Alfalfa House Members Council Meeting - minutes. 1. Attendance and Apologies. 2. Approval of Agenda. 3. Consent Agenda

Transcription

1 Alfalfa House Members Council Meeting - minutes Date: 28 November 2017 Time: 7pm Location: Meeting Space, 8-10 Brown Street, Newtown Facilitator: Jonathan Green Minutes: Jenny Millman Timekeeper: Matt McMillan Meeting opened at : 7:14pm Acknowledgement of Country : Before we begin the meeting, I would like to acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional owners, both past and present, of the land we occupy and upon which we meet the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. It is also upon their ancestral lands that Alfalfa House is built. 1. Attendance and Apologies Attendance: Jen French, Stevie Bee, Catherine O Keefe, Katherine Lustig, Jenny Millman, Jonny Green, Matt McMillan Apologies: Maurice Cabrera, Renata Field, David Winterton Absent: 2. Approval of Agenda That the agenda be approved. Moved: Catherine. Seconded: Jonny Carried by consensus 3. Consent Agenda 3.1. Adoption of Previous Minutes That the minutes of the October 2017 meeting be adopted New Members and Cancellations (To be noted next month.) 3.3. Out-of-session Decisions/Proposals The MC agreed to donate $200 to the FlameTree fundraising campaign. The money for this will be allocated from the November and December food grants Reports from Working Groups Governance NIL Premises Solutions, Shop Development and Affordability NIL

2 Sustainability NIL Volunteer Engagement NIL Community Outreach NIL Staff Liaison An exit interview was conducted with Julia Gove, An exit interview was conducted with Lucy Williams Moore, SLWG liaised with staff and Manager SLWG attended fortnightly Manager/Chair meetings Marketing NIL Website NIL 3.5. Staffing (appointments and resignations) (To be noted next month.) 3.6. Deferred Matters / Business Arising Item When expected Status Community Outreach Working Group: Review opportunity to bring in an organisational membership / subscription fee for corporates and not-for-profits, and bring a proposal back to MC. Maurice will work with Catherine, Jonny and Finance working group to add details to Shop Strategy document. VWG will add the detail to the volunteer engagement strategy. Vanessa to get figures on the return on shelf space to Catherine (Shop Development). Katherine: Collate a set of questions for Shop Development Catherine, Jonny and Maurice met on 16 Oct and agreed the next steps on the Shop Strategy process. Vanessa working on providing shelf space comparison Open In progress In-progress Open That the consent agenda be approved. Moved: Jonny. Seconded: Catherine

3 Carried by consensus 4. Finance November 2017 Treasurer s Report and November 2017 Dashboard (see page 6 onwards) Katherine: what is a good result for veggie box uplift on Facebook? (question pending an answer from Maurice) Katherine: does the spending on Facebook have any impact on our sales? Katherine: what does the $1,000 YTD spend on marketing cover? Catherine: table of questions ( ed to the manager) to be addressed re: product lines Katherine: why do we believe berries to be something which will boost sales? Why are they considered a weekly shopping item? Catherine to get an updated quote for the business insurance 5. Strategy 10 mins Jenny - Lot of work put into the strategy documents; let s leverage the work from that; afternoon session (4 hours) with interested community members in late January; see how we can align WGs with our strategic documents; ensure that all projects we undertake align with our goals and finances; $500 budget. Need to ensure it s advertised as early as possible Moved: Jonny. Seconded: Catherine Carried by consensus 6. Potential Projects 25 mins Jonny shared a draft list of projects and a project spreadsheet with indicative costs. Aim: to have an open and transparent conversation about what our priorities are. Members interested in viewing these spreadsheets are welcome to request them from the MC - they re not being publicly shared due to them containing potentially commercially sensitive information. Catherine proposed in the event we don t receive the CBP grant (Jenny Leong) that we fund $2,574 to complete the stop and shed electricals, and $1,600 for cladding and insulation. Moved: Catherine. Seconded: Bruce Jenny Millman abstained

4 7. Dates 30 mins Jen was concerned about the way the decision was made; propose apology to members; that the way we made the decision; After discussion as decision was made to: a. A communication will be sent to members regarding the AGM - reporting what happened at the AGM (to include the ethics and dates discussion); Stevie and Bruce to draft; final message approved by MC with consultation with previous MC members b. The reason we are not stocking the Israeli dates is because it is not in line with our policies/objects - this will be included (in some form) in the c. Communication will be a statement, not an apology This communication will be reviewed by by the MC in 1-2 weeks. Jen would like to stay informed on this communication 8. Container deposits 7 mins Alfalfa House were approached by Cleanaway to become a collection point for the container deposit scheme launching on 1 Dec To participate AH would need to have a space for 2 bins Bin 1 140L Glass only, Bin 2 240L Plastic, cans, paperboard (Tetra packs). This would involve keeping storage containers in the shop for depositing containers. Alfalfa House would make 3.5c per container returned. Catherine has concerns about shop space, hygiene in shop, staff time. Several people raised that ethically we would like to do this, plus it may bring more customers into the shop. However, the concerns were agreed with. Proposal: we do not go ahead with this scheme. Catherine will communicate this decision to the staff. Moved: Catherine. Seconded: Bruce 9. Manager Transition 5 mins We discussed the upcoming ending of Maurices contract, and how to progress.

