Arts & Life

Crops to your tabletop

The seed for the Long Beach Grocery Cooperative was planted in founding member Damon Lawrence’s mind eight years ago. After first encountering a food cooperative during a trip to Portland, Oregon.

Fast-forward to late 2012. Lawrence was living in Long Beach. When the Albertson’s in his Rose Park neighborhood closed down, it left a void. To try to fill it, the neighborhood association began a letter-writing campaign to attract another market to the area.

Everyone they reached out to, including Sprouts and Trader Joes, turned them down because the neighborhood “did not meet their demographic criteria.”

That’s when the Lawrence proposed starting a food cooperative like the one he’d visited in Portland years before.

Now, thanks to a recent grant and countless hours of work put in by a core group of volunteers, the Long Beach Grocery Cooperative is moving closer to becoming reality.

The Daily 49er caught up with Lawrence to find out more about this concept and why he thinks it’s a good idea.

What is a food cooperative and how does it work?

One of the key principles of a food cooperative is member economic participation. That means community members buy a share of the market. The share will cost $250 but it’s a one-time fee. Just to be clear, you don’t have to be a member-owner to shop at the store. Everyone is welcome to shop.

What does buying a share provide?

Buying a share gives you with a vote in any decision regarding the store.

You also get dividend payments on the share called patronage refunds. After the co-op has invested profits in community services and paid its employees well, whatever pool of money is left over is divided among shareholders based on how much they’ve shopped at the co-op. The more they’ve shopped at the co-op the more their patronage refund will be.

How is it different from buying stock in any other company?

It’s different from buying stock in a company because it’s limited to one share per member, which means one vote per member. Nobody can come in with a whole bunch of money and buy decision-making capabilities over everyone else.

What type of food will the store sell?

We want to provide fresh, organic food and sustainably raised meats and vegetables—something other than the typical starchy foods sold at corporate chains.

Our philosophy will be to start extremely local and work our way out.

How does this model change the community’s relationship to food?

The store is not going to be thinking about food with their bottom-line in mind, but instead thinking, “Is this good for us, should we be carrying this?”

We want to take food back from corporate America. It’s not like they’ve done a very good job of it anyway. There’s been an explosion of diabetes and heart disease, and I think as a community we can make a change in that. The ultimate goal is that the community eats healthier.

What do you feel is the advantage of a cooperative grocery store over a traditional chain store?

Instead of one person or one company making all the profit, the money is re-circulated into the local economy, which helps uplift the entire community.

To me, the concept of a community coming together to build a store that hires people from the neighborhood and sells products from local farmers and food artisans is very powerful.

We’ve got people here in Long Beach making all kind of things such as beer, beef jerky, and Kampuchea. There needs to be a place where people can buy it.

It’s more than just a place to shop for food. It becomes a community hub.

You recently received a grant from the Food Co-op Initiative. Can you tell me a little but about that?

The grant was for $10,000. Forty food co-ops applied for it. Twelve co-ops got it. We’re the only ones in California that got it and only the second one on the west coast.

Have you thought about a potential location yet?

Yes, we’re working with a commercial relator right now and scouting out different locations and evaluating all the aspects such as ease of access and parking.
Long Beach being a college town, how do students fit into the picture of a food cooperative? 
A lot of the co-ops are situated in places that have colleges and students are a key component. There’s one near UC Davis, one near Sacramento State University and all of these co-ops are thriving. California State University, Long Beach is a huge part of our economy and what goes on in the city, so having student participation is important. The way we have it set up right now, students will be able to buy a share of the co-op at a discount.

When do you see this project coming to fruition?

There are three stages of co-op development. There’s organizing, feasibility, and implementation. We are in the late stages of organizing and crossing-over into feasibility. I see it all coming together by mid-2017.

The idea may sound idealistic, but I’ve seen it work. If it can happen in other places, it can happen here.  We’re going to get it done.

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