Stuck in a Food Desert, Neighbors Are Building a Co-Op of Their Own | Hacker News Reader

Stuck in a Food Desert, Neighbors Are Building a Co-Op of Their Own

yesmagazine.org

46 pointskawera41 comments

The UK has at least 4,000 co-operative food stores [1], most of which use a common brand even as they're run by different groups. (There are probably a few independent co-operatives, too.) I'm curious how they decide where to set up a new one.

One of my relatives was a very strong supporter of the Co-op movement. He shopped there, used their bank, bought appliances and energy from them, took their package holidays, and left instructions in their will that he was to have a Co-op funeral. I was impressed that he stuck to his belief for his whole life.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-operative_Food

One of the largest grocery chains in Norway, Sweden and Denmark is literally called Coop.

They're really popular, they have over 1 million members in Norway and Denmark each (of a population of 5 million each) and 3 million in Sweden (of 9.5 million).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coop_Norden

In neighbouring Finland, the largest grocery chain (S-ryhmä, using brand S-market) is also a co-operative. It is the merger result of the so called "red" and "white" co-op chains.

S-ryhmä, together with the private chain of stores (K-ryhmä) are now seen as a politically corrupt duopoly which is responsible for the high price of food in the country. S-ryhmä "owns" many politicians and have a disproportionately large influence on zoning decisions made by municipalities so that competing stores face a barrier of entry to market as they cannot get a plot to build a shop. The locally emerging German giant, Lidl, is seen as a healthy influence here, bringing some competition to the market.

So, all in all, co-ops are not inherently good.

(Market share: S-shops have 46 %, K-shops have 33 %, Lidl has 8 %. Spar has all but disappeared. S-shops sell much of the same stuff as you find in a Co-op in Sweden, as they work together in purchasing logistics to achieve economies of scale.)

(PS: If you see a shop marked with "KKK" in Finland, don't worry, it's not owned by the Ku Klux Klan. The K group just has different sizes of shops, small corner shops are "K", medium-sized markets are "KK" and hypermarkets are "KKK".)

Are they really co-operatives? I thought they were just regular supermarkets with a loyalty card and a political wing (!).

Now I think about it, the fact that 24 of our MPs are members of a political party funded by a chain of shops is really weird.

It's more than that, the Labour party is substantially funded by Lord Sainsbury. Most political parties are mostly funded by a few wealthy individuals.

http://www.itv.com/news/update/2015-04-18/just-76-people-mad...

Right but if it was literally the Tesco political party it would look weird wouldn't it? Isn't that what the co-op party is?

They are really co-operatives. You can join the biggest co-operative here [1]. I used to be a member (before I left the UK), and before the financial crisis I was sent a £10-or-so dividend each year. Some years there's been no dividend, when the money has been invested in the business. Members also vote for the board.

This one is smaller, just for the East of England [2], but has paid a dividend this year.

[1] http://www.co-operative.coop/membership/

[2] http://www.thenews.coop/95226/news/co-operatives/east-englan...

A dividend and voting rights - isn't that what you'd get with owning a share of Tesco which isn't a cooperative?

Yes; the difference is, I understand, that in a co-op, every owner has one vote and gets the same dividend. So you cannot buy a bulk of the stock to invest more heavily, nor can you buy a controlling stake.

I'm glad the co-op is able to bring the community together, however, I am disturbed by the fact that like the title implies, residents were "stuck." Grocery stores were 2.5 miles away, but that was too far to get reasonably priced food and instead residents were gouged for $5 gallons of milk at the corner store.

I fear that the $2 million being invested into the co-op could have been better used for infrastructure, not only enabling folks to journey to nearby grocery stores, but also opening up more employment opportunities.

Possibly, but it sounds like the money is coming from a ton of sources and it may not have been available for infrastructure - for instance, some of the money is a building improvement loan from the store owner.

