Financial Report

By Elka Malkis

Our Sales for the second quarter of fiscal year 09 (October through December 08) were $10,028,834. This is an increase of $236,600 over last year.

Our average transaction amount per customer (retail) was $33.62 this quarter (up from $31.83 last year) and the average customer count was 2,614 (up from 2,573 last year). We typically see high sales in the second quarter of the year; the average basket increases due to the Thanksgiving and Christmas rushes, and if winter doesn't start too early, our customer count is still high. The third quarter, Jan - Mar will often see a slight drop off in Sales. Here, there are two competing factors at work: customer count drops due to bad weather but basket size increases as fewer shopping trips means more items bought per trip.

Our Cost of Goods in the 2nd quarter was 65.1% of Sales, a small decrease compared to last year. Cost of Goods means how much we pay to suppliers for the food we put on the shelves. Our next largest expense is always Payroll (wages, benefits, taxes), and that added up to 22.9% of Sales this quarter. This means that for every dollar in Sales, we pay 65.1 cents to suppliers and 22.9 cents for labor and are left with 12 cents to pay all other costs and, we hope, save a little (profit).

Our Building expenses are pretty low; that's because we own the building and have paid off the mortgage. They accounted for 2.2% of Sales.

Operating expenses are 5.1%. This category has the largest number of different expenses. Costs such as depreciation, operating supplies, credit card and bank fees, repair and maintenance of equipment and trucking costs for the warehouse all show up here.

Admin, Governance, and Promotions came to 4.2% of Sales. We show member discounts here, the newsletter, CPA and Legal fees, advertising, office supplies, and WedgeShare.

We show 3.3% of Sales as Other Income. This is primarily interest earned on investments, classroom fees, and service and delivery fees at the Warehouse. Some of what we classify as "other income" we could have chosen to show with Sales. While that would make my job of explaining the statements easier, it would obscure the true nature of our Cost of Goods.

We set aside $90,000 for 2nd quarter estimated taxes, .9% of Sales.

Our Net Income this quarter was $268,600, which equals 2.7% of Sales.