Front row: Michael Healy, Joel Brock (our tech guy), Mark Mulcahy, Mark Goehring
Second row: Mel Braverman, Tami Bauer, Nina Johnson, Walden Swanson, Carolee Colter
Back row: Marilyn Scholl, Pete Davis, Bill Gessner, Todd Wallace, Joel Kopischke, Art Sherwood, Mary Courteau
Not present: Thane Joyal, Kate Sumberg, Debbie Suassuna, PJ Hoffman and Bentley Lein
The cooperative difference
is our competitive advantage.
CDS Consulting Co-op is dedicated to building and strengthening cooperative businesses by providing consulting, training and development services.
We are a network of independent consulting professionals experienced in developing food cooperatives. Our consultants specialize in working with food cooperatives to achieve growth, increase profitability, improve board leadership, strengthen management, and fully serve their members and community.
We utilize assessment, planning, resource access, training, coaching, support, and continuous improvement. We tailor our services to your needs in these comprehensive areas of development:
Expansion and Growth of Cooperatives
Marketing and Membership Development
We provide top-notch services that are comprehensive and personalized. Our consultants and programs have worked on over 500 projects helping cooperatives achieve their goals.
Starting a Food Co-op? What you need to know! Webinar archives – CDS Consulting Co-op in collaboration with Food Co-op Initiative has developed a series of webinars to assist people and communities that want a food co-op. Webinar recordings and resources can be downloaded at no charge.
CDS created Four Cornerstones in Three Stages, a development model which comprises a process for developing a cooperative retail food business. The model identifies the attributes necessary for successful food co-ops.
Food Co-op Initiative exists to build and maintain a support system that enables a faster and more effective start-up process, resulting in new cooperative food stores successfully serving their communities. FCI was originally formed as the Food Co-op 500 program in August 2005 as a collaborative effort of CDS, NCB, NCB Capital Impact, and National Cooperative Grocers Association with substantial support from the Blooming Prairie Foundation.