 I'll start by introducing myself, sorry I should have done that from the start. My name's Vika Rogers, I work for Cooperatives UK and my role is specifically focused on developing the the platform co-op sector. By this we mean cooperatives that mainly operate through an online platform. My focus is mainly on two aspects on developing business support for platform co-ops and exploring potential funding finance for platform co-ops. There are quite a few colleagues of mine on this call as well and they'll be in the breakout group so you can ask also further questions. The work we do around platform co-ops at Cooperatives UK is done under the brand Unfound. I'll paste the link in the chat where you can find more information about platform co-ops. We've got some really great speakers with us today, it's really great to have them all together and I hope you will find this webinar useful. I'm going to start by passing it over to Adrian from Co-op Cycle, he'll tell you more about the platform but this is a really exciting project of the existing and running platform co-op. So Adrian I'll pass it on to you. Thanks Vika, hi everybody, good afternoon. So I'll try to make it short because we have only a few minutes. Some of you have probably heard that Cobb Cycle and it's mostly known for the software that we provide our members. But just before that because we're not a company that sells services, we're a federation, I was just wanting to introduce a little bit the political idea behind Cobb Cycle. So basically so you know the story, it was born in 2016 during the first core year strikes with people working for delivery in France and time at which some people, so it's a little bit original for a co-op federation decided they wanted to create something to have the core years. So it's not a federation that was born off the co-ops, the members, it was more a tool that was designed by volunteers who are still present and who is now transmitted slowly but surely to its members the co-ops. So 2017 was for the first year people joined like members and it was so actual co-ops and now we're about 30 and more incoming every day because we have a lot of people asking at the moment and yeah so the idea is to build a common tool of shared resource as we know we can do in the co-op movement and the idea is to provide core years with resources that will help them take back the power over their work. So it means on the tech side because the companies like Uber Eats, Deliveroo and others, I don't know all of them all over the world, what they've done is they've created a lot of people working in that field but in terrible conditions and the idea is to give them the opportunity to build their own business as a co-op because we don't want to reproduce the things that didn't work in other systems. So obviously it implies the software that I'm going to show you in a minute I'll be sharing my screen but the idea is to go further than this and to create a really like a web network between the co-ops of all around the world so that they share experience, they share their know-how, they share their knowledge and our role as a federation it's only starting because we're very young will be to try and you know see where are the needs and see where are the know-how so that we when a group comes either from Delhi, from Mexico, from Manchester we can tell them well look what we've known from the past experience in the last three years from members that are running and are doing pretty they're doing fine we can give you some tips on any issues that relates to a co-op a Korea co-op so it can be the pricing, it can be the business model, it can be how you deal with schedules, how you want to do, what tools you want to do to help you with you know project management everything that's like this we want to try and set up a pretty dense launching kit so that co-ops have like collectives have a lot of information to start off but of course the main reason why people knock on the door is the software and obviously because when you want to get off when you want to get out of Deliveroo or Uber Eats and if you want to do the same thing which is not always the case one one thing you're missing is the technology and it costs a lot to develop so one thing we created was this software so for the story the the and go back to my first statement about the co-op being created by volunteers and not members at first the developer mechs started to develop a food tech part of the software which is pretty much what we what Deliveroo does or Uber Eats does and the first members of the Federation said well it's not it's not our use case we don't want to do that so you know it's volunteers trying to do something for members but because they're not members you know it wasn't oriented the the right way so what I can show you first is what mechs worked on at the beginning which was a dispatching tool so it's something that exists so I don't see so it's something that exists in a lot of different companies but I guess Cops cycle is the only one doing it not as a service to be sold but just a mutualized resource so basically there's different kind of work in a courier co-op and one of them is trying to set up deliveries so that you can manage and optimize your routes and so this is the first part of the delivery of the software it's this section that you should see it's a dashboard on which you have a map so this is the the map of Grenoble in which because I'm a co-founder of Ciclo it's a co-op in Grenoble and on it you see all the deliveries of the day and these ones were the deliveries that were that were made at lunch it works pretty it's pretty simple you either have clients which are stores here who can order from their back office that you you create them in a camp and they get a like a back office access so that they can say well you need to collect this at this time this day here's a comment here's the way everything and you can