Minnesota Street Market receives ‘Why Co-ops?’ innovation-funding grant

The Minnesota Street Market (St. Joseph Food and Art Cooperative) and five other food cooperatives in Central Minnesota have received a $49,600 Innovation Funding grant from the National Joint Powers Alliance of Staples.

The six cooperatives will use the grant to work together as a team on a “Why Co-ops?” campaign to educate the public about the value of food cooperatives in the Central Minnesota region.

At a time when many small-town and rural grocery stores are closing, many communities have come together to build on Minnesota’s long cooperative tradition to help small towns and rural communities thrive. Minnesota leads the nation, with more than 1,000 cooperatives in a variety of sectors – utilities, banking, agriculture, health care, senior housing and groceries.

The six small co-ops – Minnesota Street Market in St. Joseph, Crow Wing Food Co-op in Brainerd, the Purple Carrot Market in Little Falls, Everybody’s Market in Long Prairie, Ideal Green Market Co-op in Ideal Township near Pequot Lakes and Down Home Foods Co-op in Wadena – banded together in November 2016 to form a Food Co-op Coalition to improve and grow their co-ops.

The Food Co-op Coalition will use the NJPA Innovation Funding to launch an educational campaign, emphasizing the value of food co-op membership/ownership and purchasing.

Supported by six food cooperatives and communities from the region, the proposal allows for the food co-ops to work together on a campaign that relays the economic value of purchasing from local food retailers, who in turn purchase from local growers and providers – creating and retaining our regional wealth. The campaign will also focus on the personal benefits of purchasing healthy foods and further advise how neighbors and coworkers can help each other become food co-op members/owners.

The overall goal of a cooperative is to create organizations that serve the needs of the people who use them. They are member-owned, member-governed businesses that operate for the benefit of their members,. When you join a co-op, you own it! Co-ops provide goods and services in a way that keeps local resources in the community. Members pool resources to bring about economic results that are unobtainable by one person alone.

It is from this foundation that the six co-ops joined to form the Food Co-op Coalition with facilitation assistance from the Region Five Development Commission at regionfive.org to support one another and work collaboratively for the benefit of all.

We have all seen headlines like these: “Small towns struggle to keep, attract grocery stores.”  “Another small-town Minnesota grocery store calls it quits.” “As local groceries close, more rural areas in Minnesota may become ‘food deserts.’” “Minnesota’s small-town grocery stores face uncertain future.”

“In St. Joseph,” Minnesota Street Market board president Pia Lopez said, “we were one of those headlines in 2010.” The Minnesota Street Market came about after Loso’ s Grocery Store, owned and operated by the Loso family since 1899 and located on St. Joseph’ s historic main street, closed in 2010. The community came together and re-opened the store in July 2011 as a cooperative, with area residents putting up $100 each to become member-owners.

Lopez continued: “At the Minnesota Street Market, we represent an old-fashioned style of grocery shopping — buying less and more often, as Americans used to do before the advent of the big-box chain store – supporting regional farmers and small-batch producers, supporting healthy foods produced without synthetic chemicals, antibiotics and hormones, and keeping a store on a small-town, historic main street. Our community-owned, independent store is a place where shoppers know each other by name and know the suppliers and farms of origin.”

The six-cooperative Food Co-op Coalition educational campaign, “Why Co-ops?”, is the first of what is hoped to be many projects together. Project coordinator, Barb Mann, of Ideal Green Market Co-op, is excited to aid in implementing the vision of this marketing campaign.

Mann said, “It’s hoped with a cohesive message and branding of food cooperatives in our region, that it aids in growing the local food economy in our region. As people travel through the region, residents and visitors alike can patronize co-ops wherever they travel, impacting economic growth locally and regionally on multiple levels. Everybody wins!”

The National Joint Powers Alliance is a service cooperative in Minnesota, with a board made up of county commissioners, city council members, mayors and school-board members. The purpose of Innovation Funding is to support initiatives aimed at creating collaboration and improving the region. The Food Co-op Coalition Innovation Funding Award of $49,600 was one of six NJPA Innovation Funding awards in 2017, worth $503,600. For more information about NJPA and Innovation Funding, contact: Chelsea Ornelas, public relations and social-media specialist at chelsea.ornelas@njpacoop.org or call 218-895-4164.