Consumer Cooperatives

Today, many newly opened food co-ops are Black-led and serve a majority-Black membership base. Not so long ago, such Black-led food co-ops were rare. Here is how that transformation occurred.

With the rising cost of gas, vehicles, and maintenance, sharing transportation may be the way to go. But what if your community has limited public transportation options, or you’re looking for an affordable or eco-friendly option to travel? A car share co-op may be a good fit. But what is it?

Usually, cooperatives are created by people as a reaction to specific, most often local, conditions. Through their joint action individuals show collective or social agency and the conviction that they must work together to pursue their shared interests. In this way, each new cooperative is an experiment and an attempt to change and innovate.

The Dorchester Food Co-op is a new community & worker-owned grocery store that aims to make healthy food accessible and advance economic opportunity and neighborhood engagement. General manager John Santos joins CommonWealth's Jennifer Smith to discuss the co-op's origins and business model.

This session will explore the power of cooperatives working across three very different contexts: Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Cooperative, Cecosesola and Ventures. It will explore how the cooperative economic model provides benefits both for employees and the communities they serve. 

Ebony Gustave writes about touring several cooperatives in the Hudson Valley as part of the Cooperative Leaders & Scholars Fellowship.

Investor Owned Firms will continue to seek regulatory treatment similar to cooperatives but without having to adhere to any type of democratic and fairness principles. Competitors of cooperatives can also be expected to search for ways to try to undermine member solidarity.

When is a “Coop” not really a cooperative? The short answer is whenever the actual activity of the “cooperative” is not carried out by the members but by employees. The problem is, of course, not in cooperation per se but in the hiring, employing, renting, or leasing of people to carry out the supposedly “cooperative” activities of the “cooperative.”

GO-OP rail is a new type of Open Access operator who may just provide an alternative. It’s local, very community based and with a co-operative ownership model that means it is there to serve passengers and workers. It’s all very laudable but it is credible? 

“Urban Recipe started in 1991 out of one church’s efforts to be in relationship with their community differently beyond the traditional food pantry relationship,” executive director Jeremy Lewis says. Urban Recipe has moved out of that church and now operates and facilitates six food co-ops similar to Co-op 1 and helps operationally support and source food for four additional co-ops in Atlanta that have been through their cooperative pathways training program.