save you can set up pricing between in the in the beginning so that it it automatically calculates for the client price it's going to cost them and then once it's saved and you've accepted it it arrives here in the unassigned orders deliveries and what you have to do then as a dispatcher which is one of the jobs usually in a courier co-op is to assign then orders to a courier so here you see Fredo and you see there's Tiffen Antonio and you just need to drag the orders like the deliveries to a courier another thing you can do I'll go fast because we don't have a lot of time I don't even know if I'm over time yet is you can download files so that you can if you have a client that's going to need you to deliver at many different addresses I don't know maybe someone producing organic soap you go you pick up a hundred kilos or maybe not a hundred kilos but 60 kilos of soap and you need to deliver it to 10 different stores in the city you can upload a sheet with the different addresses and it automatically if you complete it right it automatically brings the different points on the city and then you have to do the same assign the deliveries to the couriers so this is the first part and because I'm sharing my screen I don't see questions VK if there are so please stop me if there are and the second part of the software is something that in my knowledge does not exist elsewhere it's obviously the second part on what MEX worked on which is the food tech part so the possibility to put into relation restaurants clients and kakoyakoa so we use something called Stripe to divide payments and it basically does what the big platforms do you have a certain amount of restaurants you can click here and so what I show you is the example of sick growing for now you see all the restaurants here and it works the same you click and it tells you at what time you can order on the right somewhere okay so today today between 7.25 and 7.35 and you can choose a menu it works pretty much like what you need to know as well is this was so the first thing on which MEX worked before the man was said we need we need something else and but the COVID crisis has made us work a little more on this part lately because because all the B2B activity sector that the co-ops had pretty much turned to zero so everyone went from B2B to a little bit of B2C and what we are able to do now is also have stores so here you see the stores it's another instance it's in Nantes so they don't have any restaurants but they have you know anything like cheese shops, ceramic glasses and you can order deliveries as well and one last thing you need to know and then I'll pass it on to someone else is that we also open the possibility for shops either restaurants or all stores to have a click and collect option so that it's available to them if they are partners of the local co-op and yeah one last thing that I want to say is that we don't deal with pricing every co-op is independent on how they want to deal and how they want to contractualize with their partners so we just provide the technology and we advise as well because we don't want people to make bad choices in terms of economics or business model and everything but we provide the technology but they're like the co-ops really remain independent on how they want to run it and I think I'm done with it if there are any questions. Thanks Adrienne. I think I'm going to ask all the speakers to go first and then we'll have a Q&A at the end that's okay. You're welcome to start responding in the chat but I'll pick up the questions anyway so everyone can hear. Thank you very much. I will let the speakers go slightly over time because I think all the content is so important but yeah I'll try and keep a balance between allowing that. Now it'd be great to hear from your collective so this is a collective based in New York who have set up as a career co-op so it'd be nice to hear your experience. I think it's Matt right? Yeah can you hear me? Yeah. So yeah I'm Matt from your collective there's Alex here and Aaron as well Alex will be in one of the working groups I believe. So we got in contact with a co-op cycle near the beginning I suppose three four years ago and there were four of us and we'd all been working in food delivery at some point Aaron I think's done the most about orders. So yeah we wanted to start something ourselves we knew all the shortcomings of the current food delivery platforms primarily for the workers but also for the restaurants involved and I suppose for the customers. And one of our founding principles is that we wanted to start with without having to put any other money into it. So we started as an unincorporated association, four of us, and we started talking to local businesses and we got our first paid work alongside another startup that was yeah and just begun in York that no longer exists and they were trying to build a platform around connecting like small kind of eco-friendly jobs and as part of their trial they asked us to do the delivery side of it so we yeah agreed some terms and started accruing our first bit of money working for those guys and we built up enough to be able to afford to incorporate which yeah took a bit of time and be incorporated at the beginning of this year. Our first lot of jobs without that platform were the end of last year but to get in there had to be some changes made to the platform and ongoing like backwards and forwards with the development team at Cobb Cycle to make those changes so the platform was suitable for use in the UK. So yeah after our first bit of paid jobs and the incorporation we also decided to get a membership to a local business association called Indi York who are an association of independent businesses in York which are now about 200 strong so yeah about the same time as we started talking to Cobb Cycle we started talking to them and kind of trying to create awareness about this platform existing and