There are many food deserts in the USA, and I suspect infrastructure is a large part of the problem

https://apps.ams.usda.gov/fooddeserts/fooddeserts.aspx

Many seem to misunderstand how large the USA is, how dispersed the population is, and how impractical it is to implement alternate infrastructure to solve the alleged problem. Walking/biking infrastructure is only feasible with high enough population densities; below some threshold, "car culture" absolutely dominates unless you're raising your own food. Grocery stores require a minimum number of recurring customers (and low enough crime rates); given a sufficiently dispersed population, the average viable distance between stores may very well exceed the distance criteria currently defining "food desert", even though people have moved to those areas knowing full well stores were far away.

Following your link, I was surprised there's a "food desert" near my home; yes it may be a bit far from the nearest grocery, but if you live in this area you _must_ have a car and thus have no trouble reaching a ridiculous number of grocery stores.

> but if you live in this area you _must_ have a car and thus have no trouble reaching a ridiculous number of grocery stores.

And because of this mentality, everyone that cannot or will not drive will end up being ripped off with $5 US milk gallons and the like.

What will you do if you find yourself with a minor disability and unable to meet your financial obligations? Take one big hit, sell your underwater property and move to an affordable walkable area (where, exactly)? Or accept the death of the thousand cuts and keep buying at the local kwiki mart, fully aware that their mark up prices are twice or thrice what they should be?

You don't seem to understand my point. I live by the area, so have a clue about how & why it's a "food desert". There is no "local wiki mart" in that area, and the nearest one is just a block from a real grocery store; if you can get to one, you can get to the other. There's not enough population density to support a walk/bike infrastructure that's meaningfully different from existing roads, nor enough customers within the defined range of a grocery store to support one with a walking/biking population. If "you find yourself with a minor disability" you wouldn't be walking or biking there anyway, you'll either drive yourself (you wouldn't live in that area without a car) or get a ride from someone else (if you don't have a car, that doesn't stop practically everyone else around you from having one - this isn't a no-car area). It's a 5 minute drive from the farthest point on that map's "food desert" (in zip code 30040) to a Publix, Super Walmart, Super Target, Ingles, Kroger, Sprouts, and a dozen varying ethnic/local specialty groceries. Drive by the poorest communities and you'll see a car next to every home.

Please understand: in a large portion of the USA, not having a car isn't an option. That's not because of any intentional malice, it's just that grocery stores need a certain volume of customers to be viable, and the population density is low enough that walking/biking is absolutely not an option (no matter how good the infrastructure, for which there isn't the necessary tax base anyway). The infrastructures Europeans & many Orientals take for granted are only possible precisely because of the high population densities and limited quasi-urban distances. Here in the USA, outside [sub]urban areas we're really spread out, not congregating in villages that make local grocery stores & walking paths viable.

Infrastructure investments are long, time-consuming, and done by municipal or state governments, not by residents & non-profits. Evidently the government didn't care enough to make that possible.

Additionally, they're not always a great option. Here are the bus route suggestions from the affected area to the nearest grocery stores:

- https://www.google.com/maps/dir/2200+Phillips+Ave,+Greensbor...

- https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Kim+Food+Mart/Food+Lion,+231...

20min one-way bus rides are pretty time consuming.

I visited Greensboro once for an event at the university. I make a point of taking public transit all over the world and have made transit work for me in Europe, Asia, rural parts of Mexico... but I couldn't in Greensboro. The transit instructions to get to & from the airport on a weekend involved steps like, "get a taxi, take it 20 miles to this bus line, then sit on the bus line for an hour" when the hotel was 15 miles from the airport.

I tried to walk to a fellow conference-goer's hotel from my hotel to meet up for dinner. It was just 2 block. After confronting a bunch of 10-foot tall fences around parking lots and ending up on a highway entrance ramp from a dead-end sidewalk, only 50 feet from my destination but unable to get there, I was finally forced to admit that car is king there and they don't want you walking. (I did finish walking there by going around all the fences, darting down an unlit busy street in a valley with no sidewalk and no shoulder, and approaching from the other side.)

Being my cynical self, I don't think the government didn't care enough to make infrastructure investments possible. I think they actively didn't want to give handouts to those no-good lazy moochers of government service who oughta get real jobs and get a car like responsible citizens.

