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Real Pickles shares lessons learned since converting to a co-op
Editor's note: This article is reprinted, with minor changes, from Ferment, the Real Pickles' blog, at: realpickles.blogspot. com, where it was originally posted. The author is a worker-owner of the Massachusetts-based Real Pickles co-op.
We recently wrapped up our fiscal year at Real Pickles. In many ways, it was a typical year for the business. Interest in fermented foods has continued to rise, and the year was another strong one for us.
As is often the case, the uncertainties of the growing season necessitated some creative problem solving; a wet spring in our region resulted in much less early cabbage than we were expecting. But in the end, we got all of the fresh ingredients we were hoping for and processed over 300,000 pounds of Northeast-grown vegetables during our production season. That's an increase of about 40 percent over last year!
What was different about this past year, however, was our business structure. May 9 marked the first anniversary of Real Pickles' transition from sole proprietorship to cooperative ownership. It took a lot of work to become a co-op; now the process of running the business involves both shared effort and reward for our new group of member-owners.
Some of what we encountered during our first year was expected, while other things took us a little more by surprise. As an increasing number of businesses consider transitioning to the cooperative model, we want to share some of our experiences so far.
Learning to be business owners
As Real Pickles made the structural shift to becoming a co-op owned by its employees, those of us who hadn't previously been owners knew we would have to make the mental shift to thinking like owners. Looking back a couple of years, the process started with a group of us who worked together to figure out if Real Pickles' transition to a worker co-op made sense for the business and for each of us as individual potential owners. We spent quite a bit of time on activities that served the joint purpose of strategic planning and practicing the art of ownership.
Inspired by our friends...