the opportunities that would afford local businesses to work with us so yeah a little bit further down the road and at the beginning of the year we well actually up to a COVID I suppose um yeah we were really just using the money that we'd accrued from the start up work and COVID came along and then we got more interest from the Indi York members that we've been talking to because then there was a need for delivery service and so negotiations happened around that both with the scheduled delivery from stores which I can show you and also the e-commerce food delivery side um yeah so since the beginning of COVID we've been doing a large part that has been food delivery which we've since stopped and a consistent but yeah yeah a consistent amount of scheduled deliveries from a selection of small stores so everything from like a haberdashery through to like a whole food shop we do deliveries for and they're on a week they were a weekly pickup during COVID because of the limitations of staff being able to get to the stores but since then we've been upping that we're doing near enough next day delivery for those stores so yeah and alongside the work that came through because of the pandemic we were doing a lot of solidarity work at the same time which we also got through connections we've built through Indi York so we were doing hospital deliveries every day of the week I think it turned out to be 12 weeks and delivering about 50 meals to the local hospital each morning and then we did some mass deliveries as well or like face buys or deliveries when they start getting printed um yeah so since then uh we have dropped the food tax on stuff and we're currently rethinking the best way to approach that situation again um now the demand's picking up and yeah and taking on more hours with the shops we're working with um so yeah we work we're using the platform the three different ways which Adrienne described we've got the e-commerce like food delivery shops side of things the stores that we work with usually have or have their own logins so they book deliveries directly onto the system and then we invoice them um on a regular basis and then we've also got a booking form that's you're able to put as an eye frame in your own on your own website so we have people booking through that and even people booking through that store to collect food from restaurants which are on other platforms um but not on our own um yeah and with the stores as well with their own option some of the asked about the WordPress platform and other slots in there yeah we were booking with a store where it was integrated with their WordPress website um yeah thanks but yeah that's nice again everyone please paste questions in the in the chat uh Matt can respond um and we can also have a bit of a Q&A afterwards uh I'm gonna pass it on to Mark from Colt Culture who will tell us a bit more about how to set up a career cop in the UK right hi so can you hear me okay right so uh my name's Mark Simmons I'm a Cropped Development Business Advisor uh and I'm also a member of the Industrial Workers of the World Union which is how I first came across career co-ops a couple of years ago through their career networks so I've worked with a few career co-ops and I work with a sort of co-ops across sort of uh lots and lots of different sectors there's also my colleague Nathan Brown has worked with couriers down in Southampton and there are other Cropped Development Advisors on the call I'm just going to share my screen with you and we're just going to give you a whistle-stop tour of the process of setting up a career cop coincidentally it's pretty much the process of setting up any co-operative that just nuanced for career co-ops so typically there's some sort of catalyst at the start of this it might be you just having an idea or over a chat in the pub or seeing something in social media and at that stage all you've got is you've got the idea in your head or you've scrolled something on the the back of the DM at or the back of an envelope and that's where you are at the start of it we advise normally that before you do much else you actually recruit some other people that are interested in this idea you can set up a co-op on your own and recruit people later but it's much much more difficult it's much better to involve the people of potential members of the co-op at an early stage and then we would normally advise at that point you do some research so before you start engaging with professional business advisors like like Nathan and I actually find out who's already doing it and you know actually attending this call would be the sort of thing here and you've gotten advantages in the career co-op sector is you've already got people like co-op cycle that have done a huge amount of work and can signpost you to other people that are already active in the UK and internationally so who else is already doing this how can they because you know with any co-op development that you'll find that the people who've already done this who are further down the road view will be quite happy to help you so an early exploration of what else is going on and then actually at that point once you're convinced that actually this is something worth pursuing and you've got a group of people worth pursuing it then you can start to talk to people like Nathan and I in co-op culture and other co-op development bodies and we can get often get funded to work with you as well so at that point in that sort of early stages we'd often be helping a group explore exactly why do they want to do this so it's good where you've got a group of people to have that shared mission you know is it about providing sustainable livelihoods is it about low energy transport is it about both of them is it about other things okay so that would often be the early work that we do with the group but then pretty soon we're getting into some of the stuff that Matt was talking about