A few years went by and I realized that I didn't want to sell my business. I love what I do: working outdoors, hanging out with farmers, bartering for amazing ingredients, and getting folks excited about eating vegetables. I love market culture and I love being self employed. I've also seen businesses under new ownership go downhill and I didn't want to see that happen to Patty Pan. I care about it too much.
But the summer season can be grueling and I'm not getting any younger.
Patty Pan has fabulous employees, folks who come back year after year even though the work is seasonal and tiring. I don't know if you've ever been served by them, but folks are always telling me how pleasant and committed they are.
A few years ago I started talking to a couple of key employees about sharing ownership of the business but the time just wasn't right. This year, the time felt right. The business is making a profit and it's become grown above and beyond anything I could have created myself, in part because we've built a shared knowledge base and we have enough collective experience to keep getting better at what we do.
So we've become an employee-owned cooperative, as of the first of the year. It's been quite a journey. Every cooperative is different: most cooperatives start out as cooperatives, with a group coming together and deciding they want to build something together. Patty Pan started out as a sole proprietorship, and we've had to figure out how to share responsibility and revenue in ways that were fair to everyone. The arrangement had to offer enough to members to make them want to join, and it had to offer me enough to make me want to share.
We crafted a set of bylaws that cover everything from how we'll share equity, to how we'll distribute profits, to how we'll make different types of decisions, to how we'll kick out someone who is stealing. It's been quite a journey. I'm feeling happy, but a bit disoriented. I know I'm disoriented when I can't figure out what I want to eat.
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