“It’s really about what the membership wants, what the community wants, if our community said we want you to sell Doritos. Okay, well, then we’re selling Doritos.”
—Lucy Geeorgeff, general manager, High Falls Food Co-Op
Standing out in back of the High Falls Food Co-op (HFFC), director of marketing Jan Melchior and general manager Lucy Georgeff move away from the mechanical racket of the industrial-strength air-conditioning units while they recall their entrée into the world of grocery-store cooperatives.
“I had a group, a bunch of moms,” said Georgeff, “and we would go meet a truck, and we would get a case of fig bars and split a bag of beans. And it lasts you for a long time. And then you do it again.”
Buying directly from the distributors, they were able to get bulk supplies cheaper. For instance, they could package and share a 50-pound bag of oats. “Buying clubs,” said Melchior. By banding together, people increased their buying power.
“They still exist in some pockets, where a bunch of people come together, and pool their resources,” added Georgeff. “We’re essentially doing the same thing now.”
Rather than being part of a buying club, however, they are members in and employees of one of the longest-running grocery store cooperatives in the state. The HFFC, incorporated in 1976, moved to its present building at the corner of Route 213 and Lucas Avenue in the early Nineties.
“We’re part of the Seventies wave which was a lot of back-to-the-landers,” said Melchior. “I mean, that’s what it was. And now there’s a new wave, and it’s a lot of urban food Coops who are recognizing that there’s this absence of nutrition in some areas.”
The keys to success
In 2018, the 1346-member-strong Kingston Food Coop (KFC), which, recognizing the need to provide affordable and nutritious food, sought to serve the community by opening a grocery store in the food desert of Midtown Kingston. After five years of effort, having bought a building and spent another half-million dollars on contractors and architects, the project has finally been scuttled by a mire of practical issues of zoning and space.
“I hope that they can maintain their mission, and I hope they can maintain their drive, because there should be more food co ops. We actually have a meeting coming up with them,” said Georgeff. “We read the article (Mirage in Midtown, HV1, August 6, 2023), we called them and said, Hey, let’s get together and talk. We’ve been operating a store and a business for so long that we figured, you know, we have something to offer. Let’s see what we might be able to do together.”
Unlike the KFC, which received substantial financial support from the Novo Foundation, the HFFC didn’t begin with deep-pocketed donors. Georgeff identified member labor and member economic participation as key to the success of the organization.
Getting off the ground
Typically, co-ops figure out their share amount based on how much they project they’re going to need to get off the ground. Years-long efforts to open up a storefront aren’t unusual. Georgeff noted the Dorchester food coop in Boston just opened after ten years of preparation.
Once a coop is open, though, she considers closing unlikely.
There are in the neighborhood of 223 food co-ops listed across the United States. Minnesota holds the lead with 20 individual and separate food co-ops. California follows next with twelve and New York with eleven. These cooperatives all operate on some variation of the member-customer-as-owner model as the HFFC, which has switched from annual dues to what is called an equity model. Would-be shareholders now pay a one-time price for a share in the cooperative, which gives them a vote in the operation and direction of the co-op as well as a return on profits generated. In a year when the co-op makes a profit, members receive a “patronage refund” based on the amount of their purchases over that year.
HFFC reports just over 800 members. The cost of a share is $200. It gets you voting rights, you can have a seat on the board, and you get access to monthly members-only specials. Members can volunteer three hours a week and receive an eight percent discount. Members struggling financially are offered a discount of ten percent of all purchases through a program called Food For All …
Strengthening membership
“It is important to remember that the value of being a member-owner is in the use of services,” said Melchior. “In other words, there are businesses that you could invest in, never use, and yet still make money on your investment. Shopping here makes the business profitable, supports local farmers, and employs your neighbors.”
Enthusiasts for co-ops tend to beat the drum for community frequently, and part of the responsibilities of the high functionaries include the production of that organization’s propaganda. It’s little surprise that Melchior and Georgeff return to the topic of community again and again. When the benefits to community are discussed, it’s important to illustrate what those benefits resemble.
