[Author’s 2025 update: The following article is a snapshot in time reporting what I learned and loved about the Port Townsend Food Co-op after a decade of intense involvement. It was originally published nationally in the 1994 Loompanics book catalog, but never appeared locally until now.

The concluding section makes clear how reality doesn’t always live up to ideals, noting the dual dangers that growing co-ops face of either imploding due to misguided idealism or getting “co-opted” into becoming a corporate supermarket clone. So it’s interesting looking at how today’s Co-op compares to this view forward from 30 years in the past.

This historical perspective might be especially timely as our Co-op has been targeted for half a year by a politically-motivated smear campaign, which amid personal attacks has also raised claims about management style, workplace safety, wage inequality, microaggressions, need for unionization, etc. These claims are hard to sort out given their weaponization by the ongoing pressure campaign.

Whatever legitimate issues remain may be illumined by this article’s exploration of the unique mission of food co-ops, what makes them special, and how ours has changed over the years, for better or worse. What qualities are vital for our Co-op to preserve, and is anything that’s been lost worth restoring?]

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Do you know anything about food co-ops? I love food co-ops! Holdovers from the 60s and 70s, these hippie-born hangouts have grown up a bit over the years but still retain much of their savor. When I visit a new city I always try to check out the local co-ops.

Food co-ops are practical, too. They started from the practical reality that the pure, simple bulk foods the hippies wanted weren’t for sale anywhere on the market. So the hippies became grocers, and eventually business people, of sorts. Not because they wanted to be, but because they had to be, or go hungry for basic foods.

But because they were hippies and were idealistic, they didn’t set up run-of-the-mill capitalist businesses. They had ideals about cooperation and consensus and egalitarianism and lack of hierarchy and workplace democracy and not being focused on profits. Heads stuffed with ideals, they also valued hands-on work and invited as many people as possible to share the work of running the store.

Did I say work? More like productive play, when it comes down to you as a co-op member taking a break from the work-a-day world to bag raisins or run the register for a few hours a week as your friends and neighbors stream through. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came … more like checking in at Cheers than punching in at the assembly line!

It’s also a bit like joining a fraternal society, because co-ops do their best to cooperate with other co-ops around the world. Though separate legally, most food co-ops welcome visiting members from other co-ops and let them shop at reduced member prices. Your home-away-from-home in your community extends to connect you to home bases throughout North America and the world.

The Big News

So that’s the big news: the 60s aren’t dead, for co-ops are still alive and they’re even growing. Their doors are open and you can come in and get great food and save money and have fun and maybe even get involved in something radical!

I’m going to go into some more detail about the points I’ve breezed through above. I’ve been ardently involved with co-ops heavily for the past decade, and I’m still trying to figure out what it is about them that so attracts me. The word “cooperative” is awfully vague — at their core, what exactly are food co-ops?

It’s the Food!

First of all, there’s what food co-ops sell, which is food. Not just any kind of food, but high-quality, lightly-processed, low-pesticide, nutritious food. ”Natural” food. Most of this food isn’t exotic — it’s just the kind of basic food your grandparents enjoyed. Back in those days, before DDT, preservatives, bovine growth hormones, chlorination, fluoridation, irradiation, etc., etc., nobody made a big deal about natural, whole, unadulterated food, because that’s all there was.

There was also a lot less chronic disease; for instance, heart attacks and clogged arteries were rare until the turn of the century. Cancer rates remain much lower in countries with less meat and more fiber in their diets. The low-fat, low-salt, low-sugar, low-processing, low-poison food for sale in food co-ops is the model of good nutrition.

Co-ops Are Selective

It’s true, you can’t find everything in a co-op. Coca Cola pretends to “add life” and be “the real thing,” but since these claims are hogwash, co-ops don’t carry Coke. Co-ops have product selection guidelines, supplying goods that are whole, organic, fresh, local, low-cost, earth-friendly, politically-correct, and/or hard to find. Glop like Coke doesn’t make the grade.

But that doesn’t mean co-ops sell only brown rice and tofu! It’s amazing the variety of natural foods available nowadays, many of them healthier alternatives for standard American favorites. Natural sodas, turkey dogs, veggie burgers, wheat-meat sausages, soy-cheese pizzas, etc. make upgrading one’s diet pretty painless

You can also get cookies, chips, frozen dinners, bagels, ice cream, corn flakes, and most other popular foods at co-ops. The difference is in the ingredients: whole-wheat flour, low or no salt, or maybe fruit-juice sweetening instead of refined sugar. They’re more nutritious than the famous name brands and usually taste at least as good.