there so actually look at the feasibility of it will this thing actually fly is there a business here that stacks up and is going to actually be able to provide a livelihood for people this area here Matt talked about incorporation that's probably one of the biggest areas we get involved with them the biggest stumbling block for groups what's the legal vehicle that you're going to create for your cooperative so what sort of vehicle you're going to have who's going to be on the bus who gets their hands on the steering wheel because there are other options around this we can have multi-stakeholder cooperatives where customers and workers are both involved as well although here we're predominantly talking about and the the interest so far has been around worker cops and then finally in this sort of like to really explore in the business section do you actually need some startup capital in here you've got a real advantage with career cops is that often we're setting up a platform cop there's a huge amount of capital money needed to do this bit here to create the platform but actually you're being offered to a great extent a platform that works off the shelf so you're not having to find the money to do that but you might have to so for instance if you're setting up an electric cargo bike courier co-op you might need the money upfront to buy those cargo bikes so or the answers to all these questions will then help us choose the legal structure and hopefully at the end of working with someone like Nathan or I you would have a business plan as well so if you do need to go to a bank or investors in order to get the money you've actually got something to show them and also you've got that you've got a plan for yourself that you can show to new members etc and then just a little bit more detail on that legal structure thing which is the often the thing we most have been involved with so far that that question that I talked about who is involved is it just workers is it customers are there investors who are going to get their hands on the steering wheel and also this key question here are the workers going to be employed or self-employed do you want to preserve that sort of advantage of the gig economy from the workers point of view of that you've got that total flexibility balanced against what we're seeing in the in the current gig economy in that sort of total exploitation as the flip side of it or do you want to preserve that benefit of flexibility into the co-optive and keep that self-employed status and you can do both of those and then typically your worker co-op so worker cop is basically how you organise yourself once you're on the bus but in the UK and it will be different in different countries there are a whole load of different legal forms that you can use to to create your co-op typically in the UK we'd either be looking at a company limited by guarantee or a co-optive society but there are others so if you want to do different things there are other options there but again that's the sort of stuff you'd explore with people like Nathan and I and as Matt's already said you know they've gone through this process and now they're actually already going back through and changing things as well so typically apart from this sort of early start stuff you'll be going through this process again and again through the lifestyle of the organization tweaking it possibly even changing your legal structure down the line because these things are all flexible so it's an organic it's a flexible process and there's lots of people there to help you and Nathan and I were happy to explore those further either in the workshops or after this as well and I've popped my contact details on the Google doc so that's me I will actually also share a link to this Miro whiteboard here as well download it while you can because I can't guarantee it's going to be there for a huge amount of time so that's that's my bit thanks Nathan do you want to add anything or do you want to maybe just respond to that question about what is a cooperative that's been asked in the chat so everyone can hear yeah I think given the time mark covered it very well the the whole process but yeah yeah what is a cooperative it's a democratically controlled enterprise which exists to meet the needs of its members and if we're going to talk couriers then it's going to be owned and democratically controlled by the couriers who work within it and its whole purpose is to meet the needs of those couriers if you want to fully understand the the cooperative model you could do worse than going and having a look at the co-operative UK website where you can read far more detailed explanations and get yourself ginned up on the seven cooperative principles and the cooperative values which underpin them thanks Nathan before we go into the Q&A Petra would you be happy to just say what kind of support cooperatives UK offers for people wanting to set up a co-op would you be happy to do that yes certainly and so I'm Petra Morris I work for Co-operatives UK along with Beaker and one of the support programs we have running at the moment is called the Hive Business Support Programme it's a partnership program with the Co-operative Bank who's been running for about five years and we can provide technical advice and support to anyone that's setting up a cooperative including courier co-ops and we have a network of what we call Hive Providers that will give their expertise of which Mark and Nathan on the call today are some of those advisors it's a competitive application process it's open all the time and we review them regularly and we can obviously offer a few days of advice particularly helping you towards thinking about which legal form and how to incorporate I hope that's helpful okay thank you very much so thanks everyone for pasting questions in the in the chat that means we can get through a lot of them quicker I do want to give like 10 more