Today's natural food cooperatives are a thriving part of the natural food retail landscape. This webinar offers a basic overview of natural foods retailing, with specific emphasis on consumer-owned natural foods cooperatives. Learn about the unique aspects of underwriting cooperatively-owned enterprises, review typical financial performance measures for natural foods cooperatives, and explore a brief case study of a recent project.

High-quality, full-service supermarkets improve the health and economic well-being of communities. However, supermarket operators face significant obstacles entering and operating in many low-income, urban communities. This webinar, developed by UpLift Solutions, explains the “Grocery Gap” and the financial and operational strategies that can enable supermarkets to be successful.

Local grocery stores are a critical anchor institution sustaining America’s rural communities. This webinar highlights Kansas State University's Rural Grocery Initiative and its research to better understand the challenges and needs of these small businesses. Learn how one CDFI, Coastal Enterprises, Inc., is working to provide financing to rural grocery stores to improve access to healthy foods.

This webinar provides critical information about underwriting supermarket and other grocery retail borrowers and projects for financing.

This webinar highlights the critical elements to underwriting food producers, focusing on small and emerging farms, which are often difficult to analyze and need customized loan structuring. Discussion includes seasonality, cash flow analysis and collateral, and includes “live” farming examples.

Learn about designing a healthy food financing program and measuring its impact. In particular, the presentation outlines important elements to consider when creating a program, including the eligibility process, application process, and product development. Additionally, understand how to define impact as it relates to healthy food financing and how to develop impact tracking tools.

Living Cities engaged with Jeff Brown and UpLift Solutions to learn more about the mechanics of his business model and the value in creating career pathways for local low-income residents. They conducted a series of interviews with Jeff to kick off this work. In this first installment, Jeff discusses the specifics of the UpLift supermarket business model, including the impetus for its creation and lessons from its successes and challenges.

Greensboro is aiming to create a co - op grocery in their area, which is considered a food desert area.  They are hoping that the site will entice other businesses like pharmacies or delis to open within the surrounding area. 

This webinar illustrates, by examples and discussion, how to move from a positive feasibility study to a full business plan, and financing the operation. In addition to a "Wharton Business School education in 15 minutes," there are also two case studies: a food hub, and a food processing center. This presentation was designed for those considering creating a new business in the food value chain, or involved in counseling those who do.