Coming Together: Food

...Helping Hand The trouble is that most established co-ops don't feel established...

...Edna Haynes, who was last year's chairman of the personnel committee, promised if elected to keep the stores "attractive and conducive to pleasant shopping...

...The store was located a mile from Hunters Point, a densely populated black ghetto...

...Some will seek it in places like Berkeley, where small buying clubs dating from the Depression gradually outgrew their origins and matured into large consumer cooperatives...

...His salary was $30 a month...

...Do you know, there are people who won't buy honey unless it's been guaranteed to have come from un-sprayed flowers...

...But in Berkeley the members are accustomed to their refunds...

...He neither ended poverty nor won the election, but he did inspire many new buying clubs throughout the state...

...The merchandising and housekeeping became poor, the inventory was reduced, and volume dropped from $15,000 to . . . $7,000-$8,000 per week...

...to make his purchases...

...It was like pulling the cork out of the bottle," says Donald Rothenberg, the co-op's education director...

...Expenses are astronomical, he said, "because it's an old-fashioned store...

...Finally, one should note that there is no such thing as an instant or prepackaged cooperative...

...Brief Rescue Then, in May of 1968, Safeway Stores, the co-op's biggest competitor, came to the rescue...

...The chart was surprisingly detailed: Sea Boy Bonito chunk tuna was described as "a tuna-like fish—not a true tuna...

...In 1938, the thriving club rented a small store on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley...

...In sum, then, the Berkeley Cooperative is trying in its own fashion to face up to the conflicts which beset us all: young vs...

...Besides, as one of the founders mused recently, "We had the Berkeley people on our side...

...and the cooperative's gross last year, $40 million, was seventh highest among supermarket chains in the bay area...

...and quality control, says Neptune, was exercised through a simple test: "If you can put your finger through it, it's no good...

...On December 11, 1971, the Neighborhood Cooperative announced its closing...

...In most places the "sea of commercialism" is a tidal wave...

...One chart explained the content and cost-per-pound of various brands of tuna, both chunky and solid...

...poor...

...A kid will come into a store, dip his fingers into a container of yogurt, sample it, close the container and leave...

...and Bob Arnold, a former Consumers president, jointly lamented the decline of cooperative idealism: "Co-op once stood for a better quality of life...

...The peak year was 1965, when Consumers paid out nearly $900,000 in savings...

...The following year, having set up tables for contributions and stock purchases in countless churches and hotel lobbies, the group managed to raise $75,000...

...From then on savings declined, although volume continued to grow, and last year the co-op finished $73,000 in the hole...

...Keith Ruona, one of the store's dollar-an-hour coordinators, led me to the basement and bade me pull up a packing case...

...It certainly seemed commercial—spacious, well-lit and filled with customers...

...Lew Samuels, one of Mrs...

...Bob Goldman called for "consumer activism" and asked readers to "please recycle this paper...

...So they cut loose, and continued downhill...

...and solutions are for sale, cheap, on every street corner...

...There probably are dozens of natural food stores in Berkeley, but most are small, cluttered and somewhat unappetizing to middle-class sensibilities...

...Here again, the Berkeley co-op is in some trouble...

...Our operations must be environmentally sound," she noted...

...The dispute between Consumers and the food conspiracies is sad, not only because it seems pointless, but because it is being repeated in countless communities throughout the nation...

...It may be a nonbiodegradable stand-off...

...If a co-op cannot save money for its members, what justification does it have to be in business...

...That's all changed now, and a lot of the old shoppers are staying away because of it...

...They complain about the hippies and the panhandling...

...Relatively few of the new members can afford the price, although they are permitted to spread payments over several months...

...Even though many packaged items were then available, the philosophy of low cost and no frills guided the merchandising decisions to include many bulk items...

...Somebody buys groceries direct from farmers or wholesalers and distributes them to members of the food conspiracy, presumably at prices lower than those offered by supermarkets...

...Buying Clubs Like so many successful cooperatives, Berkeley's had its beginnings during Depression days, when Upton Sinclair was preaching Utopian cooperatism and running for governor on an "End Poverty in California" (EPIC) platform...

...For the past two years the co-op has co-sponsored with 90 black organizations a gigantic Lincoln's Birthday festival, held in a co-op shopping center and featuring black music, art and folkways...

...but they have also found strong support, and most of the time they have won...

...As the club expanded, and as new members began to swamp Wilson with their orders, it became clear they would have to become more "professional...

