Community Buy-out of Food Shops

Workshop leaders: Graham Mitchell and Helen Seymour.

This session covers the processes involved in setting up a community cooperative to take over an existing food shop.

It looks at the process involved in setting up a cooperative, touches on the Industrial and Provident Society as a highly relevant legal structure, engaging the local community, raising the money needed to establish and run the business – and how a community share issue can help, and the business planning process whereby you assess the likelihood of the business working or failing.

Graham is from the Green Valley Grocer in Slaithwaite (www.slaithwaite.coop)
Helen is from the Nautral Food Store in Leeds (www.naturalfoodstore.coop)

Both have been through the whole process and lived to tell the tale.

Feel free to comment on this workshop session or the issues it raises, either by posting a comment below, or better still, use the Community Enterprise forum.