Co-ops: Making Waves
added 05/05/10
by Jaime Baker Richardson
Education Programs Assistant
In the 1930s, the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal sparked cooperative efforts nationwide that included the establishment of a number of food co-ops. Discouraged by the quality and prices of the products and services they were receiving from their local purveyors,
consumers from coast to coast banded together to form buying clubs and open their own grocery stores. From Berkeley, California, to Hanover, New Hampshire—and many places in between—a wave of newly established consumer cooperatives met the needs of their communities.
The late 1960s and the 1970s saw a second wave of consumer cooperatives established in the United States, driven by the desire to find products free of the chemicals and industrialized production methods that had come into use following World War II. This new wave emerged in an era of movements—civil rights, anti-war, back-to-the-land, the first Earth Day. Consumers formed cooperatives as an alternative economic model with a focus on natural food, community support, and concern for the environment. Stores were primarily opened by young idealistic members, and most sold only natural, unrefined whole and bulk foods. These co-ops were pioneers in what would become a booming natural foods industry.
This fresh wave of consumer-owned co-ops resulted in a variety of storefronts from small natural food stores to full-sized supermarkets. Some were run by volunteers, some by paid staff. Various forms of management existed, from self-management by workers to more traditional hierarchical structures. Since this new wave of co-ops focused primarily on natural foods, many co-ops began as, and remain, strictly sellers of natural and organic goods.
Like its fellow consumer co-ops, the Hanover Co-op held true to its origins and the diversity of its membership while responding to consumers’ changing needs. In 1975, the Hanover Co-op converted an outbuilding on the property of its Park Street location to house new bulk, international, and natural products, creating what came to be known as the “BIN.” Today, combined sales from bulk, international, and natural grocery products comprises roughly 14 percent of total sales from the Co-op’s three food stores.
Co-ops—both new and established—quickly learned that sound business practices were crucial to their continued success. Keeping long-term members loyal and converting founders into new bulk shoppers created challenges for many consumer co-ops of that time. Inadequate support from wholesalers across the country complicated their efforts. As a result, the new consumer cooperative movement in America had mixed success, especially in contrast to Europe and Asia, where the co-op business model thrived. Some of the old wave co-ops went out of business. Others, like Hanover, became stronger.
While consumer co-ops no longer experience the phenomenal expansion of the 1970s, new food co-ops— like the Littleton Co-op in Littleton, New Hampshire— continue to open across the country, and most secondwave food co-ops are flourishing, even in today’s economy. Many have opened second or third stores and continue to show positive growth in sales.
In 2005, a group of cooperative organizations collaborated to form the Food Co-op 500 program, with the goal of growing the food co-op community from 300 to 500 co-ops (including those opening additional stores) by the year 2015.