Of course, no matter how many times the word “natural” appears on the label, I doubt the nutritional value of most of the sweets and frozen treats co-ops carry. Members (and their kids) want these sweets, and they’re better than the standard “unnatural” versions, so co-ops provide them. Sometimes I hear members say things like, “If the co-op carries it, it must be OK,” as they stock up on natural junk food!

Be Smart – Bulk Up

Quaker Oats sells for about two and a half bucks for 18 ounces of rolled oats. I’m used to paying $.49/pound for organically-grown oats at my co-op, which also sells non-organic oats as good as Quaker’s for $.25/pound. It’s amazing how much money consumers waste paying for packaging, advertising, shelf-space kickbacks, and corporate profits.

You can save a lot of money buying cereal, flour, rice, nuts, beans, chips, oil, mustard, maple syrup, pasta, herbs, salsa, honey, raisins, olives, dog food, soap, etc., etc. out of bulk bins at food co-ops. All that’s missing is mountains of landfill-bound packaging, the brand name, and most of the price.

Bulk is the smart way to shop. You can buy as much or as little as you want, so you can sample without committing to a boxful. You’re getting whole foods without the frills. And you can save even more money at co-ops by placing bulk orders in advance — just be sure you like wild rice before you order 25 pounds of it!

Only at Co-ops

There’s an entire world of products you can’t find in supermarkets, only in food co-ops and other natural foods stores: organically grown produce, exotic cheeses, therapeutic herbs, sea vegetables, macrobiotic foods, special diet supplements, natural body care products, and the list goes on.

Organic produce is grown without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides using sustainable agriculture which builds up rather than depletes the soil. Farm workers aren’t being poisoned in the growing, and you won’t be poisoned in the eating. Richer soil can also mean more minerals in your produce, as well as better taste.

Many co-ops cultivate relations with local farmers so they can offer produce that’s extra fresh. Vegetables like broccoli are sometimes trucked from coast to coast before they appear on supermarket shelves, wasting both fuel and nutrition. It’s better to have a strong sustainable agriculture base in one’s community.

Be Your Own Doctor

A real showpiece of my co-op is our great herb section. We have hundreds of hard-to-find botanicals alphabetically arranged in air-tight bottles. Prices like $17.06/pound may seem forbidding, until you get to the counter and find your pouch of fluffy powder costs only 23 cents!

Many knowledgeable people prefer to treat themselves with time-tested herbs, which are usually gentler and less expensive than the latest patent drugs from the chemical/vivisection/medical fraternity. Few have ever been harmed by misusing herbs, while untold thousands die each year from the side effects of FDA-approved drugs (even aspirin kills hundreds a year).

Nevertheless, the FDA is continually trying to get the power to classify traditional herbs as drugs or “untested food additives,” in order to get them off the market or into the exclusive control of “approved” multinational corporations. Who benefits? Certainly not the consumer. The extensive herb sections in food co-ops are treasure troves of self-care options.

The Same Old Story

It’s hilarious and sobering checking out an old book like Omar Garrison’s The Dictocrats from 1970 to see how off-base the FDA has been through the years. During the ’60s the FDA seized yeast and honey off the shelves of health food stores — the agency preferred sugar and cyclamates.

They derided as false advertising and prosecuted discussions of the connection between dietary fat and heart disease, or between Vitamin C and healing. The FDA banned books on alternative medicine (literally burned Wilhelm Reich’s) under the pretext of being “an extension of the label” of unidentified food supplements.

With the perspective of years we can see that the FDA was on the wrong side of almost every one of its disputes with the health food industry. What was persecuted as “food faddism” is now reported as fact by Time magazine. The lighter, fresher diet advanced by old-time “health nuts” is now the common wisdom, while the heavy, fatty, sugary slop the FDA promoted is only defended anymore by vested interests like the beef industry.

More Monopoly Medicine

Unchastened, the FDA is at it again with another assault. Calcium’s role in preventing osteoporosis is the only supplement health claim the FDA presently accepts, and it’s trying to ban everything else, the first amendment be damned. The FDA is threatening to keep stores from selling therapeutic herbs, amino acids, bee products, and all vitamins and minerals more nutritious than the Recommended Daily Allowances!

