In short: Families are making significant savings on their grocery bills by forming small shopping co-ops.
Cooperative business structures account for less than 1 per cent of the supermarket sector in Australia.
What’s next? The peak body for co-ops is calling for more government support for the business model.
Coops are so powerful. I tried to get involved in our local ones however they’re dying for (imo) really frustrating reasons.
Instead of leveraging their core strength, namely allowing poor people to collectively negotiate for fair prices while cutting out middle men, they are focused on everything to the max ethical hippy shit (amusingly the same busybodies pushing this also voted to make it not vegan anymore… wtf do you believe in?) so the result is they’ve become super bougie.
Instead of being a place where you can buy beans and rice etc at below supermarket prices while still giving the farmers a better deal it’s all organic biodynamic gluten free almonds and luxury teas. Don’t get me wrong, I love my fancy tea, but first and foremost it needs to be a place where you get your bulk calories/macros cheaper than the supermarket or at least comparable (obvs supermarkets loss lead on some stuff like bread you’ll never match).
Also fuck me for this opinion but putting food on the table of some working class people and taking power back from supermarkets and giant farming conglomerates does more good than serving organic teas to the 50 wealthy people in the area that can afford them. Survive first, improve from a position of strength.
Without knowing about how things are set up in your local co-op, maybe you could investigate setting up a two-stream system of ‘budget’ and ‘organic’. Or you could just set up an entirely separate co-op.
Maybe, space and rental costs for the shop are pretty limited and pretty high. I sort of want to start my own but I’m a human garbage fire between the nerve pain and the depression making the fucking hard yards of getting started extra hard.
Idk what to really do. With the death of community hubs it’s really difficult to get enough of a group together it’s not a heroic effort generating interest and that sort of organising is not anything I’m good at or even really know how to approach :(
Yeah, fair enough. I don’t have any first-hand experience, but advice I’ve heard is that if you can get just one other committed person on board, you’re halfway there.
If you’ve got a local Food Not Bombs group, that’s a good place to find people that are into cooperation. There’s other community groups around that might have people who are interested or that are willing to provide infrastructure of some kind - men’s sheds come to mind. Otherwise, it’s worth a try posting on local Facebook groups.
There’s probably a guide or blog written around getting something like this set up. I should have a dig around.
honestly, that king of the hill ep nailed it
I feel like I’m missing out…
better Raise the Steaks