...everything has to be weighed and wrapped...

...The food conspiracies, say co-op officials, don't have the co-op's interests at heart...

...Other consumer co-ops in other towns-Akron, Chicago and Ithaca, New York, to name a few—have also made their mark, but none has won such widespread support or made such deep competitive inroads as has Consumers Cooperatives of Berkeley...

...It'll kill me," he said...

...Food conspiracies are buying clubs that operate very much along the lines of the Berkeley co-op's dimly remembered progenitor, Pacific Cooperative Services, Inc...

...The store...

...The old cooperatives are still trying to get people to consume more...

...It all began in 1961, when a group of blacks who had been protesting against discriminatory hiring practices by neighborhood stores decided that what the community needed most was a store of its own...

...Wasn't it all "organic...

...To cope with the situation, board and management last year felt compelled to "go discount," to make their prices competitive with those of Safeway and the other big chains...

...the placard next to a can of Easy Off noted, "Consumer Reports says inadequate cleaning effectiveness...

...As of this writing, no resolution of the conflict is in sight, but each side appears to suspect the worst...

...Paradoxically, the slippage has occurred during a period when new members have been rallying around the cooperative flag...

...while the co-op, say food conspiracy backers, is in business just for the buck...

...in their view they remain weak and perilous operations, still struggling to survive and maintain their integrity in "a sea of commercialism...

...And their view is not far from the reality: Few consumer co-ops, no matter how large or how competently managed, enjoy much margin for error or much leeway for extending a helping hand to others...

...A single tot sat on the floor while a lady read to him from a Golden Book: "And then the Papa Bear said...

...conventional food retailing chains were meanwhile ringing up more than $30 billion...

...We have 16 people working here, which is a lot for a store this size...

...Typical is the North Country Store in Minneapolis...

...And Lamb took refuge in that oft-repeated dictum...

...At meetings the younger members crusade for such predictable causes as ecology, inner-city cooperatives and Cesar Chavez's grape strike...

...I asked Jim Lamb, the store's young, no-nonsense manager, why some of the honey jars were labeled "organic...

...But it was clear from the campaign literature I was reading that some members thought their co-op was not trying hard enough...

...old, white vs...

...The first display to catch my eye was a large, cartoon-ish poster advertising a "new product": "New-Improved POLLUTE . . . The Washday Miracle Laundry Detergent, Now with EVERYTHING...

...In these and other campaigns they have met stem resistance...

...That is anything but an extraordinary occurrence in the cooperative world: Greenbelt, which serves the suburbs of Washington, D.C., consistently skips refunds for lack of savings in the till—this despite a $50 million annual volume from a large and diverse operation (22 supermarkets, six pharmacies, seven SCAN furniture stores, and a miscellany of bakeries and gas stations...

...It's gotten to be a big fad and lots of food packagers are capitalizing on it in their promotion...

...A barber was giving naturals to people right there on the spot," Rothenberg recalls...

...Lamb's Center Council is dominated by "food conspiracy" people who want the natural food co-op to be more cooperative...

...They think the chemicals will show up in their honey...

...The year was 1936...

...As Robert Neptune, one of the founders of the Berkeley co-op, notes in his regional history of consumer co-ops (California's Uncommon Markets, 1971), "This was the kind of project that required both devotion and stamina...

...On the whole, these nurseries seem more civilized than the assortment of coin-operated plastic cars and rocking horses offered in many supermarkets...

...When I put my foot through the door of a Safeway," she had said, "a caution light goes on in my head: They're out to get me...

...Everything should be natural," he says...

...Closer to home, the Palo Alto Consumers Co-op spent the greater part of the '60s deep in the red, and consequently did not refund a penny from 1961-69...

...Thus a can of Vapor Brite oven cleaner was rated "highly irritating . . . not acceptable...

...They founded the Neighborhood Cooperative of San Francisco, and in a year's time signed up 250 members at $5 per share...

...Imitation may be a great compliment, but our co-op needs to regain that lost leadership...

...a new and viable enterprise in this community...

...By the end of 1938 co-op sales had reached $16,856...

...It refurbished and restocked the co-op store, put in one of its own managers, added Blue Chip stamps and, eventually, raised weekly sales to a figure approaching the $20,000 break-even point...

...It seemed a small place by modern standards, about the size of a Gristede's on upper Broadway in Manhattan...

