Most food co-ops belong to co-op partnerships and many will cross honor memberships at other co-ops ie the Putney co-op will give you a member discount if you're a Brattleboro co-op member
A co-op has a lot of positive externalities: better customer experience, better benefits, pay, and job satisfaction for the employees than at non-co-op grocery stores, the community it fosters, etc. If these things matter to you, they can outweigh the premium the co-op has to charge to provide them.
I worked in the Lexington Co-op in Buffalo back in the 90s. It was a great job despite the meager pay and benefits (at the time) because I didn't feel like I was the lackey of the customers or my bosses but their friend and neighbor. I was in graduate school, which was depressing and alienating. I found the co-op a far nicer place to live my life than academia. It's been many years, but it's still one of the best jobs I've had. I met my wife there. My pay is better now, but I still shop at co-ops when I can.
Some folks prefer to shop there because they like the model - co-op businesses generally seem to be more invested in local communities.
I dunno, maybe it was mismanaged due to excessive ideological community involvement? Or maybe operating costs were just too high in one of the most expensive cities in the nation?
Harvest built out a very fancy new store very close to a major subway/bus terminus that was gorgeous but everyone went to the Whole Foods which was closer to the higher population-dense areas. Location, location, location - but also WF was very stiff competition.
I never saw rotten produce. I have no idea what the other commenter is on about. Organic, locally-sourced, heirloom produce often isn't as pretty as the stuff genetically modified or bred to survive being shipped halfway around the world and stored in a warehouse for 6 months.
I think co-ops work in more rural areas because it's not a fad to be there, it's the smart choice. Places in Cali are competing with an entire world of food on the same 10 square miles.
Wild place, but their apiary is cool.
On a more serious note, the Seattle Median Income is $120,907 for 2022, see page 4: https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Housing/Proper...
PCC is also known to treat employees relatively poorly, just like grocery chains. There are also complaints about an "old boys" culture, familiar to anyone that worked retail long-term.
In the Seattle area, there are better coops like Central Co-op (with similar prices and better worker treatment).
I've heard this about every employer in Seattle. Forever, Costco had a great rep, now you can't mention it anywhere without people shitting on it. Starbucks used to give out benefits and was heralded, now being crapped on. Gravity Payments, lol at the founder's recent news stories.
And so forth. A lot of them are with good reason, but I'm pretty sure there's a strong sentiment in this city that "all management is bad management" even in employee-owned stores. Winco is a good example of that.
I mention that my employment at Microsoft was pretty good, despite being caught up in numbers-based layoffs, and people harshly wonder how I can speak well of a former employer who terminated my job without warning.
It's hard to take all the criticism all that seriously, to be honest.
In the UK we have two large grocery co-op chains. Waitrose is a worker owned co-op filling the Whole Foods niche while The Co-op is a consumer owned co-op with a mix of smaller grocery stores and medium sized supermarkets. In the US I think REI is the largest retail co-op, though we have at least one small food co-op in SF.
Once they reach a certain size they’re not all that different from regular public companies.
They’re perhaps more common in financial services with credit unions and mutual funds like Vanguard having customer owned structures. The U.K. used to have building societies (equivalent to US credit unions) but almost all turned into banks giving their members shares in the 80s and 90s.
Russo’s was definitely a high-end, premium prices place: Fancy imported cheeses, a large bakery, fresh-made pasta, and a large selection of fresh fruit and vegetables. I have no idea if the workers were paid better or treated better than anywhere else.
A co-op feels like a different beast altogether, so I’m not sure that the patrons of Russo’s will suddenly just move to shopping there en masse, especially since the market for groceries around here is well served. It really feels like the coop would mostly not be about the food.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/570+Pleasant+St,+Watertown,+...
Also, one of the things that the co-op seemed to value was treating workers well, which overlaps with one of my favorite recent stories of people banding together (a little like a co-op), to succeed. And that store is known for better prices than the others, making it more accessible while a certain premium store has been gobbling up other ones, so there's another social justice angle that might be of interest.
Does anyone know where this is actually located?
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 AFAIK (including profit-sharing for employees). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_Basket_(New_England)#20...