minutes to to question so if you if you want to either you know just paste your name in the chat if you've got a question and I'll and if you can say who the question's for as well so yeah if you've got a question please just say it in the chat it can be for any of the speakers no questions okay then I think oh okay you get a group breakout join the breakout groups Matt there's a question for you if I understand you correctly you mean that the cost of setting up a cooperative society is more expensive than a private company limited by guarantee does that include the costs of lawyers advisors etc so Matt you can answer and probably also someone can come cycle if you want to yeah um so yeah as I mentioned in the chat um so now setting up a company limited by guarantee is 12 quid if you're not online um whereas the cooperative society because you need um a sponsoring body and there's model rules involved which have been pre-authorized and yeah there's more expense involved taking that route um there's also a little bit less flexibility with the cooperative societies as far as um consensus decision making goes there has to be a fallback onto a majority vote final within the cooperative society I'm rounding out to come remember that isn't it uh do Nathan or Mark do you want to comment on that as well yeah so uh there is a slight difference in cost but it's not huge you know it'd be the difference between sort of 40 quid and a couple of hundred quid between a company and a society um also my experience uh where I I'm working with lots uh that are implementing sociocracy where they want consent-based decision making uh and it's easy to implement with either a company or a society structure there's there's no real constraint there check thanks um I have Jim next uh if if you did paste your question before I started the open the Q&A now and you feel it hasn't been responded enough in the chat uh can you paste it again and we'll bring it up again uh but Jim was next I don't know if this was your question Jim but we already have people delivering books or using bikes or and all car bikes so I guess Korea Cooperative is the tool and what you transport is up to you and how you find clients and on what in what field great thanks sorry I'd missed he had pasted the question in the chat uh Debbie asked does the software allow traders to have their own online shop and customer orders then link back to the co-op platform I guess this is the question about integrating with other platforms yeah well I already answered a little um a little before the idea is to have um APIs for every type of e-commerce websites um so I don't know which I think I think I said something wrong because the the one I was thinking about that we don't have is the Shopify uh plugin but the WooCommerce one we have so to the to Debbie's questions that would my answer would be depends on what the business is using for his own e-commerce website but everything is doable it's just time that's missing I think Presto shop is working as well yeah Presto shop to also respond to Stephanie's question is the so solidaristic career culture key to the co-op glue making this more than a new uber how do you safeguard grow this culture and I'll ask also your collective maybe to comment on that yeah it's an interesting question and uh because we don't ask us this ourselves too much because I guess we're a very young organization so it's still very political and the whole idea of this federation was to fight against something against something but and there's a but I think and it happens in most most sectors is usually you know at the at the beginning of this in France at least the co-op cycles initiative was really close to uh uh people organizing the couriers as what was going to be a union after that and um we see that paths are trying to starting to not divide the go elsewhere and I think it's one uh one issue we need to address is uh how do we keep in contact with the rest of the courier world because even if we build a courier co-op in every city in the UK or in France we might be able to you know if we're if we're good we might be able to have a maybe in the end 20 25 30 couriers per city and I'm talking about my city there's 300 delivery uh or Uber Eats Raiders and at some point I think it's in the interest of everybody that co-op cycles remains interested in uh you know fighting for uh the working conditions of every courier courier and not only its members but yeah it's uh it's something that's not there yet but I think we will have to talk about this at some point I don't know what's the feeling of that in your collective thanks does Matt or someone else from the collectives also welcome to answer the question Alex okay um um yes I agree yeah there is the like solidarity within courier culture um but at the same time the way the platforms function does also the current platforms such as um delivery we sort of thing does create some divide between riders because it's almost a competition based um the environment like riders against riders trying to get jobs trying to get in the right areas sort of thing so yeah um yeah it's like co-op cycle offers something far more like yeah those platforms the other platforms for the rider for work I'm just gonna ask if Nathan or or Mike want to come in on the relationship with the trade unions and then I'll take just one more question about um mapping the roads and then we'll go to breakout groups otherwise we won't have time so I don't know if Nathan or Mark you want to comment on working with the unions or I'll take this one both Mark and I are actually members of the IWW ourselves and my involvement with the local group to try and provoke some courier co-op action has resulted in me being more active in my union but generally the IWW has been very supportive of the idea of courier co-ops and the courier network has been provided with a lot of information um and in actual fact