...Council members then reminded Lamb that he was their employe: He proposed and they disposed...

...Were not refunds, after all, their raison d'etre...

...Among other things, the new store was stocked with a barrel of apple cider, a row of cookie bins, and sacks of beans and rice—items, notes Neptune, which "characterized the prepackage era...

...In days gone by the membership, while traditionally "liberal," saw no reason to mix racial issues with co-op business...

...The Berkeley people had been giving technical advice and some financial help to the fledgling cooperative all along...

...Near every campus, it seems, students are opening natural food stores and fashioning new cross-bred enterprises dedicated to cooperatism, ecology, and something they call revolution...

...Ultimately, North Country members may have to resign themselves to the sour smell of success...

...Now, 25 years later, I entered the co-op's food store on University Avenue, the store that had once displayed cookie bins and a barrel of apple cider...

...Chief among these was the optimism—a blessed euphoria—which convinced all concerned that the co-op could succeed where Purity had failed...

...Expenses are not Lamb's only problem...

...As Neptune tells it, "Without the experienced supervision that had been provided under the management contract, the operating effectiveness in the store deteriorated...

...I can't afford to do business without a fair markup...

...Similarly, Consumers recently opened a health-food center, a direct response to pressures from the young...

...until fiscal 1971, the co-op had made 26 consecutive payments, beginning a year before the Finns came in...

...Consumers' success and Neighborhood's failure both suggest that new co-ops should start small...

...They also need a cooperative tradition, a spiritual base, upon which to build...

...Unlike many of the older members, the new ones are extremely price-conscious and do not hesitate to forsake the co-op if a nearby competing store offers better buys...

...The abandonment, albeit reluctant, of patronage refunds, is a trend among co-ops everywhere, and it raises some embarrassing questions about the purpose of consumer cooperatives...

...Inner Revolt Ruona's inside-out revolution is based more on lifestyles than on politics...

...By October it had lost $20,000...

...Nowadays, with blacks playing an increasingly important role in Berkeley, co-op board members speak out on such issues as welfare rights and fair employment...

...Newcomers there are aplenty...

...In one instance, the Berkeley coop did extend a helping hand, with disastrous consequences...

...But when I enter the co-op, I feel safe: They're on my side...

...There is nothing in cooperative history to suggest that co-ops per se attract more customers than do conventional retailers...

...Lamb's response was instantaneous...

...a few months later it opened a second, larger establishment on University Avenue...

...Atop the counter was a display of oven cleaners with accompanying placards of opinion...

...They need time to learn, to grow and to make mistakes without fear of fatality...

...In 1970 volume again started to slide, and debts to mount...

...Just beyond the lunch counter I discovered the Kiddie Korral, a small room full of blocks and toys and lined with bright watercolors...

...The purchases were mainly vegetables and fruits...

...In a sense, the co-op keeps the other stores honest, an ironic state of affairs leaving consumers little to choose between...

...Finnish Brotherhood Meanwhile, another group in Berkeley was taking the cooperative route...

...At 5 A.M...

...but the recovery proved to be short-lived...

...Judy Bertelsen, a professor at Mills College...

...One had to read between the lines...

...One of these, the New Day Cooperative in Oakland, after enduring the usual quota of small disasters, evolved into Pacific Cooperative Services, Inc., and began to attract members from neighboring Alameda, San Leandro and Berkeley...

...and one wonders whether urban consumer co-ops have accumulated enough history and stability to provide newcomers with that essential support...

...The poster listed the ingredients of the "miracle detergent" —phosphates, enzymes, DDT—all guaranteed to pollute the earth...

...The Consumers natural food store, on the other hand, is a suburbanite's delight, very clean and very kitsch, with clearly marked crocks of grains, 100 varieties of honey, and shelves laden with pungent teas and strange-smelling soaps...

...by the end of 1967, $104,000...

...Net savings, duly refunded to members in accord with classic Rochdale principles, came to $412...

...No Refunds To begin with, the co-op last year failed to pay a patronage refund to its members...

...But these new members, many of whom are young and claim to be radical, are impatient with traditional cooperative patterns...

...In 1947, Berkeley's two cooperative streams, comprised of 1,400 Finns and EPICites, converged and merged, with two unexpected results: Membership meetings featured polkas and schottisches, and annual sales quickly zoomed to upwards of $1 million...

...Natural Foods I left the co-op supermarket and walked across the street to the natural food store...

