Our History

2005

In 2005, the Little Grill Collective felt the need for a natural foods and products store and opened the Little Store across from their restaurant on North Main St in Harrisonburg. After 6 months and $10,000 of capital investment, the Collective decided they did not have enough expertise, time and energy to continue developing the Little Store. Despite break-even sales, they called together interested community members to see if another group would be interested in buying them out.

2006

About 25 of us gathered in early 2006 to discuss the idea. We were not in a position at that point to take over a store, or buy them out. But we did decide that the time had come for Harrisonburg to develop a full scale, natural and organic grocery store that put a premium on using local farmers and producers. To be competitive it would need to be at least several thousand square feet. The decision was made to form a Steering Committee for further exploration of this idea.

We met once a month, then once every two weeks, then once a week as we coalesced around a number of goals: don’t open a store now, but put our efforts into developing a larger store that would open after 3 years; incorporate and form a board of directors; hire a high quality consulting firm to assist us; raise initial capital and look for assistance from groups like Coop500, an effort by the National Cooperative Bank and others to spur the develop of 500 food coops across the country.

2007

By the end of 2007, after 22 months of effort, we had accomplished the following:

• Raised initial capital of $11,000 to begin work
• Hired Bill Gessner of CDS (Cooperative Development Services) to guide us through the start up of a cooperative grocery store business
• Developed a 3-stage business plan with an estimated opening of fall 2008
• Kicked off our membership drive with a community celebration held at the Hardesty Higgins House on a cold February evening with an attendance of 400
• Hired a lawyer to guide us through the incorporation, bylaws and securities laws of Virginia
• Renamed our Steering Committee the Founding Team, which has responsibility for guiding the organization up until the store is opened, at which point the Board of Directors will take on oversight of the business
• Held our first Members Meeting with 35 in attendance for a potluck at Hillendale Park in June, at which point we announced we had reached 100 members
• Hired a high quality market feasibility consultant who completed the study in October, and gave us his summary reaction: the market here looks very good for the launching of a retail food cooperative
• Hired a web developer to revamp our website and provide us technical support
• Divided our Founding Team into four primary support sub-teams: Membership Drive Team, Finance, Marketing, and Site Development

2008

2008 has seen continued progress by the Co-op:

• We held our second annual “February Fest” with great music, food, and fellowship; to top it off, we signed up 47 new owner-member households
• We were awarded two grants to assist us with start-up consultancy, feasibility, and other costs -- $5000 from Coop500 and $7500 from the Resource Conservation and Development program
• We completed, with the assistance of our consultants, our Financial Pro Forma document, which projects the profitability of the venture over a 10 year period and will be used down the road in negotiations for primary (bank) lending
• We revised our timeline and currently anticipate our opening as early as Summer 2009.