71–80 of 181 posts
The article mentions no open food coops in central or eastern Massachusetts but there are quite a few here in western Mass. Not sure why the difference but maybe it’s due to greatly cheaper rent?
It tends to work in places where a for-profit supermarket would be marginal (at best), but people still need their groceries, fuel, etc.
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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…
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…
They're just two different ways of approaching risk. The so-called "doers" are taking on much more up-front risk than this type of grassroots attempt. Ultimately the goal is the same.
I've been a co-op member for almost 20 years; back before I had kids and lived really close to the store we used to go there almost every day. The biggest draw was always the quality of the food; the chain stores were only selling conventional and mass-produced products and if you wanted a better and/or local product, the co-op was your place. But then in the mid-2000s we got Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and and an organic/specialty aisle in all the supermarkets. Eventually the organic aisle disappeared and it was just organic products on the regular shelves. When we moved away, our new city also had a co-op but it was a 15+ minute drive from home and there was very little draw for us: it was largely the same products we could get at our local stores, but 20% more expensive. The only reason to go there is if we happen to be in the area and/or if there's something we want that we know they only sell there, but that's no different than the 3 big-chain stores in our town.
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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 "podca…
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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).
There are two things named Cooperatives: One is a coop that is owned by those it serves, e.g. a housing coop is owned by those who live in the flats, a food coop is owned by those who buy the food. The other is the coop as a legal form of corporations where you have essentially no difference between a regular corporation, a LLC or a cooperative, and the cooperatives will usually own other entities with different legal forms for actually run the business.
ReWe is the latter, and has nothing in common but the name of the legal form with what is discussed here.
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…
edit: The quality was almost always better *than* if I just walked down to the large chain grocery store.
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)
And, although co-ops on the surface sound democratic, they can never achieve full democratic votes.
I have participated with where I get to pick what I wanted from a pre-determined list that I had no immediate input to (the co-op "buyers" were), and I have also seen the list extended to "for the future".
There was one where I got what I got, and had zero choice in what was in the basket.
There was one where my "basket content" could be exchanged with anyone else within co-op, e.g. I had too much sugar beets and member X had too much kohlrabi. We wanted what the other had, bam! exchange made prior to delivery. This also helped with waste reduction.
Good luck!
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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…
There's one in Berkeley California with a fully stocked model train department filling 1/4 of the floorspace.