October is Co-op Month

I visited a food cooperative, Coopportunity Market and Deli.

The store in Culver City, California is part of a two-store group with the other in Santa Monica (which I haven't visited) and something in the store reminded me.

 -- 2019 Co-op Month

Part of a mixed use development with housing above, and proximate to freeways, major arterials but also across the street from the Expo Line Culver City Station and visible from the line, it was a knock out store.

The nicest (or another way to put it might be "the most upscale") food cooperative I've ever seen, with the way the store was organized being superior even to the group of PCC Community Markets food cooperative stores headquartered in but not limited to Seattle or the separate Central Co-op in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. (Greater Minneapolis also has a preponderance of food cooperatives but I haven't been there in years.)

It had great deli, bakery, produce, and beer and wine sections, and fabulous indoor and outdoor seating areas.

Maybe because they had a traditional and well-respected retail design firm help them.

I haven't been to the Common Market co-op in Frederick, Maryland, but the store promotion materials they produce, including a regular bi-monthly newsletter called Spoonful, are excellent.

Most of the other food cooperatives I've been to merely distribute materials like the Delicious Living magazine which heavily hypes vitamins and supplements (natural foods markets make a lot of money off this stuff, even though research tends to indicate they don't have much positive effect).

So it's worth revisiting some past writings on food cooperatives:

-- "Food co-ops as potential anchors of "ethical commercial districts," 2011
-- "Pogue's Run Grocer food cooperative, Indianapolis," 2018
-- "The lost opportunity of the Takoma Food Co-op as a transformational driver for the Takoma Junction district," 2018

And on Cooperative Month in general, this round up piece from last year:

-- October is Co-operative Month

Saturday October 19th is Food Cooperative Day in Philadelphia ("Cooperative businesses foster human connection in an increasingly isolated world," Grid Magazine).