Recently two members of TFCM's steering committee, Candace Minster and Don Richards, participated in a conference on food cooperative start-ups in Bloomington, Indiana. The conference, held on February 19-20, was hosted by the Indiana Cooperative Development Center and Bloomingfoods Market and Deli, with funding provided from the Bowers Fund for Consumer Cooperatives of the Cooperative Development Fund. Sessions were held that addressed both the needs of established and fully operational food co-ops as well as the challenges faced by true start-ups such as our own. Participating co-ops from around the Midwest were represented and heard presentations from an impressive roster of experts including Bill Gessner and Mel Braverman, consultants with Co-op Development Services,    Ellen Michel, marketing and outreach manager at Bloomingfoods, and Lisa Smith, cooperative spokesperson for the National Cooperative Grocers Association. Steve Stroup gave a presentation on strategies for mounting a strong member loan program and Art Sherwood discussed the principles of policy governance. An especially impressive session was delivered by Jennifer Hileman who explained the critical role in co-op development played by the project manager. We came away from Hileman's presentation impressed by the importance and urgency of hiring a capable project manager.
Besides the opportunity to hear a variety of experts speak on various aspects of co-op development, the conference afforded attendees a fruitful opportunity to share experiences and to learn from one another. Thus, for example, we learned about Dill Pickle Coop in Chicago who recently recruited and hired its general manager with the help of an ad placed on Craig's List! Dill Pickle is a small (1,400 square feet), community-centered coop on Chicago's northwest side that is remarkable for at least two facts: (1) It has no parking for its customers, and (2) it has no bank debt whatsoever. It was able to raise all its finance capital via member loans. We also learned from this group about the potential value of a membership survey as a means of identifying the talents our membership may possess that will help make our store a reality. Dill Pickle was able to identify among its membership a retired accountant who was able to lend his expertise to their effort. We also had extensive discussions with Brad Alstrom, general manager of Lost River Market and Deli in Paoli, Indiana. Lost River struggled early on, but under Brad's management has raised membership to 715 members from whom $300,000 in loans were secured. 
In general we came away impressed not only with the knowledge of the invited experts in co-op development, but also with the growing strength of the food co-operative movement in the Midwest and across the nation. One attendee traveled from Philadelphia, PA. We were also impressed by the variety of experience of successful co-operative development, and by the fact that there are a number of different paths to success. Finally, it is worth noting that while Dill Pickle was able to generate a substantial component of its finance capital from its membership, it took them five years to accomplish this task. This lesson points to the importance of patience and perseverance as values to hold close as we continue our collective work to establish Terre Foods.