The health food industry and its customers are not rolling over and playing dead — instead, Congress received more letters in 1992 demanding health freedom than about any other issue besides the economy. The result was a one-year moratorium on the FDA’s oppressive new regulations.

A year later, on Friday, August 13, 1993, my co-op draped itself black as part of a nationwide Blackout Day, a wake-up call to political action. Threatened products were marked with black dots for the duration to warn customers these products may disappear if the FDA isn’t stopped. Action booths were set up with full information and pre-addressed postcards to encourage grass-roots support for passing protective Dietary Supplement Health and Education Acts (S. 784 in the Senate and H.R. 1709 in the House).

As of this writing, the outcome is still in doubt. This is a crucial fight, for the FDA’s new rules are a prescription for disaster. The health care crisis in this country is caused by monopoly medicine and won’t be solved by more of it!

The Co-op Difference

Most everything said above applies equally to privately-owned natural food stores and to co-ops. They carry the same great products and are equally protective of your right to make your own health choices. Some natural food stores look almost indistinguishable from co-ops.

But there are differences, mainly of culture and orientation. Food co-ops came out of the hippie culture, so their staples are back-to-basics natural foods like fresh fruits and vegetables along with bulk grains, beans, nuts, and herbs. Private stores tend to emphasize “nutritious” over “natural,” with shelves full of megavitamins, pump-you-up bodybuilding supplements, and alternative health books.

Co-ops have a special kind of internal structure, neither socialist nor capitalist, that was pioneered in 1844 by a 28-member weavers’ co-op in Rochdale, England. “Capital is necessary for any enterprise, but while capitalists rent labor and earn profits, cooperatives rent capital and the members earn profits through their participation” (Kaswan, Whole Earth Review, Spring 1989). Important co-op decisions are made by members actively involved in and affected by co-op operations, not by investors or speculators.

Each co-op is organized to fulfill a specific need of its voluntary members, so it has a mission in life beyond the standard corporate imperatives to maximize growth, profits, and executive pay. Because a food co-op is a consumer cooperative, its owner/members are food consumers. Providing them with the best deal on the best whole foods is a food co-op’s bottom line.

The International Co-op Conspiracy

100,000,000 Americans are members of over 45,000 cooperatives, including credit union, group health care, agriculture, rural electric, housing, insurance, and worker co-ops. When the state capitalist economy leaves some people out in the cold, when consumerism built on invented demand doesn’t supply everyone’s desires, mutual-aid co-ops can be a satisfying solution.

In Central America, India, Indonesia, Eastern Europe, and around the world, co-ops are one of the few means available for people to help themselves out of oppressive circumstances. The outstanding example is the Mondragon system of cooperatives tucked away in the Basque region of northwestern Spain — probably the most successful social experiment in the history of the planet!

The Mondragon Miracle

Can you believe it? Founded in 1956 by the passionate Padre Arizmendi after 15 years of solitary spadework, his 5 member stove co-op has grown into a multi-billion-dollar network of 173 cooperatives employing 20,000 people. Mondragon co-ops include Spain’s fastest growing bank, hundreds of K-Mart style consumer stores, health care, insurance companies, pension management, entrepreneur development, robotics research, heavy equipment manufacture, and just about everything else under the sun.

And all this was accomplished through a sophisticated, self-adjusting system emphasizing workplace democracy, ownership gained by participation, self-financing from the local co-op bank, continuous cultivation of new co-ops, and a cultural commitment to solidarity: *all acts must, at the same time, benefit and respect the needs and concerns of everyone affected — individuals, their cooperative, other cooperatives in the system, and the larger community” (Jaques and Ruth Kaswan, “The Mondragon Cooperatives,” Whole Earth Review, Spring 1989, pp. 8-17).

A central co-op principle is cooperation among co-ops; Mondragon does it in spades! No other co-ops have ever come close to its interlocking, diversified system, but all cooperatives aspire to this ideal and have a conscious commitment to mutual support. Taken together the world’s co-ops are a global conspiracy — an open conspiracy with 700 million members at large.

The Great Good Place

Getting back to home. I’ve got to admit that such world-girdling considerations are only a very small part of why I love co-ops. Mostly it’s the day-to-day joy I experience walking into my own local co-op and immersing myself into its soul-soothing ambiance.

Today my fingers played over the keys of a musical cash register while I enjoyed the vista of chatting member-workers bustling backstock to the retail shelves amidst chatting member-shoppers carelessly selecting groceries. The business at hand seemed to be conversation first, food second. One shopper confided to me, “I have to come here to get some social interaction. I work at home and don’t even get to talk to people. I come to the Co-op to catch up.”