I've heard Heritage Foundation people and others argue very strongly that people should just buy cars -- public transportation is an inefficient handout -- but I can't find any quotes right now. Stephen Moore in this debate made remarks in that direction (http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/1...) but he didn't include my favorite line (by some candidate) that people should just join a church that will help them monetarily with buying a car so they can be good US citizens.

http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2012/07/race-class-and-stig... http://www.wnyc.org/story/285757-back-of-the-bus-documentary...

It's not as if these places are impossible to access. The existing bus routes are just not well planned for this trip. These journeys are both less than 15 minutes by bike.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=mapzen_bicycl...

Not only can you carry more food on a bike than you can on the bus, but it's good exercise too.

I'd be much more scared to bike in Greensboro than in Manhattan. Drivers aren't used to bikes and the streets in some areas are poorly set up for biking (no shoulders, many lanes in each direction, high speed limits, so you have to cross four lanes of traffic with one a highway entrance to make a left turn).

In the 1990s, I got hit by a car while biking in the bike lane in Greensboro, on UNCG campus.

As kaitai & teddyc, mentioned the roads aren't as bike-friendly. Now trying to be a mother with kids in tow trying to bike a total of 30 minutes, in a not bike-friendly area, to the grocery store and back.

it's worse than 20 minutes. That bus only runs every 30 minutes, so unless you get lucky chances are the trip back is going to be closer to 40.

Unrelated question - is anyone aware of why when you hear about cooperatives, it almost always pertains to food?

I love the idea of having cooperatives for all types of business (welding shops, software engineering groups, etc etc). It's such a great business model: promotes passion in employees, business decisions are vetted by multiple people, and many great things for the community.

I sometimes dream of starting a non-profit that pays for all the legal documents (the big one being bylaws and how it should operate under member management). So any Jane Doe not gifted in legalese could start a cooperative for her idea.

Where are you located? In the US we also have agricultural supply co-ops, agricultural producers co-ops (dairy, produce, etc), housing co-ops, bicycle co-ops, electricity co-ops, credit unions, shops like REI, the Associated Press, community ISPs, community water associations, and others. Some of these types of co-ops are very popular in their respective sectors: electric coops are often the only choice for electricity in rural areas, many markets have a variety of credit unions to choose from, agricultural supply co-ops are universal in the countryside, etc..

If you only read mass media, most co-ops are too obscure for anything other than universal needs like food. My town for example, has a co-op printing shop and a co-op bookstore as well as a co-op grocery. A FOSS project could be seen as a co-op in some ways, too.

There are people trying to spread the idea of cooperatives to "sharing economy" tech platforms.[1][2]

[1] http://platformcoop.net/video-stream

[2] http://americablog.com/2015/11/meet-the-activists-who-would-...

Hopefully some discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10615241

We are still experimenting (though we are profitable), but my startup[1] is working on an open source toolkit for building cooperative businesses. Our eventual goals are to build a diverse network of coops across multiple industries and to lower the barrier of entry for being a business owner/co-owner.

I would love to see coops everywhere! Unfortunately they can be a bit complicated to set up and operate. I really hope we can change that.

[1]: https://infinite.ai

This is exactly what I had imagined. Very cool, I wish you the best of luck!

This article won't make sense if you're not from the area.

If you live in Greensboro, you need a car to be effective. The structure of the city (suburban sprawl with few boulevards) means that public transit is slow and unreliable.

Also, this is more than just a grocery store. It will be the anchor of a strip mall that has been decaying ever since the Winn-Dixie left. It is a way to organize and galvanize neighborhood members. It will provide good jobs to those in the area. These intangibles go far beyond the small profit the store will make.

Co-ops are great! I am from a part of the US that has a lot, thanks to the trickle-down influence of all the left-wingers in northern Minnesota and upper Michigan (Wisconsin seems to have a different ethnic mix and lots of farmer co-ops but not as many buyer co-ops.) It seems to be a good time for co-ops again in some parts of the US: they're growing lots of places and they can be a good investment when they're expanding. Kudos to the Greensboro-ans, and I hope they see the power they can wield when they work together!

