How to use the food co-op toolkit

This food co-op toolkit aims to provide an overview of the important things you need to think about when setting up and running a food co-op.

The toolkit is divided into sections, each one summarises the various questions or areas your food co-op will need to consider and many are accompanied by useful tools, such as sample questionnaires, checklists, and other templates, which you can download to use or adapt according to your own needs. Most tools can be found in the sub-pages within each section. For instance, an example of a volunteer agreement form is located under Volunteers, a sub-page of the People section. 

It is important to bear mind that the relevance of particular sections will depend on your food co-op or what you envision your food co-op doing. For instance, there is plenty of information related to the sale of fresh produce, however, you will not need to know all of this if you run or plan to run a wholefood co-op.

There are several other websites and guidelines that focus on some of the areas covered in this toolkit, such as volunteer management, marketing and finance. To help you navigate this information, we have summarised the topics we consider most relevant to food co-ops and highlighted other useful publications and organisations on these pages.

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To find more useful food co-op related information visit our homepage