Most places I've lived on the west coast have grocery co-ops. Often they stand out in the market by carrying high quality, locally produced, or "hippie" food.

Some folks prefer to shop there because they like the model - co-op businesses generally seem to be more invested in local communities.

Yes, you are accurately describing the Harvest Co-op which operated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and failed to thrive. Aka "the People's Republic of Cambridge"?

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?

I went to the one in JP a lot before it closed. Our main issue was that the produce was often rotten / moldy and there were flies inside a lot. It's hard to justify higher fees and being "more healthy" when all your food is spoiled. We went because it was a 5 minute walk but now we use Whole Foods for everything.

Harvest's JP location was costing them an arm and a leg in maintenance and repair due to the building (an old mansion) being in very poor shape, and then Whole Foods bought up a property from a local ethnic 'super' market whose owners were done being in the grocery business.

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.

They are all over. There is a co-op in my college town of Fayetteville, AR. I was not a member but it's successful.

We have some CSAs and a couple health food stores that focus on local agricultural products. I don't think any of them are true coops though.

The co-op in Gays Mills, WI has been going strong since the 80's. All you need is a homogeneous community and some hippies. It's hard for one side to get one over on the other side when everyone shares the same corner store, pool, pub, and one-eyed barber. Love that place. You can smell the spices and herbs about 20ft from the door and it's just amazing. Like a spicy masala with a little skunk to it.

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.

One of the oldest food coops is in Park Slope Brooklyn, which is not rural but sure does have a bunch of hippies.

https://www.foodcoop.com/

That place is notoriously kind of a cult. I can see it from a place I frequent, and some of the staff at that place are co-op members. They occasionally engage in illicit gossip, any the co-op sounds awful. They also boast among their members several 60s era leftist terrorists, and weather underground hangers on.

Wild place, but their apiary is cool.

It's not a cult. Sure, there are busybodies pushing weird issues at the general assembly meetings, but I'd compare it to Trader Joe's if it were staffed by mostly volunteers who only work every 6 weeks - bit incompetent, but very normal.

Kickapoo exchange? Driftless folks on HN?

Driftless adjacent.

Yep you know the one. It's on the other side of the street from the barber shop and knicknack place the barber's wife owns. the one with those welded metal sculptures of people made from forks and scrap iron and stuff. You from around the area?

La crosse area, love going down to viroqua during this time of year though.

Lots of great memories having malts at the viroqua dairy :)

That was super informative except for the term “one-eyed barber”

In Seattle we have PCC, which is at least successful enough to have a bunch of different locations since my childhood. https://www.pccmarkets.com/about/

Seattle area has the nations largest and oldest grocery co-op - https://www.pccmarkets.com. 16 stores and generally doing well. The answer to how to keep it going is to run it like a grocery chain with experienced leaders and good board governance. In my experience a lot of the smaller coops I've seen have a problem separating the ideology from the need to run a business, grocery is notoriously low margin so a little waste is all that is needed to sink the buisness. Check https://www.ncg.coop/find-co-op to find a co-op near you.

pccmarket prices are sooo insanely expensive. I wonder who can afford to shop there :-/.

Whole Paycheck shoppers

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...

> The answer to how to keep it going is to run it like a grocery chain with experienced leaders and good board governance.

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).

>> PCC is also known to treat employees relatively poorly, just like grocery chains.

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.

Syracuse, NY apparently: https://www.syracuse.coop/

> If you can't run a successful co-op in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where can you?

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.