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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

This seems to be in the Boston, Mass., area.

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...

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I mean… Stop and Shop is literally two blocks from where Russo’s was [1] so I’m not sure what relevance Harvest or Market Basket bring to this conversation. (Edit: I’m not trying to be dismissive, but it’s not really clear why these other stores are relevant. Are you suggesting that perhaps labor is being treated better than at the big chains?)

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,+...

I thought someone who's interested in new co-ops in this area would be interested in the history of a prior co-op that operated in this area.

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.

Given that Harvest shut down "after years of financial instability", what's the strategy for this new co-op to survive? If you can't run a successful co-op in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where can you?

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.

> 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 (since all employees are owners in addition to opt-in shoppers)

At this point, PCC is just Whole Foods with higher prices...

>> 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.

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...

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.

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.

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

Kickapoo exchange? Driftless folks on HN?

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 :)

Driftless adjacent.

> 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.

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/

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.

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

Here are more details are the year before harvest shutdown. Summarized to say that all the unique organic and varieties of healthy food they were once known for, can now be found at most other grocery stores. https://archive.ph/NEc4o

This could have been pre-pandemic thinking in 2018

Vermont has a fairly successful Co-op in Burlington.

https://www.citymarket.coop/

Vermont has a number of successful co-ops. https://nfca.coop/vt/ has a list of them.

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

The Brattleboro co-op is quite successful.

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.

I kind of love the old styler website and the .coop domain to booot!

I was able to figure out it's in the Boston area by the 617 area code and the name, but after spending 5 minutes looking for its actual location, I still can't find it. It doesn't seem to be on the website, and it's not on Google Maps either.

Does anyone know where this is actually located?

If you go to the FAQ, they say that they are likely several years from opening.

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