because the IWW you know believes in worker control perhaps far more than the sort of mainstream TUC unions there's less resistance to the idea of the workers joining a co-op than you would find in traditional unions I don't know if Mark wants to add to that uh I only to say that there is real interest at the moment in developing working with the unions to develop cuts and last week there was the launch of a union co-op manifesto as well actually looking as uh as unions as catalysts for this sort of activity check. Adrian do you want to answer the question about if there's anything uh I think it was Michael are there any tools in the app for couriers to draw save plot out maps of which roads are great for cyclists a way to label roads in regards to the general safety? No not really probably because we don't have the kind of problems you have in American city but might be something that would be interesting to draw in the future there's so many things that would be interesting you know and I'll just see Tanya's question what extra things do you offer compared to others just to be clear we don't run the co-ops I mean I'm talking co-op cycle but we don't run the co-ops we help them where we are the property in a way of the co-ops who collectively own the federation we don't uh we we can give guidelines if we think there should be things that should be done in the co-ops but it's really important for um for us to keep every co-op um relatively independent in what they do so I guess uh you know in every human experience there's good and bad and there's probably experiences in co-op cycle in which couriers are it's not maybe so democratic as we would wish it would be and uh in others uh you know everything might be uh almost perfect uh but um you know our role is to give guidelines and even for that question um Mark talked about do you want to be employed or self-employed well uh the idea of co-op cycle at first was we have two requirements to get in the federation you need to be a co-op and you need to employ people because we want people to be um to have you know social security if they have an accident and they have you know benefits coming in and everything and um the reality has come to us where co-ops come and say well you know this thing you were saying there was that was pretty bad the flexibility and the self-employed thing well it happens that in our collective some would not want to be employees how do we deal with it and uh so at the moment I'm not going to lie to you we're in between two times where we have to decide what the federation allows because it used to be a requirement and I know that for a fact that your collective is wondering as one example do we want to be employees do we want to be self-employed and it's the same in every co-op in most co-ops so so yeah I guess you know we give guidelines and we are a fluctuent organization and we are going to look like what our members make of us um I'm not sure if we still have the same groups that I'll go through what we have on the sheet and tell me if that group doesn't exist I'm just going to ask you to really briefly one of you one person per group just give us a bit of a feedback on on how the um the conversation went um if you still have questions or if there were questions that came out that need to go we need to go more in depth can you paste them in the chat and then we're going to save a copy of the chat and we'll make sure that we address them either in a blog post or via email um so uh Mark do you want to go first with your group which I think was UK one there with me uh yeah my group in the ended up being Manchester uh which which I'm quite happy to talk about so I ended up talking to a small group that are actually in the process of setting up uh a worker co-operative in the area of Manchester known as Charlton which I know quite well and have worked with other co-ops in that area so we were able to have um quite a useful chat um unfortunately and in that chat we decided that someone else was going to feedback as well so I'm poorly prepared for that so I think that was Abby was going to do that so can I invite Abby to uh feedback uh yes oh I've just lost my um oh no I've just lost my nose okay here we go right can can everyone hear me great thank you so we just talked about the fact that obviously we're working together already and we gave Mark a little bit of background about the area though he knew it I think the the things for feeling about that perhaps our most interesting two others was Mark was talking about the possibility well we're a small sort of core group there's six of us and we're working with some other people and between us during the delivery so the core group plus the others and we talked a little bit about recruiting new people in possibly existing couriers um and a sort of enabling people to do some work with us at the same time as they're maybe deliver or whatever other courier work so that they're you know in terms of their their money coming in because none of us are dependent on on this at the moment for our income so we talked about that and we talked a little bit about the networks and how we might uh start making contact with those existing couriers um through that and then at the end we started talking about the concept of minimal viable products and this sort of um what we might need to do to get ourselves or what what to think about what the minimal we might do to get ourselves started so we're not looking to be all singing all dancing I think this is what it means we're not looking to be all singing or dancing we're looking to think about the stages that we need to take to get ourselves towards that what we might we need to do at this point to to liaise with people to to get some of the learning which we can apply as we go on um to it to recruit new businesses to work with us uh to engage with the early adopters that sort of thing I think that I think that pretty