When you walk through the doors of a food co-op, you experience the hospitality of owners and staff, the smells of fresh and wholesome foods, and a sense of community that you just don’t get from conventional grocery stores.
About co-ops:
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A cooperative is an enterprise that is owned and democratically controlled by its owners.
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Cooperatives use the one owner/one vote system (not the one-vote-per-share system used by most businesses). This ensures that people, not capital, control the organization.
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Co-ops empower individuals and encourage healthier and stronger communities by enabling people to pool their resources and share risks.
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Co-ops are the fastest growing socio-economic movement in the world. They exist in virtually every sector of the economy including agriculture, financial services, and housing.
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There are approximately 10 000 cooperatives and credit unions in Canada alone providing products and services to 18 million owners!
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Hamilton has a car sharing cooperative, a developing renewable energy co-op, and the Canadian Co-operative Association, among many others.
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While each co-op is unique, they are all ownership-based, driven by social as well as economic concerns, and guided by 7 principles, including equality and solidarity.
Cooperative grocers play an important role in communities across the country as purveyors of local, organic and sustainable foods.
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Food co-ops spend 3x more on locally-sourced products, give 3x more to charity, sell far more organics, and pay significantly better local wages & benefits.
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On average, they support over 150 local farms and other producers. For every dollar spent at a food co-op, 1.6x more money is generated in the local economy!
Yet our experience of food co-ops is that they are still affordable and beautiful places to shop – because owner benefits come before shareholder profits.
Check out some other co-operatively-owned retail grocery stores in Ontario:
Big Carrot (Toronto)
Karma Co-op (Toronto)
West End Food Co-op (Toronto)
Your Local Market (Stratford)
London Food Co-op (London)
Collingwood Community Food Co-op (Collingwood)
Karma Project (Penetanguishene)
Sandy Hill Food Co-op (Ottawa)
Dandelion Foods (Almonte)
The True North Community Co-operative (Thunder Bay)
All of these co-ops benefit from the experience of established co-ops and the knowledge shared through the Local Organic Food Co-op network in Ontario.
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