Objective; Expand and Relocate Blue Hill Food Co-op - the - Blue Hill Coop Community Market & Café

Objective; Expand and Relocate
              the
     Blue Hill Food Co-op

   Blue Hill Coop Community Market & Café
                 P.O. Box 1133
              Blue Hill, ME 04614
                 207.374.2165
               www.bluehill.coop

                 March 2015

Overview

      Every healthy community boasts a handful of institutions that define its character
and shape its identity. On the Blue Hill Peninsula the Coop, which welcomes everyone --
members and non-members alike -- has become a center of commerce, social interaction,
local self-reliance and healthy living. It reflects and strengthens what we value about
living in rural Maine. It feeds our bodies and our spirits.

      The Coop -- like all healthy living beings – has grown and changed over time. Now
in our 40th year, we are one of the oldest and largest food Coops in New England. Having
employed hundreds of people, and supported and nurtured many local farms and
producers, we are now making plans to serve a growing membership and a community
hungry for even greater offerings of locally grown and organic foods, and for the space
to enjoy and celebrate the friends and hearty food people come here for.

       The Coop's mission and buying policy take strong stands on organics and local
sourcing. This provides a trusted source for local shoppers to find quality,
unadulterated, healthy food and fair pay for local farmers. Our success depends upon
our ability to create and sustain trusting relationships with our customers and local
vendors. In 2013, the Coop spent over $900,000 within 25 miles of Blue Hill and
purchased products from over 100 Maine vendors.

        The strength of the Coop is it's cooperative ownership model, which serves as an
alternative to the corporate agribusiness supermarket chain arrangement that
dominates this country's food delivery system. Coops return power to the people
through voluntary and open membership, democratic member control, and equal
economic investment. Dividends are returned to members based upon their level of
patronage, not their level of investment. Coops have proven to be less susceptible to
recessions and better able to endure tough economic times because our shoppers have a
stake in our survival and our investors are involved for reasons other than making a
profit.

     This prospectus was written to put forth our current thinking about the challenges
and opportunities before us. We are undertaking a feasibility study to determine
whether the plans presented here will be embraced and supported by our members and
by the Blue Hill Peninsula/Deer Isle community. Your thoughts and suggestions are
important to us.

             Present-day Challenges – The “Three Bump” Rule

     Our current location consists of 1,850 square feet of retail sales area and 900
square feet of operations space. Without adequate “back stock” warehousing,
management cannot take advantage of commonplace industry bulk-purchasing deals,
which would lower Coop prices. The following comments are often heard:

"I’d like to see more variety in every department; grocery, frozen, deli, bulk, home
       goods, produce, and fish and meat.”

       "The café is too small and awkward."

       "I wanted to stop in but the parking lot was full."

       "Without bigger aisle space for shopping carts, I buy only what I can carry."

      There is a well-known retail rule called The Three Bump Rule: If you bump into
someone in a store, you don’t really notice. The second time you bump into someone,
you get annoyed. On the third bump, your subconscious catapults you to the checkout
line or straight out the door, whether you’re done shopping or not. As much as
management has masterfully maximized the efficient use of our current sales space, it
has been said that everyone tends to bump into at least three people upon entering the
Coop.

     And even with these challenges, the Blue Hill Coop is made up of more than 1,400
member-families and grosses $2.6 million annually. How much more healthy and
sustainable food could the Coop buy and sell to our community if its hands weren’t tied?

                                        The Vision

        After 12 years of debate, the Coop commissioned a detailed Relocation Analysis
and Evaluation report, which concluded that the Coop would thrive by relocating to a
larger store. Since relocating in the center of downtown Blue Hill is not possible, the
Coop is in the process of purchasing a five-acre wooded lot (most of which will be left
untouched by the new store construction) just south of Mainescape and directly
across from The Bay School.

       Our new location will be more convenient to those who visit other merchants
and will help with the town effort to develop a more pedestrian-friendly and
attractive South Street. The new storefront, designed by Architect Bruce Stahnke, will
enable the Coop to sell more produce from local farmers and to offer a wider variety of
healthy products, support educational programs (like cooking with unprocessed foods
and introductions to unusual and organic produce), and enhance the Coop’s role as a
community gathering place, all while keeping the sense of hominess to which we are all
accustomed.

New Store Highlights:
   New building size: 11,480 square/feet
   Retail sales floor area: 6,132 square/feet
   Café area: 1,935 square/feet
   Café seating: 40 seats inside, 20 seats outside

 Community meeting room: 344 square/feet
    Parking for customers and staff: 73 cars
    Host potential farmer’s market
Qualitative Changes:
   Double the produce area
   New fish, meat and deli service
   Aisles to accommodate shopping carts
   Safe and appropriately designed parking
   More check-out lanes
   Café and grocery store can have independent hours of operation
   Greater flexibility for store layout, based on seasonal and evolutionary growth
   Handicap accessible
Sustainability – Net Zero Energy Production
     Central to our vision is a store that highlights energy conservation. By designing a
high-performance energy efficient building, utilizing daylight for inside the store,
recovering waste heat from refrigeration to provide 100% building space-heat and hot
water needs, and utilizing a roof-top photo-voltaic system to provide electrical power
generation, Bruce Stahnke has designed a store that, over the course of a year, is
targeted to produce as much energy as it uses.

Cost and Funding.
     We are in the process of estimating the costs of the project and putting together a
funding package that accomplishes the goal of relocating in a fashion that ensures the
future success of the Co-op. The exact design, cost, and funding of the project is being
modified as we gather more information.

Our Mission
We are a welcoming, vibrant community of owners guided by our belief in the importance of
healthful, honest food options. Through cooperative principles we support our economy by
sourcing locally, and by providing education on food, environmental and social issues.