The HFFC describes itself as an autonomous, voluntary organization, democratically organized and controlled by its members, the shareholders. The economic benefits returned to the members through the equity model are not invested back into the operation. Georgeff puts the differential in pay between the people at the top of the operation and the rank-and-file at two to one.
With 180 locations and 26,000 employees, Hannaford is the largest food retail chain in northern New England. It is owned by a Netherlands-based international company, Ahold Dehaize, which also owns Stop & Shop.
ShopRite’s grocery empire consists of more than 270 supermarkets and 40,200 employees. ShopRite is itself the fourth largest cooperative of any kind in the United States. Its members are 50 businesses that formed the cooperative.
The co-op universe
The primary survival strategy of any co-op is cooperation. By providing its employees and member-customers a stake in the game and by selling the products of other businesses who share the same philosophies, HFFC charts its course. Co-op produced products Cabot Creamery, Real Pickle, Organic Valley, and Blue Diamond are all around us, sold on the shelves in plain sight.
“Frontier is probably the co-op that we purchase the most,” said Georgeff. “They grow and sell dried herbs. They’re based in Iowa.”
HFFC forms alliances with other cooperatives. “We have a national partner,” said Georgeff. “We belong to a business services co-op. And we get cost support for big distributors from them. Just a bigger co-op. It’s a co-op of food co-ops.”
Local, national, regional and international structures enable co-ops like HFFC to remain competitive with the non-co-op model.
“You have to ask what the incentive is for people to collaborate and help each other out. It’s not maximum profit,” said Melchior. “I think a lot of business decisions are still motivated by self-serving interests.”
She talked about the triple bottom line, known as people, planet and profit. to explain.“Any profit that we make goes back to supporting this community enterprise and supporting livable wages for the community members who work here,” she said, “plus help the local farmers who as much as possible grow organic foods that are better for the planet.”
Healthy food has become synonymous in the mind of cash-strapped shoppers with expensive food. For those people working under a tight budget, sometimes working three jobs, the co-op designed a solidarity fund, to which more well-off can pay into. The co-op funds any portion of a membership a cash-strapped member can’t afford.
“It’s interesting,” Melchior said. “If you go to a grocery store like Hannaford or ShopRite, they now have natural foods. They now have organic vegetables, but they’re actually in my experience more expensive. Of course you can go shop there and get food that’s not natural much, much cheaper.”
By “not natural,” she means food with synthetic chemicals. Factory-farmed, government-subsidized meat, refined flour, GMO grains, other crops treated with glyphosate, high-fructose corn syrup, and so on, which are cheaper than untainted crops, fruits and vegetables as well as humanely raised, unmedicated meat.
“Our members have decided that they want this to be a store that sells natural and organic foods,” said Melchior, “which are by nature more expensive.”
She maintains the co-op is competitively priced. “The thing about our co-op that’s important to know is that our prices reflect what we need to earn to keep the lights on and pay employees a livable wage,” said Georgeff. “We do want to earn a profit because if we have a profit we can put it back into the building, put it back into the facilities. We have to be able to reinvest to stay current and stay open. And then any profit that we have left over, that’s what we get back to the membership. Does that make sense?”
It’s what people want
In a conscious effort to keep money in the community, over 30 percent of the stores purchases are derived from local vendors. The member-owned cooperative strives to take feedback and direction from as many people as possible. What the community wants, the community gets.
“The other 70 percent is made up of items that the community wants,” said Melchior. “Toilet paper, chips, cereal, peanut butter, candy. You’d be surprised how much people really do want that package stuff.”
“It’s really about what the membership wants,” agreed Georgeff. “What the community wants, If our community said we want you to sell Doritos, okay, well, then we’re selling Doritos.”
It concerns Melchior that many people still don’t understand what a co-op is.
“A lot of people think they can’t shop here unless they’re a member. Some people I think don’t even know that a co-op is a grocery store. Or maybe they think it’s, like, a food pantry.”
Melchior said she would love to see a successful food co-op in Kingston, “and figure out how we can work together, because if we can strengthen the whole cooperative economy the world’s gonna be better off. But anyway, you don’t have to be a member to shop here.”
All, said Melchior, are welcome.
Join the family! 
