GreenStar holds on despite pandemic challenges

They say timing is everything. GreenStar Food Co-op planned for over a decade to expand its flagship West End store. The site for its new location at 770 Cascadilla St. was chosen in 2018, with ground breaking in early 2019. After much anticipation, the doors were set to open in the spring of 2020.

“The timing couldn’t have been crazier,” said General Manager Brandon Kane. “A business is at its most vulnerable when expanding and investing in growth. To have that happen simultaneously with the pandemic was incredibly challenging.”

The store did open in May, without the fanfare of a grand opening celebration to showcase the new building and attract new customers. Instead, it came at a time when the business was hemorrhaging cash.

“After an initial surge of panic buying in April, there was a sharp drop-off,” Kane said. “GreenStar was losing $300,000 in revenue per week just prior to the move.”

Kane attributes these losses to several contributing factors. Pandemic lockdowns meant fewer commuters and less lunchtime traffic. People adopted new shopping habits and routines, including fewer trips to the store and ordering more products online.

“The confluence of this suppression of revenue with the increase of expenses at the larger store was unfortunate,” Kane said.

In fact, the situation quickly became dire. With the threat of bankruptcy looming, GreenStar was forced to lay off staff. A government loan helped to offset those early losses, but a slow bleed continued.

Kane said that the boost GreenStar usually sees from summer tourism didn’t materialize this year. In addition, fewer students on campus translated to fewer transactions on a daily basis. In short, the Cascadilla store continues to be roughly 2,000 transactions per week shy of where it needs to be to break even.

“We have exhausted every avenue, turned over every stone, to reduce our cash losses,” Kane said. “At this point, we are losing $55,000 a week, and we are asking for help.”

A recent press release on GreenStar’s website reads, in part:

With a heavy heart, we are writing to inform you that effective today, December 3, GreenStar is furloughing twenty-three of its 215 employees. The job loss impacts employees at the Cascadilla Street store and is a direct result of financial instability due to a consistent level of cash loss as the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impedes GreenStar’s ability to operate at a profit…The General Manager, Council, and our leadership team have worked closely to offset our rapid cash losses in numerous ways to avoid a staffing reduction.

We deeply regret that furloughs became unavoidable. We value our staff and we hope that is evident in our decisions to support them through this difficult time. We are eager for their return and we are standing by our commitment to a Living Wage for all employees…We urge you to shop local, support small businesses, and please support your local Co-op…We can’t know what the future holds, but we do know that the only way we will get through this challenging time is to pull together and focus on operating the best cooperative business possible.

We also know that this community of member-owners is dedicated to the well-being of our Co-op. We need each and every member to support our Co-op in any way you can. Your dedication will speed the return to work of our GreenStar team members. We are eager for that time and for the time we can operate the full functionalities of our beautiful new store. The sooner our cooperative business recovers, the sooner we can bring our employees back to work.

Response to GreenStar’s announcement has been mixed. Negative comments on social media reveal some ongoing internal issues, though most detractors acknowledge that any hope of a positive resolution depends on the organization’s survival. Others were quick to praise GreenStar’s investment in local farms and the local economy in contrast to more corporate entities.

Kane welcomes the showing of support and the opportunity to clarify some misconceptions.

“There is some baggage from the past that our prices are not affordable,” Kane said. “We have put a lot of work into making GreenStar more accessible, while still maintaining our higher-end natural food niche.”

Some of that work includes the addition of over 1,000 items to a lower-cost basic product line and the expansion of the FLOWER (Fresh, Local & Organic Within Everyone’s Reach) program. In existence since 2010, FLOWER offers free membership and a 13% discount to households that receive assistance from a list of qualifying programs like SNAP, WIC, free school lunch, Medicaid and SSI. Unemployment Insurance was added as an automatic qualifier in response to the pandemic.

Kane emphasized that GreenStar does offer delivery and curbside pickup through the Instacart app, and he sees this as an area of potential growth.

“Our staff is working every day to increase the functionality and add products to the online platform,” Kane said. “Bulk foods are available now, and prepared foods are coming soon.”

Looking forward, Kane is enthusiastic about the future and the possibilities that will open up in a post-COVID normal.

“I’d love to have the outdoor grand opening celebration that we never got to have,” he said. “I can’t wait to offer our full suite of services like a return of our gathering space for cooking classes and community events. We haven’t been able to feature and expand our grab-and-go prepared foods as we planned to in the new store. More than all of that, I’m just looking forward to face-to-face interactions with people at staff and member meetings.”

Getting to that potential future will require a little help from all of us. If you are already a member, pay any outstanding balance on your account. If you’ve been thinking about becoming a member, now would be a good time. For everyone else, simply choosing to do some of your holiday shopping at GreenStar would go a long way. Look for food and gift promotions in its weekly flier or on its website (greenstar.coop).

“Shopping at GreenStar enhances and improves our community by keeping profits local, supporting local suppliers and employing over 200 people at a living wage,” Kane said. “That may be the most compelling holiday promotion of all.”