by Jeannine DeWald, General Manager

Greetings Plainfield Co-op Community! It’s finally Spring here in Vermont, and so much has changed since our last newsletter. The birds have returned, the sun is shining on us, and the Co-op greenhouse is full of bright, beautiful blooms and vegetable starts. 

The store has also undergone significant changes. The grocery-side reset allowed us to expand our aisle widths and open up some additional shelf space for new products. Moving the bulk aisle and bulk herbs display has made the store feel less congested and more shoppable. The most significant changes can be seen on the hardware side, where we have expanded our plumbing and electrical sections, as well as our hardware essentials. There is also a brand-new display of Skil brand power tools, and new offerings in our lighting section. Pet and cleaning supplies have moved closer to the grocery side of the store. Paints and stains have moved to the opposite wall, where our colorful paint sample display can be seen from the grocery-side, inviting customers to browse the color palette while they shop for other essential items. If you haven’t had a chance to explore yet, come check it out!

In other exciting news, our partnership with INFRA (Independent Natural Foods Retailers Association) continues to have positive effects on our grocery purchasing power. Beginning May 24^th, we will see an additional three percent decrease on our grocery wholesale costs. In times of increasing inflation, this is a significant benefit for the Co-op and our customers. Combined with our Cadia everyday low-price program, and our bi-weekly rotating sale items, we have been able to bring shelf prices down for our customers, which contributes to increased grocery sales!

On the hardware side, we continue to face challenges with decreased revenues since the purchase. Due to the complexity of the POS system merger last year, it is difficult to derive apples-to-apples comparisons, especially prior to April 2025, but hardware-side revenues are down approximately 15% compared with April and May of 2025. It is unclear how much of this is due to the store reset process, the cool and rainy start to the Spring, or other factors, but we are keeping an eye on it and brainstorming ways to increase business. It is our hope that the store redesign and addition of new product will give the hardware-side the boost that it needs.

We are also facing challenges with some significant needed repairs to the grocery-side of the building, namely the roof, walk-in cooler, and other items. Please see Mike and Allen’s report from the building committee as well as John’s President’s report for more info. While tho Co-op does have some funds in reserves to address these issues, we will need to raise additional money to complete the projects. Addressing these immediate needs would be a huge lift for any co-op, and is especially challenging for a fledgling business that is still working toward profitability.

In early 2026, we transitioned away from our previous bookkeeper and have partnered with Kristin Winer and her team at Biz-Ops Solutions to manage bookkeeping for the store. In their review of our 2025 financials, it was discovered that significant clean-up needed to be done. This is not necessarily unusual for a business that has taken on a complex acquisition, but the needed cleanup was more than we expected. Losses during Q1 2025 turned out to be higher than we realized, not surprising considering the delays in closing the village store and the increased costs of running two significantly underperforming businesses. The Co-op purchased the Route 2 building in August of 2024, but we didn’t truly get operations off the ground until April of 2025. The complete quarterly and annual totals for 2025 are shown below. While the Co-op’s net profit in 2025 was a positive $90,000, much of the business’s earnings were represented by donation income and the gain on the sale of the building*. The significant losses in Q1 impacted the rest of the year, but we can also see operational gains in Q1 and Q3. Had the Co-op been properly positioned in the new location with the necessary staffing, equipment, and inventory by January of 2025, it is possible we may have seen profitability for the year, or at least been much closer to breaking even.

While the early 2025 numbers are disappointing, we have seen a significant turnaround since that time. In the last newsletter, we shared the budget for 2026, and we are happy to report that Q1 2026 performed better than expected. This is a highly seasonal business, and Q1 losses are unfortunately part of our reality. Significant gains in net income are expected in Q2 with the combination of Greenhouse and seasonal hardware sales. Our expected losses for Q1 this year were $27,046. Our actual losses were $4,962, which did include an additional $5,537 boost of donation income that offset the cost of our heat pumps*. Excluding donation income, operational losses for Q1 totaled $10,499, which represents a significant positive difference when compared to budget.

April reporting from our bookkeeper is still preliminary, and while we unfortunately did not hit our budgeted revenue goal of $235,435 for April, we did see a storewide sales increase from 2025 of 5.4%. It’s important to note that the budgeting process for a new business is extremely challenging, and while we did fall short of our goal for April, revenues for Q1 were much higher than expected, and outweigh our April shortfall by $23,613. As the business grows and begins to stabilize more, the budgeting process should become more predictable, but there will always be unexpected fluctuations, especially due to external economic conditions. We are keeping a close eye on May revenues in comparison to budget, which have been a bit off due to the cool and rainy Spring affecting greenhouse purchases. By the next newsletter, we will have the full data for Q2 to share with our membership.

We have seen a few staffing changes over the past few weeks. Longtime Route 2 staff member, Dawn recently left the Co-op for another position. We all miss her positive energy and strong work ethic, and we hope she stops in to visit us from time to time! Hillary has also moved on to another position, but still maintains some weekend and early morning hours, though we miss having her bright presence and hardware expertise during the week. Drew and Gavin have since joined the team, and are working hard at learning the ropes. They both have excellent customer service skills, and are great additions to our store. We are still hiring for assistant buyer, cashier, and deli positions to round out our team. We are running a bit short-staffed right now, which has proven challenging for us, and we are grateful to all of our staff who have stepped up to fill in wherever they’re needed. Lisa, especially, has been juggling many roles, from greenhouse, to produce, to other buying tasks as well as hardware support. I am grateful for our incredible team, and hope to bring some relief in the near future as we continue our search for new staff members. 

I will close by saying that this project remains enormously challenging as we continue to make progress in growing the business while managing the significant needs of the building. Board member Allen Freund has stepped up to manage the building needs, and we are grateful for his service. It allows the management team more room to step back and focus on operations, which is its own challenge. Management’s primary focus now is to continue to expand the staff while we work diligently on increasing revenues for the year. We are grateful to all of our members and customers who continue to support the Co-op. 

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