Topanga Coop Plan

Mission

Make more optimal food available in Topanga; build resilience, skills, sustainability and community at the same time.

Vision

To create a cooperative market and community organization that will

• retail great healthy and whole food in Topanga Canyon
• and could also
• serve as a communal piazza space
• support healthy living
• provide a market and skills for the canyon to become optimally self sufficient with its food
• become the communal base for other local collaborative enterprise: credit union, skills & goods exchange, prepared foods & meals exchange/market

Plan

Build a core team/start-up board

Come to a consensus vision towards an outline plan, budget and development budget

Identify development leadership, experienced mentors and experts in food coop start-up & mgmt

Raise awareness, inform the community, consult with the community, recruit more participation

Raise development funds to

1. incorporate
2. pay executive leadership
3. develop more complete plan and financial model

Start-up

including site selection, planning, permits, fundraising, financing,

The Raw Saloon (just past Arteique before Pat's) is OPEN (woohoo!)

I would be surprised if any of yall hadn't noticed the raw saloon opening, Jeremiah Shattuck serving up the super juices and raw delights. In an ideal site to serve 'drive by' morning smoothies/lattes and take-home home-made meals to the thousands of 101-PCH commuters.

And that is just perfect isn't it? Set the intention with a visioning meeting, notice that we lacked a 'take charge leader' and voila, one appears in the canyon. They are for-profit, but I could give a hoot - the ethic and vision is in sync with what we hoped for, and it will be hard enough to eek a profit in food retail. So I say: more power to them.

WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP AND MAKE THIS SURVIVE AND THRIVE?

A few ideas:

Meet at the saloon to share ideas and offer resources (business consulting, fridges, tables, BBQ, etc) in another round of brainstorming.

Pool resources to purchase relevant equipment from the closing canyon gourmet

Put together all best ideas, form a plan & budget, launch a Topanga Healthy Food Saloon Kickstarter to raise funds - rewards could include: 1 year 10% discount ($100), 5 day juice fast ($200), etc

I really feel that these things would be awesome:

Local sourdough (local yeast) Bread every day and Challah on Friday afternoons (Patrice?)

Drive-by service: especially for the commuters, if they call or txt ahead, their order can be brought to their car, charged to their credit card on file, etc.

organic fiar-trade smoothies and coffee drinks in the AM

organic local made home-made meals to take home in the PM ($5-10/person, super lasagnas, casseroles, salads, stews ,etc....); 2-3 choices every day, made by locals in the Saloon's commercial kitchen or at the Globe Theater's commercial kitchen down the road.

a simple fast good POS system to make drive-by orders easy and fast (shopkeep.com - web based)

Picnic tables to eat on-site outside with umbrellas

The dream is realizing, let's lock it down people!