The Concord Food Cooperative has hired a new general manager, nine months after opening an investigation into allegations of professional and financial misconduct by his predecessor.
The co-op board of directors announced its pick in an email message to members last week. Chris Gilbert, who has nearly 30 years of experience in the grocery industry, starts today.
He will succeed Paula Harris, who was the primary subject of last year’s inquiry. Last summer, a majority of the staff united to oust Harris and customer service manager Josh Bourassa and improve the work environment at the cooperative, where more than 7,000 members and employees own shares of the business.
“The concrete takeaway is that an organization can’t function very effectively if its employees are not happy,” David Marshall, chairman of the co-op’s board of directors, said last week.
“The main change will be what we hope is a much improved work environment, and I think that in itself will produce a lot of other changes where everybody feels free to provide their ideas.”
Gilbert has risen in the ranks at Shaw’s over 27 years – starting as a part-time cashier, he said, and eventually overseeing 17 different stores in the region. “First job, only job,” he said with a laugh.
Most of his time with Shaw’s – 14 years – was spent as a manager of individual stores.
“It was probably my favorite job,” Gilbert said. “Being with the people.”
“One of the things I learned is every single person is different,” Gilbert added. “Everybody has a different take on how the business should be run. The one thing I truly, truly believe is that in order for any store to run efficiently, to run well, you’ve got to be a team. I want everybody in the store to be part of that team.”
His words echo the hopes of co-op staff.
The Monitor had learned of the probe into two top managers last July through documents and statements provided by current and former employees, which detail a rift at the co-op.
A staff email, obtained last year by the Monitor through a former employee, included a recap of the concerns raised about Harris’s behavior. They included: “treats the co-op as owner of her personal store and bank account,” “not accountable for spending,” “lacks respect for employees,” “allows customer service manager to bully/belittle employees” and “fails to embrace co-op mission.”
There has never been an indication of a wider criminal probe. The co-op board placed the two top managers on administrative leave in mid-July and hired an attorney to investigate the staff’s allegations. Marshall would not disclose legal costs, but said he did not see those bills as an insurmountable financial challenge for the cooperative.
Though the findings of the investigation were not released publicly, Harris and Bourrassa both left the co-op by mid-September. It is unclear whether Harris resigned or was asked to leave.
In the wake of that investigation, the co-op established a five-person hiring committee: two board members, two employees and one member. They distributed a survey to gauge what members and employees wanted in the next general manager.
“The things that were mentioned, which sort of rose to the top of the list, were bottom-line financial accountability experience, supervisory experience – including hiring, empowering, team building,” Marshall said, as well as experience with natural and organic foods.
Gilbert’s resume includes that experience. Since a private equity firm acquired Shaw’s in 2013, he said the company has become more and more corporate. So when he saw the job posting for the Concord Food Cooperative, he jumped.
“It’s more personal, one-on-one,” Gilbert said. “It was exactly what I was looking for.”
Gilbert, who lives in Bow, wasn’t a frequent co-op shopper. But he said he had been to the store before, in particular for prepared foods and the bakery cookies his 6-year-old loves.
He had followed the Monitor’s coverage of last year’s investigation, but doesn’t know too many of the details. His goal, however, is to make sure employees and members feel their voices matter at the co-op.
“I want the staff and the customers to feel like it’s their store,” Gilbert said. “I want to listen to their ideas.”
Going forward, Marshall said the experience reminded the board of the co-op’s “dual character.”
“It has to survive in an intensely competitive business environment, but it’s more than that,” Marshall said. “It’s also a membership-owner organization where owners take a great deal of interest in the operation and health of the enterprise, and the community in which it serves. So I think it is a balancing act, but I think the board learned that we need to try to maintain that balance a little better than perhaps we have done in the past.”
The first week of construction on South Main Street is on the books.
This week, crews plan to perform “considerable utility work” in the northern end of the work zone, according to an email update from the PR team at Louis Karno & Co. Underground drainage and hydrant work will also continue through Friday.
Today, crews will close the western end of Hills Avenue to install conduit; however, the street will be accessible throughout the day from Storrs Street.
On Tuesday, construction workers will continue to remove the sidewalk curb south to Theatre Street.
For more information about the Main Street project or to sign up for regular email updates about the downtown construction, visit concordmainstreetproject.com.
(Megan Doyle can be reached at 369-3321, mdoyle@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @megan_e_doyle.)