Common Good Soup Kitchen Community
Business Plan (as of 5/1/09)

 

Executive Summary

The Common Good Soup Kitchen Community is an innovative and exciting new venture that seeks to exploit the everyday necessity of food to promote positive change for the good for our community.  Inspired by the free soup kitchens of the 1930s – No Politics, No Bull, Just Soup, our basic concept is to prepare and sell a variety of gourmet, healthy foods at a profit in order to generate sufficient funds to support a free soup kitchen for those in need within our community.  Along the way our coop will:  1) promote dietary habits that foster health and wellness;  2) provide a model of green, eco-friendly living; 3) support local growers and the local fishing community; 4) help other local charities and service organizations; and 5) build and maintain a strong sense of community on our island.

The CGSKC products will benefit our customers in several ways:

• Relatively inexpensive – high-end restaurant quality food at affordable prices;
• Nutritious and satisfying - meals that promote good health;
• Time saving – minimal shopping, no preparation, and minimal cleanup;
• Convenient – sit down and eat at the coop, or take it home; and
• For seniors – plans are being discussed for home delivery service.

The keys to the success of our business will be:

• Great quality products that will encourage repeat business;
• Offering a variety of products based on the season, trends and customer preferences;
• Exceeding our customer expectations on quality and affordability;
• Creating a high level of customer satisfaction that will generate free advertising via word-of-mouth recommendations;
• Establishing appropriate retail outlets for products; and
• Tight control over expenditures given MDI’s seasonal business cycle.

Our objectives are:

• To exceed customer expectations for our products and service;
• To develop a sustainable business that generates positive cash flow, and to use the excess funds to promote the common good on MDI;
• To help our friends and neighbors prosper and enjoy a healthier lifestyle.

The purpose of this plan is twofold: to provide information to potential investors (our founding members) interested in seeing this project take flight; and to clearly state our organization’s vision, philosophy and strategy, to ensure that we know where we’re going and how we’ll get there.
 

Financial Plan

We are cautiously optimistic that if the coop can get up and running by July 1st, then the operation may be able to break even for 2009 primarily due to the absence of four low activity winter months (Jan.-April).  Going forward the coop expects to generate a 10% profit on sales in the first full year of operation.  These extra funds will be used to continue the free soup kitchen and to start an emergency reserve account for unforeseen future needs.