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Coolers and the Next Step
Good morning folks. Thank you all for the feedback
on the issue of LPO going to coolers. It is a huge help to get feedback
(hopefully honest) from the members who it would be affecting.
Here are a couple of points in clarification though. Uno, this step
would ONLY affect the home delivery members. Our U-Pack members
at the farm, Page One, and Carlisle store would never have to use
the coolers.
Well, unless you wanted to buy a super sexy cooler with an LPO logo
on it.
And unfortunately, we would not be able to use it for our location
pick up members either due to spatial constraints from our pick
up locations, as well as tracking who’s cooler is who’s
at those locations. Our pick up locations already do us a huge favor
by letting us take over part of their stores for the CSA pick up.
Asking them to hold a stack of 40 coolers for the entire week is
too much.
Also, it would be a feat no smaller than the building of the Panama
canal to try and track who returned their coolers and who did not.
Labels fall off coolers easily and for job security reasons, I cannot
have our CSA manager, Becca, trying to debate with a member if they
did or didn’t return the coveted (sexy) LPO cooler. So I hope
you all understand the logistics behind that limitation.
Here is the big move for LPO though. And again this is a little
peek behind the LPO curtain. Unless that is a creepy metaphor. In
which case use your own Wizard of Oz reference that does not give
you the willies.
Here goes….basically in my glorious off-season I have been
studying routes, shopping patterns, and how far the average U.S.
Joe (or Monte) drives to get to the grocery store. And what I have
learned has propelled the next stage(s) of LPO.
Did you know that the average person drives 20 minutes roundtrip
to get their shopping done? And to be honest with you, I bet it
is more for folks like us who drive a little further to get natural/Organic
foods. So here is what hit me, home delivery is probably the most
environmentally friendly thing that LPO can do. Well, besides growing
ridiculously tasty local food.
Again, to show you my tender furry underbelly...I thought that home
delivery was a “luxury” when we started it 6 years ago.
I thought that it was a convenient way to get our food to members,
but I never looked at it as a “green practice” that
we did as a company. Probably because I was always seeing the gas
used (and paying for it) on our end. But I never saw savings.
Now back to our 20-minute-commuter. Since I passed the third grade
the second time, I know that 20 minute commutes equate to 3 folks
per hour can get their groceries. Ok. But then it hit me that our
drivers are doing 8-9 deliveries an hour! What? Wait. No. It couldn’t
be. Is LPO home deliveries actually 3 times more efficient than
all of us driving to our stores? Yup, it is.
So now picture that little compact fluorescent going off in my head.
(it only takes 1/3 the brain power to light up) Bing! Well how do
we make our delivery service of the CSA even better? And the answer
is easy my amigos, higher density of delivers per square mile. Makes
sense. Drive a block rather than a mile in between deliveries and
you are more efficient. Ok….
So how do we get more home deliveries. A) advertise the heck out
of it (which I can do to the point of nausea) and B) lower the price
of delivery to make it more enticing to members.
“But Farmer M., you will lose money if you lower the price.
The horror, The horror.”
Well, not if more folks use it. Then we would be getting the same
amount of money gross then we did when we had less folks and a higher
delivery charge. And really, I am not trying to retire at age 40
on the delivery charge. I just want it to cover the cost of running
the vans.
There it is folks. There is the master plan of LPO version 20.10.
Educate folks that you can be as green as Kermit the Frog, and still
feel like you are being pampered. So don’t feel guilty. We
are working out logistics on this to lower the delivery fee be this
spring, but the coolers are a huge piece in the puzzle. So that’s
how it all fits.
Happy grazing, Farmer Monte
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