PCC 2004 Annual Report

A message from the CEO

Thanks to continued support from our members, staff and vendor community, our co-op completed an economically strong year in 2004. Sales at our seven stores grew over 6 percent to reach $89 million, enabling us to return $1.2 million in discounts to the membership through our Member Bonus Days program and still retain a very healthy level of net earnings to re-invest in PCC’s future.

Our management team evaluated how to continue improving our member benefits program in 2004, culminating in the experiment through the last quarter of the year with the floating bonus day that supplemented the two monthly 10 percent discount days. Member feedback was so positive on the floating day that both management and your board of trustees were pleased to make it permanent going into the current year.

Another highlight of 2004 was the success of our new Fremont store (opened in mid-2003), which had very strong sales and, impressively, achieved a positive bottom line in its first full fiscal year. The Fremont store, in many ways, represents the scale of store we hope to develop in other neighborhoods in the years ahead.

We invested steadily in our other stores last year as well, completing an extensive remodeling of our View Ridge store as well as less comprehensive but impactful remodels to the interiors of both our Kirkland and Greenlake stores. This completed a cycle of significant investment and upgrading in each of our stores over the last three years. In the near future, we also are hoping to enlarge our Seward Park store. Soon we will begin that perpetual cycle again as we continue to strive to keep our stores in excellent physical conditions to best serve each of you.

PCC also took some important steps last year toward identifying and documenting our performance in the sphere of sustainability, a set of business practices that has much in common with the concept of PCC’s triple bottom line (economics, environment and social responsibility). By assembling a comprehensive table across each area of these three areas of impact, we have prepared ourselves to more effectively measure the changes we make as well as to set priorities and goals to make our business operations even more responsive and supportive of our surrounding communities.

As 2004 came to an end, we once again felt great appreciation for you, our members, for the continued support you have shown our cooperative through another year of bringing wonderful food to your homes, of supporting our efforts to preserve organic farmland, and to run a very successful cooperative with a focus on succeeding as a business, as an environmental steward, and as a socially responsible community-owned enterprise.

Tracy Wolpert
CEO, PCC Natural Markets