Community shops/ co-operatives.

[Bossybritches22]

Does anyone have one in their village?

This may not be the right place to post it but I'm sure the MNHQ collective will re-direct if so!

I'm doing some preliminary fact-finding for our village

and I would appreciate any tips,hints, horror stories from any of you that have used one or helped with one, just to give me food for thought whilst I accumulate the official stuff.

The Plunkett Foundation website is being very helpful.

Bump for the evening crowd

Yes, we have one in the village. I volunteer on a rather ad hoc basis. Its the village post office, and the shop is in the same space, so to speak. I often hear The Plunkett Foundation talked about in a good way.

There are 3 different post mistresses, and a full time manager (well, 5 days a week) who are all paid. We (the volunteer villagers!) then take it in turns to do 2 hours shifts through the day. Its great fun and you get to meet loads of people. There is a person who keeps on top of the volunteer slots, a treasurer and a committee. It does take up a lot of people! We are blessed with a lot of active retired people, who are willing to donate their time. Without them, it probably wouldn't survive.

There is a village shop that has won an award in Kirdford (W sussex, I think). I'm sure they have a cafe and a wifi spot, too.

Hope that helps...

Great thanks blue we're just fact gathering, but we have lots of retired folk too, would be great to tap into their life experience.

It's for them really that we're doing it, plus the rest of the community, We had 5 shops, 2 pubs and a garage 20-odd years ago & gradually they have all closed. Public transport is minimal & currently the PO is down to one outreach session a week from a main one over 50 miles away!

From my experience, I would say that the active retired are the most active volunteers, and customers too.

The very elderly use it for their full weekly shop, and we ALL use the Post Office for their services. I use it as my local cashpoint - its brilliant.

However, I don't think it serves the (how shall I put it?) the less well off. It is seen as rather expensive by some residents of the village, which is'nt strictly true... but they're not going to change their minds.

Come the summer, we all take our extra fruit and veg from the gardens and the shop gets to sell it very cheaply, but at 100% profit. We have very local honey, cakes, bread, cards and curries too!