Can Online Sales Help Food Co-ops Thrive?

When I heard that Food Front Co-op in Portland was offering online ordering and delivery to most of the Portland area, I knew it was a big story. Food co-ops have traditionally depended on their immediate neighbors for most of their sales and, particularly, for their membership subscriptions. With the grocery scene in Portland exploding, co-ops were struggling to compete. So I pitched the story to the prestigious online food-issues website, Civil Eats, and it published today.

Can Online Sales Bring Food Co-ops into the Modern Age?

New technology is allowing once-fringe natural food co-ops to reach a new audience.

If the mention of a cooperative grocery store conjures images of barefoot hippies pawing through bins of nuts and grains like squirrels, then we have news for you. Many of today’s co-ops have modernized their business plans to reach a wider audience. This fact is especially evident in the way many co-op groceries, like national supermarket chains, are on their way to offering online ordering, with delivery in one to two hours.

The reason that many brick-and mortar grocery stores are jumping on the online grocery bandwagon is simple—for many people, shopping online is more convenient.

Due to the emergence of delivery services like Instacart and Amazon Fresh, the technology which has made it possible for the chains to get online has also made it easy for co-ops, many of which have only one or two stores. Customers simply go to the store’s website, log into the online ordering section and start shopping.

Instacart currently has 100 retailers nationwide, including several co-ops such as Rainbow Grocery in the Bay Area, Good Grocer in Minneapolis, Central Co-op and Puget Consumers Co-op (PCC) in Seattle, and Harvest Coop in Boston. Andrew Nodes, head of retail accounts at Instacart, says that co-ops particularly benefit from online ordering and delivery services because it allows them to expand beyond their neighborhood membership base by giving them access to new customers.

“[Co-ops] also sell hyper-local and perishable items that don’t have the exposure that national brands backed by multibillion dollar corporations do,” he says. “Instacart is a way for them to increase customer exposure to those items.”

According to Brie Hilliard, marketing director of Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Portland, Oregon, the co-op decided to go forward with an online system two years ago, but put it on the back burner until it had a point-of-sale (POS) system in place. This year, they’ve begun offering sales through Instacart and so far around 130 customers have taken advantage of the service.

The timing was fortuitous, as it coincided with the opening of a popular 17-store grocery chain, New Seasons Market, just a few blocks from the co-op’s flagship location. With online ordering, Hilliard said, Food Front is now able to fill orders from its two locations for most of Portland’s neighborhoods in one to two hours.

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Local Co-op Adds Online Ordering, Home Delivery

Ordering your groceries online is nothing new in Portland. Larger supermarkets like New Seasons, Costco and Whole Foods have offered it, along with home delivery, for awhile, and even newcomer Green Zebra has added the service for the neighborhoods it serves. Last fall Fred Meyer added online ordering for groceries, but customers must order the day before and pick up at the store.

The reason these big boys are jumping on the online bandwagon is simple—they've found that people don't want to take the time or trouble to drive to the store, find a parking space and then wander the aisles checking items off their grocery lists, not to mention fighting traffic and wrestling with bored kids. Then there's the ease of knowing exactly what the store carries, rather than getting there and finding they're out of pomegranate juice or that they've discontinued your favorite brand of mayonnaise.

That's why just this month Food Front Cooperative Grocery became the first co-op in the area to offer both online ordering and home delivery to its owner/members and the public through the Instacart system. According to Marketing Director Brie Hilliard, the decision to go forward with an online system was made two years ago but was put on the backburner until the co-op had the systems in place to launch it successfully.

The timing for adding the service is fortuitous, since this year New Seasons opened its new Slabtown store just a few blocks from the co-op's original location on Northwest Thurman. So now, in addition to serving customers near the Thurman location and its second store in Hillsdale, Hilliard said that with the exception of a few zip codes, the co-op is able to fill orders in most of Portland's close-in neighborhoods in one to two hours.

Though you don't have to belong to the co-op to use the service, General Manager Eamon Molloy (at left in top photo) said the goal was to expose a broader spectrum of people to the high quality of the products that the co-op offers and, as a result, hopefully gain new owner/members. Not only do owner/members get discount pricing, but with the addition of online ordering and home delivery, it no longer matters if people live near the store as long as they're within the delivery areas.

