Food Co-ops: Good Food and Good Prices

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"When we first started," Susan recalls, "I thought the auction idea was going to be a real headache. But it's !turned out to be a lot of fun. More than that, it's good for the coop. It gives people a chance to see cooperation work and to sense the strength of their own buying power."

After the auction's completed, folks tally up their bills, add a 15% markup for coop expenses, check to see if their accounts have credit or debit from the preceding month . . . and then prepay the entire amount of their orders.

And do the clubbers save money? Well, Susan recently bought 10 pounds of rolled oats, 10 pounds of wild honey, 3 pounds of cheddar cheese, 5 pounds of garbanzo beans, one 17-ounce can of tahini, and 2 gallons of unfiltered apple juice. The final cost to her was $27.45. The price for the same items at a nearby health food store would have totaled a budget-busting $41.66!

MY THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN

Amazingly enough, the boom in both large and small consumer-controlled food groups has led to a new phenomenon: the coop warehouse. The members, owners, and legal governors of such "co-ops' coops" are not individual customers but smaller cooperative businesses! Such groups join together and establish a warehouse to order, store, and deliver vast quantities of high-quality foods . . . thereby providing access and savings-to the member stores and buying clubs-that would simply not be available otherwise.

In fact, one of the most prosperous and far-reaching of these emerging "megacoops"-the Ozark Cooperative Food Warehouse in Fayetteville, Arkansas-now serves over 350 buying clubs and storefronts . . . from Mississippi to Kansas!

And such super-organizations serve to prove that the entire network of American co-ops is becoming stronger and more organized. The two national co-op associations-Consumers Cooperative Alliance (which recently sponsored a countrywide convention in Austin, Texas) and Cooperative League of the U.S.A. (which produces canned products under the famous twinpine CO-OP label)-are starting to work closely together.

All the while-in every area of the countrymore individual food co-ops are sprouting, growing, and prospering. As Jim Hawkins of the Ozark warehouse has written:

"The cooperative circle grows and yet is filled as it expands. There's room for all."

How To Start Your Own Co-op

The shift to cooperative food buying is among the strongest of organized people's movements in the U.S. today. More and more folks are using buying groups to get access to less expensive and/or more healthful foods, to gain some control over their consumer lives, and to share the experience of working with others. If you want to get involved in this cause, the easiest thing to do is to find a functioning food co-op and join it. (Psst: Be prepared to help!) And the best resource for locating a nearby chow club is the cooperatively published Food Co-op Directory (P.O. Box 4218, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87196) . . . a guide which is priced at $4.00-postpaidto individuals and alternative non-profit groups, and $7.00 to businesses, institutions, and government agencies.

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