5 10. Nomination of board members to positions; Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary and Treasurer 7 mins Chair Nominated: Jonny Moved: Jonny Seconded: Bruce Deputy Chair Nominated: Catherine Moved: Jonny Seconded: Jenny Secretary Nominated: Jenny Moved: Jenny Seconded: Jonny Treasurer Nominated: Jonny Moved: Jonny Seconded: Catherine Next meeting date : 19th December 2017 Action item: Catherine to book our next room for the MC, and ensure the room for the 26th is cancelled. Post-meeting check-in Meeting closed at : 9.54pm

6 OCTOBER NUMBERS / Dashboard We recorded approximately $97K in sales (vs. $112K last year vs. $101 the year before). We show a net profit of about $9K for the month. Adjustments for the month would be: (i) $26K for employees wages vs $27K average for the past 12 months; (ii) $54K COGS vs average $61K for the past 12 months; and (iii) $800 for the annual report to the bookkeeper and $200 in recruiting costs. So, we show an adjusted profit of about $3K for the month. We have held to the historical monthly average for October of around $100K. Last year, we saw a surge in purchasing as a result of the Save Alfalfa campaign. Sales Variance (POS v. bank) is $ for the month. Maurice s analysis of our sales is that we need an additional 12 shoppers a day at an average shop of $33. Maurice thinks we need to get new products in that would be a weekly purchase. Maurice is suggesting frozen bulk organic berries to achieve this. Another way to achieve this is to do special s to our newest members and invite them to a free workshop. Maurice has received a grant from Google to run $10,000 of ads on Google a month for one year. A volunteer (Bunny) is working on the ads. Our Veggie Box delivery has been advertised on FB, and we have had some good results with a $28 investment in boosted ads. Maurice saw October increase in sales from September. We have some new products selling - zero waste kits, cleaning products. Membership is up significantly with 91 new members in October. AUGUST AND JULY TILL VARIANCE NUMBERS CLEAN-UP Maurice will review the numbers for these months ($1.9K - Aug; $600 - Jul). Still in progress. CHECK THE CC/EFTPOS FEES Our fees have been higher because we have been doing more card transactions than before and our card merchant charges a flat fee. We will continue to monitor this. We are coming up on the end of our 12-month commitment to Bendigo. So, we will be able to renegotiate or move on. Tyro is what works well with POSWise. Jonny to get January - March 2017 numbers into the spreadsheet.

7 INSOLVENCY ALARM We discussed when we should be concerned about immediate insolvency. We all recognize the formal position that it is the point at which we would be unable to pay our debts as they come due. We looked at the current balance sheet, and we estimated that our current buffer is about $62K (an increase of about $7K from the previous month). This figure is based upon the Current Assets less Liabilities; basing inventory value at cost; estimating that inventory is at around the same value as at June 30, CASH FLOW BUDGET/FORECAST Maurice still feels comfortable with his fortnightly budgeting at the moment. Maurice is budgeting about $15K a week on stock purchases; although for November. We are comfortable with our cash position for the next month. We are looking at the following expenses in November: we will do significant groceries purchasing in the first two weeks of November to ease pressure on staff while we bring in a new Groceries co-ordinator; increased staff costs related to paying out Lucy and Julia their annual leave entitlements (about +$5K) and training the new Groceries co-ordinator. We had a couple of errors in the payroll which have been corrected - (i) we overpaid staff a complete payroll which they paid back to us and (ii) Yue was overpaid by $313 due to an error in timesheets which was deducted from a more current pay. Maurice and Jonny to review this in the account. POS WORK AND INVENTORY TRACKING Catherine O Keefe is taking a lead on this. Catherine, Maurice and Jonny traveled to FlameTree to see their POS (POSWise) in action. We had a good conversation with the POSwise folks. Catherine is looking into whether we can purchase/run the POSwise inventory model without the POS. We are also looking at getting remote access to one of POSWise s machines to play with it. We did not get the grant for funding the purchase of the POS.

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