A key reason that the co-op decided to go with Instacart's service is that it's easy to sign up for the service from Food Front's website, and Instacart has a trained "picker" in every store to fill orders and hand them off to drivers, though Hilliard stressed that the store is trying to use its own staff to fill as many orders as possible.

While Food Front may be the first co-op in the area to add online ordering and delivery, Jenna Chen, Marketing and Design Manager at People's Food Co-op in Southeast Portland, said that its board is considering adding the service "because [our] competitors are doing it."

"People don't go out and shop anymore," she said of the trend to buy groceries online, even among the supposedly non-traditional audience attracted to co-ops. The holdup with adding the service at People's, according to Chen, is that the point-of-sale (POS) system would have to be completely changed in order to work with the service providers' systems, an expensive and complicated undertaking.

As for Food Front, in the first two weeks, without any big announcement or press releases, orders were coming in from as far away as Sellwood and St. Johns, a promising start. "We're really excited to offer this service," said Molloy.

Apparently the co-op's member/owners—along with non-members—are, too. One happy customer summed it up this way when she placed her order: "This is a gift to my daughter. Thank you for making it possible for a mother living in Germany to send a hug."

Farm Bulletin: Trust Is the Glue

“Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships,” Stephen R. Covey wrote. True in business, it's also true in life. This week, contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm elucidates the importance of longterm, stable relationships between the farmer and his local grocers.

We will return to the Hillsdale Farmers' Market with a full cargo of Chesters, along with Triple crowns. If you all run out of fruit midweek, Food Front and most New Seasons stores carry our berries. We harvest about 900 full 12-pint flats of berries a week during the peak of our blackberry season. Of those we sell only 100 at market, the balance finds it way to these grocery stores. We have a very good relationship with the buyers, Josh Alsberg at Food Front and Jeff Fairchild at New Seasons, and their staff. It meant a lot to us that both Josh and Jeff took the time attend our Ramble last year.

Food Front Cooperative Grocery.

About ten years ago, a national chain opened a store in Portland and contacted us about supplying berries. They bought a lot and were happy with our quality. The problem is that they rotated staff all over the country, making it impossible to establish a longterm working relationship with a produce manager. When each new harvest started, we found ourselves at the courtship stage again. The new person was from Palo Alto, Austin or Miami and knew nothing about the local produce. It didn't seem to matter that the chain sent a fancy photographer from Los Angeles to photograph us. For all we know, the fancy photographer photo still hangs in the store. The final straw was when they went extremely bureaucratic with respect to ordering and receiving. A very officious letter with lots of attachments explained all of the ways they didn't have to pay us if we strayed from the rules. Threatening farmers with nonpayment puts a deep and irreversible crimp in the relationship.

New Seasons Market.

The pleasure of working with Josh and Jeff is that we have known their staff for years. And when New Seasons opens a new store, it is always a seasoned staff member who takes the lead. We are not actually dealing with a new store, just a familiar face in a new setting. We know staff by name and it is always one of us who makes the delivery. This detailed approach means the store can eliminate wasted berries. If they feel they are a bit long on berries, they can email or call us and we adjust the orders. A fair measure of our time is spent convincing stores that running out of Chesters is okay.

This week we will have lots of berries, some purslane and amaranth, frikeh, herbs, shallots and garlics. We will leave the preserves at the farm in order to fit all the berries in the van. If you want to make your own preserves, this early season fruit is the best choice. All of our preserves are made from the first harvest, which means we never need to add pectin. There is enough in the fruit to get a good set. Adding pectin diminishes the flavor.

Farm Bulletin: The Visitors

One chilly January morning a few years ago, we watched a young mink splashing about in the stream at the base of the canyon for an hour or two. In the winter, the young disperse and find their own digs, and this one was passing through on its way to a new territory. In recent years, we have noted several road killed minks, perhaps indicating an increase in their population. On the south border, our neighbor watched a young cougar bounding about in the grass seed field on an early autumn morning, another offspring of predators looking for new home range.

Pileated woodpecker.

