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Food Coops Popular, But Not Easy to Open

Food Coops Popular, But Not Easy to Open

http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/nov/03/food-coops-popul...

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

New York City is home to three food coops -- member-owned, member-run grocery stores that aim to sell fresh food at reasonable prices. Right now there’s one in Manhattan and two in Brooklyn.

But several more coops are in start-up mode around the city, writing up business plans and looking for members.

The Park Slope Food Coop is the most popular in the city, with nearly 16,000 members. Its entire inventory, from organic vegetables to locally raised beef, flies off the shelves more than once a week. Many products are 20 to 40 percent cheaper than elsewhere.  That’s because the coop’s business model differs from a regular grocery store’s.

General manager Joe Holtz points to the people stacking shelves and working the cash registers.  “Ten out of the 11 checkouts are going,” he says. “There’s people on the phone, there’s people at the entrance, people at the exit. There’s not a staff person in sight.” 

In fact, members do 75 percent of the work at the coop. And if you want to shop here, you have to be a member.

On a typical Saturday afternoon, there are 65 members doing everything from unloading deliveries to running the childcare center. Holtz says all that unpaid member labor is the main reason for the low prices. And unlike regular grocery stores, coops aren’t in business to make a profit: this coop has a markup of 21 percent, about ten percent lower than most supermarkets.

Joe Holtz says there are smaller economies too, like buying in bulk.

“We can save people a lot of money on raisins by buying a 30 pound box of high-quality Thompsons Seedless Raisins instead of buying them in little packages, if we do the packaging ourselves,” says Holtz.

Some members spend their shifts stuffing small bags with olives or dried fruits.

Membership at Park Slope has almost tripled since 2001, as interest in local and organic food has shot up. Some members come from as far away as Westchester. That growing food consciousness, combined with a lack of fresh food in some areas, has spurred seven groups in parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Jersey City to form their own coops.

But even with plenty of enthusiasm and good will, opening a coop isn’t easy. DK Holland is a founding member of the Greene Hill Food Coop in Brooklyn.

“You know it takes three years to start a coop,” she says, adding she’s not sure she would have embarked on the project if she’d realized how long it would take.

The Greene Hill Coop just secured a space for their store in Clinton Hill. Getting this far has taken almost three years of volunteers working on the business in their spare time. They hope to open next year. But they need to raise more money, to renovate the space and buy key items like walk-in refrigerators. Initially the goal was $600,000. But Holland says once they found a space, they changed their minds.

“We’re not going to open as the ideal store,” she says. Instead, they plan to open as what she calls “a prototyped store.” Instead of having architects complete a major renovation before opening, Holland says they’ll spruce up the store in stages.

They now hope to raise $80,000, then start renovating. Most of that money will need to come from memberships. Twenty-five-year-old Anna Muessig is the coop’s outreach coordinator. At one of the coop’s monthly meetings, she tells newcomers that the joining fee is $150. Members can pay that all at once, but the coop also gives them the option to pay over a six-month period. And if they’re on income assistance, they can pay it over five years.

Greene Hill is determined to serve low-income residents who have little access to affordable, fresh food. The Park Slope Food Coop says food stamps account for around three percent of sales. But new coops like Greene Hill want to recruit many more low-income members. Muessig has spent weekends knocking on doors in Clinton Hill, explaining how the coop will work. She’s also talked to local community organizations about spreading the word about the coop, and says they’ve been receptive.

But these efforts are still at an early stage. Health-conscious foodies are natural recruits whenever Muessig and her colleagues set up a booth at the Fort Green Farmer’s Market or the Brooklyn Flea. Attracting people outside that group takes more work. Of the 115 members who have signed up, only a couple receive income assistance.

Founding member DK Holland knows the coop is far from achieving their mission. She says when she looks around the room at their meetings, she sees they are “way too middle class to be doing what we need to be doing.”

Still, she says, a lot of highly educated, energetic, middle class people helped get the food coop to where it is now. They just want to make sure they’re not the only people shopping there.

http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/nov/03/food-coops-popul...

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