much covers it thanks um next group I'll I think maybe we focused on the uh hyperlocal so London and Brighton uh just to say the we need to really be super punctual in ending this call uh so if if we can keep a quick brief we still have 10 minutes so you don't have to rush it but if I if I stop you that's the reason uh so London and Brighton who would like to report back um yeah I'm gonna report back for London and Brighton yeah great yep so again we had uh about four or five of us in the group largely Brighton but with one London contingent um mainly people who are working or have been working in cycle couriering cargo bike couriering um I'm one person working more delivering food provisions um but all at various stages in the journey of kind of not wanting to work within the delivery of all the more standard sector and looking to set up their own groups and further or less far along in the journey of doing that uh and two real key questions that came out of it really very um a lot of interest in cycle co-op and the platform that they have and how um that they can be worked with a lot of interest and uh happiness I suppose that cycle co-op are keen to share their platform and help support people so we felt that part of the presentation really helpful and then we started focusing more on the co-op structures and set up one of the members of the group who was in the process of setting up the CIC limited by guarantee and we started to get into the detail of how that can still be a co-operative whether it was just the couriers who were members of the cooperative um but one person who was interested in a wider multi-stakeholder group with kind of people receiving provisions people providing restaurants food providers that kind of thing so yeah we started focusing more on that towards the end um which I think covers it all could I just add to that sorry this is Sean and I was facilitating that group so uh we as as John said we just started into some of the questions around the sort of legal and formal sides of the co-op and I'll be happy to follow up on that with anybody from the group I put my email address and number into the google doc and I've put and I've made a sort of provision so if you want to go into the google doc and put your contact details down or pick up my email address and just email me I'll be happy to follow up on uh some of the questions that we just started to articulate in our group thanks Sean for that thanks a lot and um okay let's go international now there was an international group who wants the feedback from that that's me so um we were lucky to have Adrienne with us and we were we were quite a quite an international group and there was consensus really around the question of viability so Adrienne covered a few things there in terms of first one in terms of numbers and he reckoned that you know there were lots of examples of co-ops with 17 20 25 people so that was fine that was manageable in terms of being viable but there was probably more questions then around um volume and uh make it viable in terms of volume because not only are you paying your career you're paying your person behind the screen the dispatcher and you're paying maybe somebody on call as well so getting those on call policies right in terms of payments and how you might structure that you know how much are they getting if they're at home how much are they getting if they get called out and and so the pricing um he reckoned you could you could you could make it work you could make it cheaper than deliver but you know you'd have to have your volume and your your volume right and he gave the example from Grenoble of how they divided the city into zones so that um you know you could or you could have so many orders per hour and you're getting paid um you know say four orders per hour per courier getting paid so much and and if if you have your pricing right that you will be able to pay your courier you'll be able to pay your standby and you'll be able to pay your dispatch and so you know obviously some thought and consideration and ideas in there and the good news was that you you don't need much capital for setting up you need your health you need your bike which isn't necessarily that expensive and the software capital does need to be contributed to but my understanding is it doesn't have to be immediately so you know the pressure might be off there and then getting away from viability he just made an interesting comment then about whether it's a kind of a worker cooperative which is looking after couriers or whether it's a multi stakeholder and he he he just pointed out that um in a multi stakeholder scenario it could be kind of a territorially based whereby you have um couriers you've restaurateurs and you've maybe the local council who might have an interest in them tackling something in their particular area so um he answered the question has it been met with resistance um by saying no but that it can be difficult to convince the restaurants um to become partners so you have to overcome that so thanks to Adrian and he he might correct anything I said that wasn't correct thanks Bridget that was great I saw that you were reading some notes it would be amazing if even in bullet points you were able to put that in the in the google doc um because it was a lot of really valuable information um if you don't mind but if you don't have time I can take it down from by listening to the recording um let's go to Mexico if we've got the Mexico group here hi yeah yeah I can talk um it was well it was more uh back and forth of q and a between how we set up how uh about the software and forming the co-op um it was just mostly that a lot of q and a until we got removed it was it was quite a few people though I think like four or five great and if anyone listening in from from other countries um I mentioned this in the international group as well there is uh if you go to platform doc co-op