The Challenge: Convenience Store Conversion
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First Green Bank does considerable lending to convenience stores in the Central Florida area. CEO Ken LaRoe is searching for a way to square his lending to these stores with his values as a regenerative banker. He is looking to identify a convenience store owner who would be interested in creating a deeply sustainable convenience store model, including a green building retrofit.
Ken is hoping to make as many supportive connections between this project and the sustainable food businesses of Central Florida, including those in his current lending portfolio. He envisions that store might become the purveyor of sustainable food sourced where possible from local providers of organic produce. Ken had approached the owner of one store with the idea but the latter seemed to be most interested in the idea of building a new store in an affluent neighborhood. That was an admirable goal, Ken admitted, but he wanted the project to meet broader social goals. He had hoped to convince the borrower to do a conversion of an existing store in a high traffic area at a crossroads between lower middle class neighborhoods and more affluent neighborhoods, "where the person who installs drywall will meet the lawyer at the checkout counter." The Year in the Life project introduced Ken to James Johnson-Piett of Urbane Development for an initial conversation about how to approach the convenience store owner in a way that would capture his interest in doing this higher order conversion. James runs a consultancy called Bodega Bootcamp, and has helped many corner stores in lower middle income neighborhoods accomplish successful conversions. “Our idea is these convenience stores can be places where folks convene, they can create those place-making opportunities. If you have the traffic there it is a good opportunity," James says. "I could make a pitch for that model but it comes down to the owner being able to see the benefit in profit points and operationally wanting to do it, because while you will get better returns, you have to put in the work.” |
Convenience Stores as Community Crossroads |
In their first conversation, Ken and James brainstormed ways to support the convenience store owner through the conversion process with the goal of attaining profitability, bringing all communities' together around healthy foods, and at the same time helping to regenerate the Central Florida economy by cultivating a local food provider supply chain. This led to another conversation between James, Ken and the owner of the convenience store. While the owner initially expressed buy-in to this more ambitious goal, he ultimately declined to participate in the project because he was closing on a deal to lease out all his company-operated stores. Although the conversion project has experience this initial setback, the bank is not giving up on the project. Ken's ultimate goal is to create a successful conversion to showcase the idea, and then scale it up by creating a tailored loan facility to support similar projects in the region. The bank continues its search to identify another possible store partner.
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