It may be a last-ditch plea to keep the doors open at Bloomington's co-op grocery store.
Green Top Grocery, just east of downtown, has launched a GoFundMe campaign, partly to offset a $100,000 reimbursement from the Internal Revenue Service that's on hold indefinitely.
Board member Allison Smith said Green Top owes farmers and other vendors about $75,000.
“We wanted to focus on getting our farmers and our vendors paid first, no matter the fate of the store,” Smith said in an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas. “It is literally week-by-week now.”
The campaign raised about $10,500 in the first week.
Volunteer and former board member Melanie Shellito said Green Top is also trying to refinance its debt to avoid balloon payments that it says are draining the store’s cash reserves, but it's struggling to find manageable terms.
“We are trying to negotiate, trying to look into everything from grant opportunities, to trying to bring that loan local to a bank who might care whether we live or die,” Shellito said.
Green Top's financial problems run much deeper than the delayed federal payment. The store has never approached the benchmarks that a market study suggested it could when it opened seven years ago. Shellito said the study projected annual sales of up to $12 million, but the store has generally been in the $3 million to $4 million range annually.
The story has also gone through nine permanent and interim general managers in seven years. Shellito said more experienced co-op grocery managers often come from the coasts and are not interested in moving to Bloomington-Normal.
“It doesn’t seem central Illinois is particularly sexy to lure experienced GMs to our community,” Shellito said.
The Green Top Grocery Board of Directors has also had its own share of turnover. In 2020, the entire board resigned following weeks of heated rhetoric on social media and allegations of wrongdoing.
Shellito said a lack of marketing has been another big shortcoming.
“You can look at it as for all these years, you still haven’t been sustainable and that is true,” Shellito said. “However, we have also had tons of turnover, there has not been a consistent story about the value this store brings.
“You just end up hearing, 'Your strawberries are more expensive.'"
Shellito says there's no money for marketing when the immediate need is keeping store open.
She said out-of-town consultants also recommended “tone deaf” pricing when Green Top opened and the store has not been able to overcome the perception and reality about higher prices and what those prices represent.
Shellito countered the higher prices narrative by indicating that its sales were going to support local farmers and employees, not an out-of-town corporation.
“A lot of the profits are going to shareholders. They are going to very well paid CEOs of these food empires,” Shellito said, adding Green Top is the only grocery store in Bloomington-Normal that doubles LINK card benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
When Green Top opened in May 2017, it had 37 employees. It’s currently down to a "skeleton" crew of 22.
The $100,000 reimbursement from the IRS was for the Employee Retention Credit for staying open during the height of the COVID pandemic. Shellito said the Green Top Board has reached out to representatives from U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s offices to see when that payment can be delivered.
Smith said the store hopes begin discussions with the City of Bloomington to possibly extend the tax credit it approved when the store first opened or perhaps provide some other type of relief.
