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Starting a food co-op: Year 1

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Re: Starting a food co-op: Year 1

#61

Post by dylan604 »

hinkley wrote: post #59
dylan604 wrote: post #3

As a kid, my family was part of a co-op. I grew up in the boonies, and there was one local grocery store that had horrible selection. The larger chains required long drives to get to, but even then they did not have the produce selections that is the norm now. Instead, each weekend a member of the co-op would visit the farmer's market in the Big City. We were no where near the size of the co-op in the TFA, but it mad…

Ace hardware is technically a co-op, but that would be a surviving one more than one for the 21st century. REI is also a co-op but I couldn’t explain how to save my life. However, Organic Valley definitely is a co-op, and while they started in 1988 they didn’t seem to get serious traction until around 2000, and now they’re everywhere on the west coast, which is not bad for a Midwest company.

Interesting you mention Ace. It is truly one of my favorite places to visit in new cities. No two Ace stores are the same. One in my area focuses on homesteading, and is known as the place to get your baby chicks to start your chicken raising experiment. They also carry other items that are in this line vs just your typical selection of tools and what not. Then another Ace in Flagstaff saved my butt while on a video shoot as they had some items I had never seen in a local Ace, but were the perfect fit for the off the wall rigging I needed.

Ace is the place!

Re: Starting a food co-op: Year 1

#62

Post by trelane »

bombcar wrote: post #14
debacle wrote: post #11

There is a local group trying to "disrupt" coops in this way: find members to shell out $$, have a steering committee, do a lot of marketing, all before the coop even has a location in mind. Meanwhile there are actual coops (though they don't call themselves that) with skyrocketing membership who are doing, not planning, and slowly growing to encompass more than just produce. One of them now has a year-round greenhou…

There's one trying to get off the ground here, and it's a similar story - it has been more than five years and nothing has actually happened except marketing whatever it is they're doing. Meanwhile at least two different actual grocery stores have closed, and two more changed ownership; they could have bought either of them (I daresay a fundraiser would have worked) and kept them running. Some farmer's markets are hi…

Yeah, similar where I moved from about 8 years ago. We joined, they reached their numbers, and then.. nothing happened. We moved away, and it seems to be the same as when we left it. Still no store, but got a website etc.

Re: Starting a food co-op: Year 1

#63

Post by daxvena »

kthartic wrote: post #49
Semaphor wrote: post #46

I wish I could follow this, but the blog sadly lacks any (discoverable) RSS feeds. So qrush, any chance of that changing?

Not to be rude, but I don't think I've seen the term "RSS" in over ten years. I'm sure there's probably a niche group of people that still use them (maybe disproportionally higher amongst HN users), but I think OP can be forgiven for not including one.

I kind of feel like you're missing out then.

I was pretty young when RSS was "popular" and didn't really get into it back then. I started using it in the past couple of years, and I find it's one of the best ways to keep up to date with multiple things I want to follow (without being tied to a specific platform).

I would also be pretty surprised if you haven't heard of podcasts in over ten years. I feel like a "podcast" isn't really a podcast if it doesn't have an RSS feed.

Re: Starting a food co-op: Year 1

#64

Post by qrush »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #57

I read the article, but it is not clear what kind of co-op they want to create. Is it a brick & mortar, delivery? Is it making deals with local farmers & homesteads, or buying from large distributors at discount? I have participated in co-ops that were delivery only, local only. It was not always the cheapest, but for planning meals it worked out. The quality was almost always better if I just walked down to the larg…

We're definitely aiming towards a brick & mortar - but we are still figuring out distribution and more (and will continue to do so until we're open for business)

Re: Starting a food co-op: Year 1

#66

Post by bombcar »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #57

I read the article, but it is not clear what kind of co-op they want to create. Is it a brick & mortar, delivery? Is it making deals with local farmers & homesteads, or buying from large distributors at discount? I have participated in co-ops that were delivery only, local only. It was not always the cheapest, but for planning meals it worked out. The quality was almost always better if I just walked down to the larg…

So I've seen a couple of different kinds:

1. The one they're working on results in a "grocery store" when done - it's coop run and handles working with distributors, etc. It often ends up "feeling" like a Whole Foods or similar, as the "non-direct" farm products end up sourced from similar distributors.

2. The "farmer's market" type - where you end up with basically a continual farmer's market - this one can grow into being more of a "grocery store" but is often quite limited on the products available; think almost entirely local farm produce and nothing much else.

3. The "community supported agriculture" type - where you pay a flat fee and get a box every week/month/whatever, but don't really have much choice what's in the box. These can be the "closest to the farm" as you're literally getting boxes of whatever they're harvesting. However, they're often only active during harvest periods and you don't control what's in them.

The third one is the only one I've seen be consistently higher quality (and if I had to rank them it would go 3,2, 1) because the farmers pick the super ripe stuff for the CSA because they know it will be delivered and eaten in a day, not packed into a truck for travel across the country. You can also end up with strange fruits you've never heard of before, but still exist.

Re: Starting a food co-op: Year 1

#67

Post by itake »

kjbreil wrote: post #55
jpm_sd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Harvest shut down "after years of financial instability", what's the strategy for this new co-op to survive? If you can't run a successful co-op in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where can you?

Seattle area has the nations largest and oldest grocery co-op - https://www.pccmarkets.com . 16 stores and generally doing well. The answer to how to keep it going is to run it like a grocery chain with experienced leaders and good board governance. In my experience a lot of the smaller coops I've seen have a problem separating the ideology from the need to run a business, grocery is notoriously low margin so a littl…

pccmarket prices are sooo insanely expensive. I wonder who can afford to shop there :-/.

Re: Starting a food co-op: Year 1

#68

Post by Aachen »

miclill wrote: post #65

Cool, I've been a member of a Coop for about 10 years now. Website of our Coop (in German): https://foodcoop-karlsruhe.de

I had never heard of this concept before seeing this article. Great to hear it's in Germany also! Would you know if there is a list of co-ops in Germany somewhere, to see if there is one closer to me than Karlsruhe?

Re: Starting a food co-op: Year 1

#69

Post by Symbiote »

Aachen wrote: post #68
miclill wrote: post #65

Cool, I've been a member of a Coop for about 10 years now. Website of our Coop (in German): https://foodcoop-karlsruhe.de

I had never heard of this concept before seeing this article. Great to hear it's in Germany also! Would you know if there is a list of co-ops in Germany somewhere, to see if there is one closer to me than Karlsruhe?

Try REWE, the second largest supermarket chain in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cooperatives_in_Germa...

A little north, we have Coop Danmark, also the second-biggest retailer (runs the supermarkets Kvickly, Brugsen, SuperBrugsen, Fakta, Irma).

Re: Starting a food co-op: Year 1

#70

Post by derekbaker783 »

jpm_sd wrote: post #6
neilv wrote: post #2

This seems to be in the Boston, Mass., area. Some related local background is that there was the Harvest Co-op chain until a few years ago: https://www.boston.com/food/food/2018/10/04/harvest-co-op-ma... There's also the Market Basket for-profit regional chain, where employees and customers successfully stood up against some family business maneuvers to force out the head, and it's once again generally well-regarded…

Given that Harvest shut down "after years of financial instability", what's the strategy for this new co-op to survive? If you can't run a successful co-op in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where can you?

Syracuse, NY apparently: https://www.syracuse.coop/
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