...We want less packaging, and you notice we don't advertise...

...He told me straightway that he and his colleagues felt little affinity with older co-ops...

...Lamb told me, attracted 4,000 customers and $16,000 in sales each week, just enough to break even according to the official co-op budget...

...In a 5-4 vote, for example, the board decided to support Chavez's wine and grape boycott...

...I could see what she meant...

...Within a single block—the 1400 block on University Avenue—a shopper can browse or buy in any of a dozen different types of cooperative establishments, including two kinds of food stores (health and conventional), an auto-repair garage and gas station, a pharmacy, a hardware-variety store, and a taxi service...

...So it was reasonable for the Finnish Brotherhood to open a cooperative gas station on Shattuck Avenue, next to the other cooperative's first store...

...Election of co-op board members was just six days away, and all the candidates seemed to be running scared...

...but it assumed a more critical role when Purity officials, fearful that the operation might fold and leave them rentless, insisted that the blacks sign a management contract with Associated Cooperatives (the organization that represents Bay area co-ops...

...From then on we could hold our head up high...

...Few people nowadays will walk a mile for a co-op...

...After all, weren't the co-op and the food conspiracies all in this thing together...

...If there is a co-op in the neighborhood, prices at competing stores nearly always move downward...

...Plainly, something had to be done, and what co-op leaders did was persuade Purity to release them from their management contract with Associated...

...But problems generally loom larger on the Berkeley scene than anywhere else...

...The Neighborhood store opened in July amid many festivities...

...Every store owned by the Berkeley Consumers Cooperatives has its own elected Center Council whose members enjoy a considerable voice in store operations...

...Three years ago," says a co-op official who asked that his name be withheld, "we were essentially a white, middle-class extension...

...The cooperative's relations with black people have improved over the years...

...it is a slow maturing process, a la Berkeley...

...We want people to consume less...

...This time neither Safeway nor the Berkeley co-op, both of whom reentered the picture, could salvage the store...

...It owns stores and supermarkets at nine different locations in and around Berkeley...

...Wilson's labors saved members about 10 per cent on their food bills, an attractive proposition during that lean, hungry decade...

...The new generation of cooperators will surely require a new source of inspiration...

...It has to come from within us...

...In any case, the co-op's location, a mile outside the ghetto, made it inaccessible to many of its prospective customers...

...Earlier that day a coop member had told me why she preferred shopping there to shopping elsewhere...

...During the past three years membership has jumped by 50 per cent...

...With the exception of housing, most successful urban consumer coops, from natural food stores to hospitals, have drawn their initial inspiration from rural cooperatives...

...The store had been losing money, but co-op leaders were optimistic: They hoped to reverse the trend by appealing to black pride and community spirit...

...They don't care about the revolution," he said, "and the revolution is the main thing...

...So they hired Neptune, who didn't know "the difference between zucchini and cucumbers," as their first paid manager...

...The new buying club operated in much the same way new buying clubs have always operated, on a wing and a prayer...

...But when a new buying club sets itself up, the established cooperative is expected to welcome it and provide it with all manner of aid and comfort...

...In effect, the younger membership has forced the Consumers to risk abandoning the old, Rochdale-type Puritan ethic (deferred payments, deferred pleasures) in favor of more current cost-plus notions (get it now, seize the day...

...Annual refunds seem less important to them than do weekly bargains, a state of mind that the organization's own dues structure actually encourages...

...Co-op Politics In another part of the store I came across a long table laden with political literature...

...A poster on the wall advised members to "Mind Your Own Business: VOTE...

...Every Consumers store has a Kiddie Korral, staffed by volunteers, for the convenience of young parents...

...It was springtime for Black Power-Stokely Carmichael had first shouted the slogan on a Mississippi highway only a year previous—and many in the black community were convinced their co-op had been playing Booker T. Washington to Berkeley's Andrew Carnegie...

...Haynes' running mates, emphasized "harmony" among members and "financial well-being...

...Twice a week the members would phone in their grocery orders to Wilson, and he would make a master-order sheet listing every item requested...

...If tomorrow a new department store opened next door to Gimbel's, one would expect Gimbel's neither to celebrate the occasion nor to offer assistance...

...The cooperative milieu appears to invite such conflicts between the new and the old, precisely because the game is supposed to be cooperative and not competitive...

...they were a way of life in the homeland, as well as in certain sections of Minnesota and Wisconsin, whence many Finns had migrated to Berkeley...