there's an international course being run by the new school uh and Mondragon on how to set up a platform co-op and it's very likely that it will start uh there will be a new version of it in October um if you subscribe to our newsletter I'll put details in this in the email we'll send you later um you will get notified when that happens um you're obviously welcome to join from the UK as well um so we've got two two more groups I think uh should we go with UK uh one or is it well I know there's one with Nathan facilitated by Nathan I don't know if there was another one was another one we were UK too shall I speak yeah um yeah I asked for a volunteer at the start and no nobody offered so I'll feedback um really interesting group we had uh one individual from Edinburgh one from Glasgow and one from an existing co-op in in Derbyshire all of them interested in in establishing over a career service or a new career co-op um we had Aaron from New York Collective giving his experience and we also had Steven Gill who's who's software company which is converting to a co-op actually helped design uh the co-op eats ordering service for Scott mid and one of the big problems we were looking at is you know how do you start how do you get enough people that critical mass of people to become a co-op you know because if you start with one then you can have psychological ownership problems and difficult to convince people to come on board and and the lovely thing is we actually had a solution generated in the call which was you know Scott mid have actually got an ordering service um there might be a way of marrying up a career co-op in Glasgow or in Edinburgh to actually deliver their orders and obviously Steven's in a position to put the people in Edinburgh and the people in Glasgow in touch with the people at Scott mid to start discussing this and the whole business of how do I attract enough of my career co-op my sorry my career mates to join this co-op idea well you say we've got a customer already and it's Scott mid and there's a significant load of business there so I feel that our group really set up a lovely brokerage there we we did also um have a bit of a chat somebody flagged up the whole thing about community interest company and obviously I was able to uh outline the the co-operative UK has developed a co-operative kick form so that was something which came up that was available but um yeah I feel that really the you know the fact that we had uh somebody from the supply end of things who was looking for co-ops or at least to introduce the the supply end to co-ops and and people who are looking to start co-ops but need something which gives them that critical mass that minimum viable product I feel that our group really really came up with a bit of a result there so that's us I don't know if anyone else wants to add to that from our group so I've seen um Stephen Jills put his contacts in in the goo or dark so if you want to follow that up after after this call are you happy for them to get in touch with you yeah okay was there one more group or or not Leila Petro okay please go ahead Petro yeah I've got like two seconds left I think yeah but I think we can so I was a bit late coming to our group I think we were coming from a slightly different angle in our group and Sally do jump in if I get this wrong um but it seemed to me that we had some existing cooperatives um we had central England co-op in in the group and also um Sally who works in um operates in Derbyshire Peak District and also Village in Tewkesbury who had existing co-op shops and because of the current situation we're doing deliveries um community response type work so there seemed to be the potential to kind of match up that need of having to have deliveries and online and and how we could match that with couriers so I thought that was really interesting um and the potential around that and and obviously you know the fact that hopefully we would rather work with co-operative couriers than than delivery as existing business cop businesses um but yeah it's Sally or or Matt if you want to jump in on that because I came late to the session you know I was there about same time as you so uh you know we had a quick discussion about um volunteer work that some people are doing and a commercial aspect that could come out there yeah I was explaining this has really come out of COVID response is um every um village in the valley has set up a way of getting food to um isolated people and we're looking at how we can make that a longer term thing by setting up her um it's going to community benefit society delivering food from local shops so we're supporting the local shops and looking to local people and using electric vehicles that would be carbon neutral great thank you everyone have I missed any groups I think no I think they're there I'm just going to put um paste uh the google doc again so everyone can see if any of you have energy or time to add um any notes from or questions that came out of your sessions let me just start it okay so this is the the google doc where if you have energy to just put in the questions that came out in the in the in your sessions uh if you can remember any of the answers but it will be really useful for us to know what the questions were so we can put together a a q and a and publish that in a in a blog post and and send you a link to it um just um so yeah so thank you everyone uh for your contribution uh we'll be also sending a survey to have feedback from you uh about this session so we would really appreciate if you could fill it in so we know how we can improve uh our webinars uh but other than that thank you to all the speakers um and for everyone who participated and for Leila for taking care of all the complicated breakout rooms thank you everyone and we've recorded this so we'll put this online if you want to share it with anyone okay bye thank you everyone thanks everyone bye