by Anya Firszt, General Manager
Hello dear Owners. We shared with you a financial update mid-last month, here is the same post for those of you who may not have read it.
Financial update
Every year, the Co-op closes its books at the end of June, provides a preliminary report on the numbers at the Co-op Annual Meeting in July, has the books audited by a third party, and then publishes an Annual Report that includes audit details by December. As reported at the Annual Meeting, Fiscal Year 2020 showed an unplanned loss. The audit was completed and presented to the Board in late September and we are now preparing the FY2020 Annual Report. Meanwhile, I felt it important to provide an update to our Owners regarding the Co-op’s present financial status.
FY2020 ran from July 1, 2019 through June 28, 2020 and had an unplanned operating loss of $1.4million dollars. Our sales were under budget by $2.1 million and our expenses were greater than our budget, both due to COVID-19. Your Co-op did receive a Personal Paycheck Protection (PPP) loan in April through the Small Business Administration based on two and a half months of wages and benefits. These funds provided the cash needed to:
• pay for wages and benefits to keep our retail stores open
• expand labor for our online delivery and pickup service
• re-open our Production Kitchen
• offer a limited time hazard bonus to our employees at the retails and the Kitchen
Between the needed, short-term infusion of the PPP loan to help get through the last six months and our regular budgeted expenses, your Co-op may be able to get through FY2021 without another major unplanned loss, particularly if most or all of the PPP loan is forgiven.
The safety of staff and customers continues to be our top priority. Our next priority is the financial health of our Co-op. The Co-op’s goals are to keep all of our locations open and have adequate cash to pay our obligations including payroll, vendor payables for the products we sell, and debt payments to Owner Bond holders and Summit Credit Union. The future economic outlook is uncertain and the recovery will be slow and extended, so we need to much more closely monitor our expenses and align expenses with current sales revenue—all while the COVID-19 pandemic continues in our community.
More details have also been made available in our FY2020 Annual Report that was recently sent. And, we also reviewed our financial health during our virtual Annual Meeting in July; minutes of the full meeting with preliminary financial reporting is archived at www.willystreet.coop/2020-annual-meeting.
So what does this mean? We have seen tough financial times before, and we have had to make some hard decisions to support the long term health of the cooperative. We need to review areas of our operation to see how to manage expenses to sales. Our mission statement directs us to be an economically sustainable grocery business, and we will be.
Thank you for your continued support and being part of the journey; we would not be here were it not for you.
Hazard bonus
On a related note, the Board and I have received some emails from Owners who have asked us to further extend the hazard pay bonus to staff working in our stores and production kitchen. The hazard pay bonus provided by the temporary agreement we have with our employees’ union (UE Local 1186) expired on September 27. Willy Street Co-op would sincerely like to be in a position to continue offering a hazard bonus to our employees, however, we are unable to continue the bonus and operate on a sound financial basis. We paid the limited-term hazard bonus to staff members who work in our stores and production kitchen from March 16 through September 27 (28 weeks) that ranged from $2 per hour worked to $5 per hour worked. In lieu of continuing the hazard bonus further, in our discussions with the UE we have offered an alternate option to increase union staff pay.
Just before going to press, we reached an agreement with the UE to pay a hazard bonus for two more weeks, and to also increase base wages as provided for in the collective bargaining agreement. The wage increase required a change in the collective bargaining agreement, which UE members voted in favor of and made effective October 12, 2020.
Special store hours and dates to think about
Last month, I misreported open hours on Thanksgiving Day, please note: Thanksgiving Day - November 26 - the retails are open 8:00am - 2:30pm
Until next month, stay healthy.