Ray Oldenburg’s book The Great Good Place rhapsodizes about “third places [that] exist on neutral ground and serve to level their guests to a condition of social equality [that’s] remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends. … a source of news along with the opportunity to question, protest, sound out, supplement, and form opinion locally and collectively. …

“The activity that goes on in third places is largely unplanned, unscheduled, unorganized, and unstructured. Here, however, is the charm. It is just these deviations from the middle-class penchant for organization that give the third place much of its character and allure and that allow it to offer a radical departure from the routines of home and work.”

Co-ops are great good places. They are Temporary Autonomous Zones. They are community crossroads, counterculture cynosures, neighborhood news services. They are R & R for overworked psyches, refuges from dog-eat-dog reality, and perhaps the seeds of deeper and more sustaining realities.

The Abolition of Work

Food co-ops have this feel of the “third place,” while trying to integrate it with the business of providing good food and service. At their best, they seem like real-world exercises of the vision that Bob Black broadcasts in his essay, “The Abolition of Work“:

“A ‘job’ that might engage the energies of some people, for a reasonably limited time, for the fun of it, is just a burden on those who have to do it for forty hours a week with no say in how it should be done, for the profit of owners who contribute nothing to the project, and with no opportunity for sharing tasks or spreading the work among those who actually have to do it. …

“Such is ‘work’. Play is just the opposite. Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it’s forced. …The player gets something out of playing; that’s why he plays. But the core reward is the experience of the activity itself …some things that are unsatisfying if done by yourself or in unpleasant surroundings or at the orders of an overlord are enjoyable, at least for a while, if these circumstances are changed.”

Much of the work at many co-ops is done by members part-time in exchange for food discounts or other benefits — not as a requirement of membership but as a welcome option that satisfies Black’s standards for play. In a convivial, ego-free environment, professionals and working stiffs and assorted unemployables can break up their lives with some hands-on cheese cutting or clerking or cleaning — as one CPA/discount worker remarked, “I can do anything for 4 hours a week!”

Whither Food Co-ops?

I have been describing the ideal situation; co-ops often find themselves stretched between apparently opposite commitments to cooperative purism and efficient operations. The Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley, at one time America’s largest food co-op with 12 stores and 100,000 members and $83.6 million in annual sales, failed in 1988 partly due to this conflict. The board factionalized into progressive versus economic camps, the staff collected inflated paychecks while co-op assets were sold off, and the membership defected in dismay over infighting and the disappearance of politically-taboo products from the shelves.

Berkeley is an extreme case, and remember that for 50 years it was a pioneering and successful co-op. Did cooperativism fail at Berkeley, or is this an example of what can happen when co-ops neglect their underlying principles? Many employees hadn’t been educated about co-ops, didn’t bother to become members, and felt alienated from their co-op bosses. A weak board literally gave away the store in contract negotiations, putting reflexive sympathy for union causes ahead of the membership’s interests (source: “What Happened to the Berkeley Co-op?”, excerpted in Cooperative Grocer, January, 1992).

As food co-ops grow and find themselves directly competing with huge corporate supermarket chains, they start discovering every incentive to become more like supermarkets and less like co-ops. Member involvement in store operations gets phased out, replacing the energy of enthusiastic part-timers with the professionalism of stressed-out staff. Whether at McDonald’s or Mondragon, full-time service work within a power structure can be a stupefying experience that makes cooperative ideals seem pretty hollow. When a co-op looks like Safeway and works like Safeway, why should its shoppers and workers care that it isn’t Safeway?

One answer is that supermarket co-ops remain excellent natural food stores with top-quality products and a benign corporate outlook which plows profits back into the co-op and its community. But those who prefer small-fry co-ops do feel that something intangible gets lost as co-ops grow into increased hierarchy and organization. As a co-op gets less fun to work in, it gets less fun to shop in and less like a great good place to hang out in. Play time is over — it’s back to work. Where’s the co-op difference?

I hope that food co-ops will someday crack the nut of how to grow without losing what makes them great. I wonder whether co-ops will prove to be just the wave of the past, or whether the Mondragon model will eventually take over the earth. What I do know is that right now many magic co-ops survive and thrive for you to enjoy — there may be one in your home town. Check it out!

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Illustrations by Barbara Williams and Shaun Hayes-Holgate