New Haven Independent

posted by: co-op on June 18, 2010  3:28pm

Perhaps the co-op would be a competitor of farmers’ markets in the summertime, but during winter months, when New Haven’s CitySeed operates its farmers’ market once per month, the co-op would still be open daily.

Having a dedicated market serving fresh produce and food in it’s raw forms (instead of juice from concentrate, cookies from Kraft, bread with milk in it, processed sugar-rich foods, etc) will benefit the community as shoppers learn how to choose ripe fruit & veggies, and importantly, how to prepare the food!

Onions too strong for your sandwich? Try sliced, raw leeks. Looking for something spicy on top of your oatmeal? Try some fresh bean spouts!

Rice/quinoa a little bland? Throw in some saffron!

If variety is the spice of life, New Haven’s food markets have been devoid of life for too long. No wonder our bodies are unhealthy!

Changing one’s body starts with making up one’s mind.

posted by: Pat on June 18, 2010  4:11pm

People want fresh, quality produce that is affordable, more local than flown in from South America or trucked in from California, and fewer processed foods.
Shaws was not a good source of quality food. Ferraro’s on Grand Avenue does a better job.
Edge of the Woods caters to quality shopper, but the selection is limited.
The search continues.

posted by: HewNaven?? on June 18, 2010  4:24pm

There are no bad co-ops. And multiple co-ops operating in one community is not a bad thing either. Resiliency in the system will make it impossible to fail.

If we already had even one co-op in the Dwight/West River/Dixwell community the Shaw’s Crisis never would have been called that.

Co-ops should simply be seen as local food networks. It’s an absolute win-win for community members. The only people arguing against them are developers.

To paraphrase one of the panelists from last night,

“yes, we need to start a co-op, we need to start one yesterday!”

posted by: Eric Triffin on June 18, 2010  9:01pm

I was involved with the N H. Food Co-op from when it was a buying club of less than 50 families.  I would collect people’s orders from the church stoop on the corner of Dixwell and Orchard Place on Thursday nights and then we would buy bulk produce, cheese and chicken on Saturday at Long Wharf and break it up into market baskets in the church where people would come and pick them up. Any excess we brought over to the Black Panther Daycare for their breakfast program; just a bit of history.
  It became five neighborhood clubs of 10-90 families each that bought together and then went in for a permanent store, the first on Carlysle St. in the Hill, then a bigger on on Greenwich Ave., then Whalley Ave as an almost $35,000/day business. Among other things the credit crunch with 20% interest rates killed us along with the need to buy 100K in freezers.
  But at every move there was a group of us who voiced the alternative of running a collective wharehouse that the buying clubs of all sizes could then draw from. That might be a better model so that you can cater to all sorts of constituencies and meet people where they’re at but with the common attraction of economic savings through collective buying power.
  The learning we gleaned from mixing all groups in the Whalley location wad great, we even had a daycare fir the kids while you shopped or worked there. We kept the healthiest foods at the most minsk markup of 1% s
and surcharged the imported cheeses and crackers to do so. That all members worked 12 hours/year was a powerful equalizer and a teaching tool in itself.
  I still recommend that collective purchasing power might be enough to being people together. That’s all for now but there is a history of great success with co-ops in New Haven. Co-operation is infectious! Contagions of caring…..