On occasion, we have watched pileated woodpeckers working some of our snags, but they are soon chased away by the acorn woodpeckers, earlier visitors who chose to stay and are intolerant of any other woodworking birds. Their behavior changes when goshawks and Cooper's hawks pass through, using the residents of the oaks as a quick snack on the way to other places. The woodpeckers stay close to the trunks and communicate the location of the hawk in quiet, urgent calls. This September, a Cooper's hawk caught a flicker unawares, and we have photo of it with a lifeless flicker, beak agape, in its talons (top photo). The scene was as dramatic as any captured by Audubon but too gruesome for a full month, so it won't appear in this year's farm calendar.

Mink.

Some visitors pass through without us seeing them. The depressions made by hooves in soft soil tell us that a stag or bull elk passed through while we were sleeping. The bones and sinew of a deer's hind leg was found on the low ground, betraying another drama missed by us.

Our farm is part of a bridge, or maybe a set of stepping stones is more apt, between the Coast Range and the Tualatin Ridge dominated by Bald Peak. Ecologists call these areas "wildlife corridors." Our approach to farming, with its rough fields and perennial crops, has enhanced the quality of the connection, providing creatures cover in their transit. It doesn't hurt that we provide a lot of great nesting habitat as well, thus having a few flickers to spare for the hawks.

Northern goshawk.

Peter and Pam Hayes of Hyla Woods share our affection for the natural components of the landscape. We have batted about the idea of a collaborative effort to link the farm and forest lands of the area. Working with Faye Yoshihara from the Food Front Cooperative board, Peter and Pam have proposed a loose collaboration called "Tualatin Headwaters: Producers in Partnership." The idea is to put together a gift package of Hyla Forest maple cutting boards,  preserves from Ayers Creek and wine from Montinore Estate Vineyard. This will be the first step of a work in progress.

We have a lot to figure out, but we are drawn to the project because we understand some our visitors were raised in forests flanking Mount Richmond that are carefully managed by the Hayes family. Maybe the Cooper's hawk we saw here nested on Mount Richmond and passed through the Marchesi family's vineyard feasting on a few robins or starlings. Anyway, we are part of Portland's backyard, and the waters from our lands flow through the city, so it will be fun open up a discussion about the connection we have with each other and the city.

Livin' in the Blurbs: Celebrations Galore

It's all Italian, all the time when Ritrovo Italian Regional Foods hits town with a boffo series of product tastings in Portland and Dundee. Find out what the food pros get to do for "work":

• Aug. 27: Abruzzo Tasting featuring Montepulciano Grape Walnut Conserve, Pomegranate Blood Orange Syrup each with a wonderful Italian cheese.5-7 pm; free. Foster & Dobbs, 2518 NE 15th Ave.
• Aug. 28: The Best of Italy featuring Farro Umbricelli Pasta, Maletti 6 yr. Balsamic Vinegar, Alba White Truffle Oil, Pear/Moscato Wine Jelly, Acetorium Fig & Cherry Vinegar all paired with cheese from Steve and wines from Square Deal. 5 pm; free. Steve's Cheese, 2321 NW Thurman St.
• Aug. 29: Farm to Fork featuring Tenuta Cocevola Pugliese EVOO, Radici Orange Mousse, Kiwi/Lemon Conserve, Nebbiolo Wine Grape Chutney, Colli Etruschi EVOO and pinot, too! Noon-4 pm; free. Inn at Red Hills, 1410 N Hwy 99W, Dundee.

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Believe it or not, it's been a whole year since Food Front Cooperative Grocery opened its new store in Hillsdale, bringing their commitment to building a vibrant community and a healthier world to a wider audience. On Sunday, Sept. 13, they're throwing a wingding to celebrate, with free hot dogs, organic lemonade, music and prizes, so if you're in the mood (or at the Hillsdale farmers' market), stop by any time from 11 am till 5 pm.

Details: Food Front Cooperative Grocery in Hillsdale First Birthday Bash. Sun., Sept. 13, 11 am-5 pm; free. 344 SW Capitol Hwy. Phone 503-546-6559.

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And last but certainly not least, the year's cheesiest celebration will kick off when The Wedge: Portland Celebrates Cheese holds its second annual festival on Oct. 3. Last year's event featured national speakers, classes and a fair with cheesemakers from around the country gathering to share their wares with all of us, and this year promises to be, as the ad folks always tell us, bigger and better than ever. Mark it on your calendars!

Details: The Wedge: Portland Celebrates Cheese. Sat., Oct. 3, 10 am-4 pm; free. 928 SE 9th Ave.