Here is a great contrarian point to the CityLab discovery about induced demand. An individual is unwilling to walk 2 miles to the nearest grocery store, the solution would be to take a bus, however a route does not exist the ideal solution would be a car. However, entrepreneurs stepped in and identified what the non-car community would pay for things and still turn a profit: $5 for milk from readily available stores. As an aside, how is this any different from Walgreens/CVS' model of having multiple convenient locations, but charge a larger premium.

The idea of a food desert is non-sense as people have access to food, they just want cheaper prices.

Access to unaffordable food isn't access.

I think you're missing some supply and demand calculations here. Since many people can't afford $5 for the milk, don't have a car, can't walk the 2 miles back & forth with 4 kids because they don't have enough stroller space for 2 and can't carry the purchased food and the kid at the same time, they just don't buy the milk. They buy the Coke for $0.99 at the gas station.

If you're poor of course you want cheaper prices! "Let them eat cake..."

You don't seriously think that a drug store suffices as a food source.

I could be totally off base here, but couldn't people without access to a good grocery store just buy their groceries online and have them delivered? Does it cost more to have groceries shipped?

I understand Co-Op's offer more cheaply priced groceries and that's a great community project so I'm not suggesting Co-Op's have no point. They're great things. I'm just wondering what the difference between big box grocery stores and online grocery delivery is?

couldn't people without access to a good grocery store just buy their groceries online and have them delivered

Of course they could, but those who live in food deserts aren't those who would (at this time, at least).

Online grocery delivery is still only in limited, typically wealthy areas and is still more expensive. I think it also caters to people buying higher priced items such as more expensive meat or seafood, where the cost of delivering it is a small percentage of the value. Let's assume for a box filled with $5 and $10 items such as chicken, steak, coffee, etc that the delivery cost is $0.25 or $0.50 per item... that might not be a big deal for people here. But say you're buying boxes of $1.00 Rice in a box, or cans of beans and the cost of delivery makes a bigger difference in your cost per meal.

Items sold in online grocery services are also marked up higher than they are in stores, for example: "Celeste Frozen Pizza is 99-cents at ShopRite, $1.29 at Peapod and a whopping $2.69 at FreshDirect"(source: http://6abc.com/archive/8983520/)

It also assumes that people can be home for the delivery, neighborhoods like this might not be the type where you want $50 to $100 worth of groceries sitting outside your apartment building.

Making the actual payment is another thing to consider. Not everyone has credit or debit cards. It looks like online grocery sellers also can't legally accept EBT, Wic or other food programs for online grocery delivery: https://www.facebook.com/notes/peapod-delivers/why-we-dont-a...

Online groceries require planning, time, and at least for the foreseeable future will come at a premium cost. It's great for certain people but I hope it does not become the only option for groceries.

This is how the Onion River Coop started (City Market) in Burlington.

https://www.citymarket.coop/

"A mile or more from a grocery store" isn't that terribly far - plenty of suburbs, to say nothing of rural areas, meet that criteria.

Now imagine that you're living paycheque to paycheque, barely making ends meet, and your car breaks down and you can't afford to fix it until next month. How do you buy groceries? You walk over to the corner store talked about in the article and pay $5 for a gallon of milk.

Speaking from my own (not super broad) experience, people who live in suburbs are often better off than the people that this article is talking about. Having to drive to get groceries, while necessary, isn't the same kind of hardship. And most of the rural folks I know have two things that help: a huge pantry down in the basement full of canned goods and a deep-freeze or two full of frozen food, and a good enough relationship with their neighbours that they could get a ride or tow into town to get their car fixed.

It's weird in my city. There's a pile of apartment buildings right downtown, but there hasn't been a grocery store there for probably 10-15 years. I lived there when I was a student (it was a short-ish walk to the university), the only time I managed to actually buy groceries and cook was when my roommate and I happened to be home at the same time and we could use her car (when it was working). Otherwise, the easiest food to get was Subway which was less than a block away, or eat on Campus before I came home. Transit was a waste of time, it'd take over an hour each way to get to a grocery store. It was pretty much the definition of a Food Desert, and it sucked.

I'm sitting in Greensboro right now, this doesn't surprise me.

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