July 18, 2024

Re: Perdue Location

To Our Valued Members,

We sincerely appreciate and understand that a change in our operations at the Perdue Location can be met with an emotional response. Please know that we are wholly committed to maintaining our business in the Village of Perdue. With any operational decision that has an impact to our valued membership, careful and detailed analysis of the operation is completed, and decisions are not made lightly by our leaders in this Co-op. We truly appreciate the feedback that our members are providing to us since our announcement. We felt it necessary to share this statement and business information to help our members understand “why” this decision was made, and to highlight the reality and challenges we face in our Perdue operations. Please rest assured that we hear you and understand, but we need the entire community’s support in making positive changes for the long term. Below we will try to address the overall comments and questions that were submitted to us:

1. Our Perdue location is firstly a cardlock, and as such is available for fueling vehicles 24/7, every day of the year. Cardlock applications are available through the administration office in Rosetown, as well as the Perdue store. A cardlock card also provides access to Co-op locations 24/7 across western Canada. Locations, products, and services are listed on the Co-op App. A change in hours of operation in no way changes the availability of fuel to your community.
2. Staff costs are the largest expense in any organization, and one that allows for managing. The safety of our employees is extremely important to us, and as such we do not schedule a team member to work alone. This does add costs, where many smaller operations, or private operations run employees alone on their shifts to save staff costs. Our business also requires a base minimum level of staffing to ensure service and safety.
3. A part of the analysis included all the sales data for two years being reviewed. This included reports of sales broken down hourly, daily, weekly, monthly. This data helps us identify where the bulk of our business is derived, as well as highlighting the slowest hour by both customer count and sales consistently being 6PM-7PM.
4. Comparing our Perdue Operations to Co-ops, Villages, and services that are offered elsewhere must be done carefully. We use population as a key measure when a market analysis is done to determine business availability in any area, in an effort assess feasibility of products and services. For example, a sister Co-op nearby that has a population 3 times larger and did 4.5 times the sales we experienced, has hours of operation of 6AM-10PM. In that way comparisons can be unfairly made without careful analysis, and lead to unachievable expectations when our market and sales potential are so different.
5. Recruitment in a small community can be difficult, especially as we balance hours available to employees. In particular, part time employees create better scheduling flexibility and coverage, where a full-time position can make scheduling and managing hours used more difficult or constraining.
6. We have always been an employer for the high school aged students, and work to provide them hours and flexibility for studies, sports, and social requests. At times we have experienced recruiting for a student, where no applications came in for month span or more. With the time demands on our students in their personal lives, we do seek to have enough students on payroll to allow us to be flexible and satisfy their requests. This flexibility in supporting their time off needs can make it very difficult for them to accumulate a lot of shifts/hours within our budget targets. This can create difficulty in getting our students the work certifications required while balancing the schedules.
7. We have received feedback, a perception that we have not invested in our Perdue Operations. As listed in the financial data chart below, we would suggest that every single loss in operations is an investment in the community of Perdue. And as the chart shows, the team has worked hard to decrease the loss through improved expense controls. Breakeven operations, or net zero savings alone does not justify increased investment, there must first be a return. This year the Perdue location has invested in new refrigeration equipment, new water dispensing equipment, and replacement and repair of fuel lines/concrete/pump assets. None of these expenditures are expected to grow our sales, but to maintain our business and presence in Perdue. Although no final numbers are available for the pump repairs, these expenses should exceed a further $200,000 investment to the Perdue location.
8. Financial Data from Operations:

As the data we have shared here shows, our team and leadership have been working very hard to reduce expenses. Our goal being to be net zero bottom line, but ultimately to achieve a profit or positive net savings within our Perdue operation. Profitability is the only way to justify new capital investment in the facilities, and as a Co-operative, those profits are shared to the members via Equity and cash back. Losses in any department degrade profits for the entire association, thereby reducing the money that can be shared with all members as equity and cash back.

Based on membership concerns and feedback, we are announcing that we are delaying the change in hours of operation. For the time being, we will stay open until 7PM. This is only a temporary measure and will require your support to keep the facility open to 7PM longer term. We will continue to review and analyze the data and be assured we are committed to profitability in this location. As such, there is a very high likelihood that something will have to change, and we will do our best to find solutions in whatever form those may take.

What does that mean to you as a member in Perdue? It means we need your support of our Perdue location. We need you to look at your fuel gauge when you are out of town and choose to fill up when you get home to Perdue. We need you to seek a cardlock card if you need fuel outside of our regular hours. We fully understand that we are not a store that is everything to everyone, we are a convenience store. We need you to choose to support our facility in all the products and services we have as often as possible. Your role as a member is to know that when you make the choice to shop elsewhere, you are choosing to make it harder for us to add hours, services, or options to the Village and our business. A business, in which you share the profits. We will continue to make changes as are necessary to ensure that we can be in Perdue for years to come.

Please watch for a customer survey in the not-too-distant future. We will be building and co-ordinating that mechanism to collect your feedback in a constructive way. We are prepared to listen and make positive and financially responsible decisions on our journey. How are you prepared to change to help in that regard? Change is better if we change together.

This information will be emailed to those that submitted emails and posted on our website, with links provided via social media. Please email your questions to admin@centralplains.crs