's food, there's a human market for some of these crops here, sort of thing. Uh, so yeah, I, as, uh, as I said, again, I suppose building up those trust and relationships and then actually what margins can you get from your larger distributor sort of thing, and then seeing then how you can get best value for money. And then you can promote the more common known brands, you can maybe take a larger margin on that, but then the more smaller up-and-coming brands that have got a better story, then you can take a slightly lesser margin to help encourage that those pay differentials sort of thing. So, but I, as I said, for me it's a like retail and stuff, it's about tapping into your own customers. So it's reflecting like the good values that you have and seeing how do I build in that and in my customer base. And I think that, that, that's about the culture sort of thing. So it's about which stories you can tell What magazines that you are reflecting that, and what events can you put on, what charities can you support, what's your wider culture input into that sort of thing. And it's one of those I look forward to. I mean, I was on the board there, community centre, for about 10 years as well, and pre-pandemic situations, like some of the powerful— I mean, food is one of those things that's like It's the cornerstone of everything. From— it's, it's like your environment, your health, your well-being. So I, I think it is, uh, for me, the pre-pandemic stuff where we were doing like community eating and community meals together was like fantastic. This was getting, getting beyond food banks because it was basically—

that's awesome—

egalitarian spirit, just everybody there to have a good food and have a good time. And you would have refugees sitting next to working-class people from the schemes in Glasgow, getting together with, with food as the common denominator. And so I am looking forward to that because I, I think like eating together is a powerful tool, and that it reduces so much in terms of mental health as well as your own health sort of thing. So, uh, but I, I Yeah, food's like just one of those things, you know. It's like, it's, uh, everybody's got food in common, you know. So, and it is a community maker, as it brings community. Totally, totally.

Um, Brad, Erica, anyone have any questions for Scott? Uh, maybe I'm sure there's lots of things we could ask, but I didn't get a chance I, you know, sure, sure.

Yeah, my connection is not great, so I apologize if I drop off. Um, but I wanted to know what you guys, um, you know, how you guys think about transparency kind of with your community and everything and other members. And is there like a— are you— do you try to be as open as possible at every— all the cool stuff you do, or is there like some stuff that you know, you just kind of do and, you know, people may not know about it or something. Yeah, yeah, we're— I'll be totally frank with you, we are rubbish. It's— we're a £9 million business that, uh, doesn't actually have like a formal marketing team sort of thing. We do what social media and stuff like that, but yeah, that I would say that's probably our biggest weak point, is that we, we just do what we do. And we've started to get a lot better, like on our website, then it's like work, like some of the stories that we're working with the charities that we do. But yeah, we've got a lot to, a long way to go to actually communicate what we, what we'd be doing and how we do it. And I'm probably like the worst. I'm one of these guys that still hasn't got a Facebook page or anything like that. It's just like, I just, I like working away in the background. But I realize actually there's loads of stuff that you were involved in that actually I should be actually putting on the website. So stuff like the Glasgow Food Policy Network and the organic growers and associations, stuff like that, where you can go. Actually, we, we should our networks are like sometimes really closed, so I— but we should actually open those doors out and shout a good bit about that because it does give you what your unique selling point is. But I, as I said, I'll hands up, we are rubbish at it. Okay, that kind of answered my question. It's not necessarily required. Yeah, I think it is definitely a work in progress, and I think it is, uh, yeah, building those networks up is something that you should be shouting about. And, uh, but we, I, at the moment, we are very behind closed doors on a lot of it, but we have— we are getting better. But I think there's a lot of work still to be done with that.

It sounds like you probably utilize other community outreach and networks to supplement maybe the lack of transparency on the social media front, probably.

Yeah, I—

Erica, Ulla, either of you have a question?