...My first duty is to see that the store survives"—a position which found ample support among Lamb's superiors in the front office...

...Starkist solid tuna was said to have "no salt added (low sodium...

...Berkeley Consumers," remarked a longtime resident recently, "is an island of integrity in a sea of commercialism"—a pardonable exaggeration, all things considered...

...The answers appear to lie in the cooperative's impact upon the competition, the big national chains that tend to base prices in each neighborhood on what the market will bear...

...The "Co-op" brand proved to be the cheapest, ounce for ounce...

...black, rich vs...

...Uneasy Alliance With patronage refunds in jeopardy, co-ops must rely more and more on membership loyalties...

...Nearby I found the Home Economics counter, a standard feature of Consumers Cooperatives...

...Who needs that...

...Sales instantly increased...

...In dollar volume they outdistance all local competitors, including such giants as Safeway and Lucky...

...But unlike the old buying clubs, many of the new food conspiracies zero in on natural and organic foods, the stuff Lamb sells every day...

...In one way or another, these campaign promises—in tone so reminiscent of school elections—reflected problems, both social and fiscal, tormenting nearly all consumer coops...

...As any visitor to a natural food store can testify, the more things change, the more they remain the same...

...Yet any new and viable enterprise in the community will likely face the same old and viable difficulties that finally defeated the co-op...

...Thinking all was well, Safeway withdrew...

...Indeed, total sales last year among all consumer goods cooperatives in the United States came to only $500 million...

...An estimated two-thirds of the citizenry belongs either to an established cooperative or to one of the many "food conspiracies" (Berkeley-ese for "buying clubs") that are all the rage now among students...

...Today he is general manager of Associated Cooperatives, a wholesaling and warehousing center for co-ops in the area...

...The store grosses about $5,000 a month ("it's difficult to say for sure—we don't believe in ledgers"), maintains a "people's warehouse" in partnership with similar stores in town, and is beginning to attract respectably dressed ladies from suburbia...

...The prayer, and most of the work, was supplied by Roy Wilson, a Methodist minister from Alameda who agreed to do the purchasing and to use his parsonage basement as a grocery depot...

...The day I went there, customers were poking into bags of rice, piling peanuts onto scales, and examining a stack of blue jeans (People's Pants?4.95 a pair...

...Berkeley's Finnish community, the second largest in the United States, already knew a great deal about cooperatives...

...It costs only $5 to join the Consumers and obtain voting rights, but it costs $100 to be eligible for patronage refunds...

...the next morning Wilson "would back his old Franklin automobile out of the garage, drive through the Alameda tunnel to the wholesale produce market, and bargain with the commission merchants...

...That natural food store, for instance, it's just a big joke...

...Most of these enterprises are owned and operated by the Consumers Cooperatives of Berkeley, a swinging, 25-year-old association with more members (63,000 families) than any other consumer coop in the nation...

...Wandering down an aisle of canned goods, I noticed that all prices were clearly marked on the shelves and that the many broadsides and brochures available tended to be full of helpful information...

...It's commercial...

...As one of the rebellious members, a graduate student, had already told me, "The co-op is just another rip-off...

...But North Country's fast growth hardly suggests consumer withdrawal...

...Didn't all honey come from bees...

...The sudden influx of new members has caused considerable grumbling among traditionalists, some of whom have already abandoned ship...

...Nevertheless, the new policy placed patronage refunds in serious jeopardy...

...Their managerial talents have outstripped their philosophy, which might be characterized as "rural-romantic...

...In 1965 the co-op subleased a large supermarket from Purity Stores...

...But the majority of new members are neither panhandlers nor yogurt-samplers...

...Everything has to be 'organic' now," he explained...

...they are simply a new generation trying to shake up their more complacent elders...

...It is not a happening...

...New ideas once pioneered by co-ops are now advertising mainstays for our competitors...

...Others may draw inspiration from Seattle, where a rare and until recently little publicized species of cooperatism—a health cooperative—has been thriving for two decades...

...We hope," said Jefferson Beaver, the outgoing president, "to build from the mistakes of the past...

...Cherie Gaines, a black attorney...

...Survival Why couldn't the natural food coop, reasoned some council members at a recent meeting, stock food on behalf of the food conspiracies and sell it to them on a cost-plus-overhead basis...

...In the back of the store I found a lunch counter, where I bought a ten-cent cup of coffee...