Yeah, I have a question. Hi, Scott. Like, I want to ask about mistakes. Like, what mistakes did you make along the way, and what did you learn from them? And, you know, obviously we could maybe learn from them. Yeah, for us, sometimes you can constrain yourself within like your articles and memorandums or your constitution sort of thing. And yeah, sometimes again, sometimes when it was like set up, but it was like it started off with 6 people, it doesn't sometimes reflect into the needs and the wants of the 56 people sort of thing. So for us, there was like limitations on how much we could borrow, which was bizarre, but we changed that. And then there was also— we were trying to have decision-making via consensus, which is a nice idea, but it's just like we got to a stage where you would We had like, at the time, probably had like 35 people, but there was just one awkward bugger. So yeah, so it's getting those where we ended up, we reduced it to rather than having consensus, we would have like 80% majority or some things it was like 65% majority. And yeah, so sometimes And for me, that sort of held us back with opportunities. Like I was looking for new property and we got a chance of getting like this 40,000 square foot warehouse and big massive yard for like 300,000, which in terms of today's market value is probably worth about 2 million now. But I could not get 80% to agree on this because we were taking— we took everybody down and it was like they, they were just basically seeing pigeon shit, broken glass, uh, windows, uh, fire damage in the roof sort of thing, and they couldn't see beyond that. And they were just like, what is this? Why would we buy this shithole? So you're going, well, this shithole can be done up for like a couple of hundred thousand, then, uh, you would have something as an asset that's really worth 2 million rather. But as I said, so things like that, that, that really— we had to actually, after that, we were like, no, we need to change some of the rulings here. And it's like, these things that we had that was at the setup from the start doesn't really necessarily make for a very fluid decision-making process now. So yeah, cross your eyes and dot your— no, don't do that. Cross your eyes and dot your Ts. The other way around. But so yeah, good lesson to learn. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what we are trying to be, but it's something to consider. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Building into your, your, uh, constitution that ability to change as, uh, as time goes on, as you grow, sort of thing. Then yeah, it's just the market changes all the time, you know. And, uh, I— and that's what is keeping up to date on market trends, sort of thing. You'll probably be way ahead of what's happening here in the UK and like stuff that's happening in London it'll maybe sometimes take 2 or 3 years before it comes up to Glasgow. And then sometimes it'll come to Glasgow but it'll not go anywhere further north. They'll be like, kombucha, what is that? So it's funny, but that's just where the market is. But certainly structural restrictions within the cooperative model, say, it can— some things that are ideologically a real positive can sometimes be in practice a hindrance. So it's getting those parameters sorted out prior, then it helps a far smoother journey and end up.

Got it.

That's great.

Yeah, we've been making a lot of decisions via consensus as a small team right now, but I think we imagine as we grow to think about subcommittees as as a way to like, you know, okay, this subcommittee has autonomy to make certain degree of decisions and so forth.

So yeah, no, it makes sense. And even certain budgets to say, right, that's agreed, bang, if you stick with that. If you want to go above it, come back to a meeting or send us around a message on Loomio or something like that. So yeah, sure.

Erica, you have any questions or—

No, I don't. Thank you. Um, you asked very good questions, Anoula, too. And thank you, Scott, for your thoughtful answers.

And this has been very, very informative and helpful.

No, it's been a pleasure. And, uh, it's great, great chatting, uh, with you guys. And certainly keep us posted. And, uh, yeah, I said if there's anything Like, as I said, just like if there's certain like documents or that, they just go, well, what's your HR policy on this or whatever, then just drop me a wee line and I can bring you over a copy of them. And, uh, as I said, but there is good governance, say, models out there, sort of thing. But certainly from a retail perspective, I would check out Unicorn Groceries website. Because I think they— and even it may be worth even a conversation with them because they've got that sector-specific knowledge that I'm one step removed from that. So definitely worth checking those out. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you know anyone over there that we should connect with, try to reach out to?

If not, I can just So yeah, I'll get— I'll get you a coin. I'll drop you every email with a contact there.

Oh, that'd be great.

Ah, super.

Thank you so much, Scott. Thanks for your time. Uh, I'll let you go. I know you have a lot of work, I'm sure, today. Uh, we really appreciate, uh, you making time, being, being so cooperative, uh, and, uh, you know, helping us, uh, small startup get off the ground. So we'll definitely be in touch.

Totally. Wish you all the best with it. And thank you. I enjoy the journey because that's what it's about, it's just enjoying the Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for your advice. All right, take care. Best of luck. Take care. Be in touch. Bye.