Posted by:
Steve Dubb
Co-op forms key component of urban revitalization effort
As Ryan Van Lenning of Sustainablog writes, “Oakland may be on the list of the top 10 Greenest Cities, but certain areas like West Oakland are nearly bereft of healthy, local food, which is an important element of sustainability. Fortunately, an oasis has just appeared in West Oakland in the form of a worker-owned grocery store with a focus on healthy, organic, local food and community.” The Mandela Foods Cooperative, like many food cooperatives sells customers local and organic produce, but it also has some unusual features that make it stand out. Among these are: 1) worker ownership (for a rare example of an established U.S. worker food cooperative, see San Francisco’s Rainbow Grocery); 2) a sharing of the profits with members of the neighboring People’s Federal Credit Union, a local credit union that is a division of Self-Help Federal Credit Union; and 3) a direct link to a local nonprofit, the Mandela Marketplace, a “community leadership incubator that provides civic engagement, economic and entrepreneurial opportunity to low-income residents and minority farmers.” In other words, the co-op is part of a larger community revitalization effort.
The Mandela Foods Cooperative opened June 6th and is located across from the West Oakland BART Station in the Mandela Gateway affordable housing complex, owned by the nonprofit housing developer BRIDGE Housing. BRIDGE is leasing the food co-op its space at below-market rates.
The co-op aims to serve a neighborhood with 25,000 residents. The store is small: 2,300 square feet. And its initially worker-owner staff consists of eight people. As reporter Carolyn Said explains in the San Francisco Chronicle, the eight worker owners will “earn a living wage and eventually will share in two-thirds of the store’s profits. One-third of the profits will be returned to the community as matching funds to people who open accounts at the credit union next door.” As Said also reports, start-up funds of about $640,000 were donated by foundations and local economic improvement groups. Said adds that “Some grants will be needed to help with cash flow in the next couple of years.The store’s business plan projects profitability in its third year - and that’s despite reducing its margins to make the food more affordable for customers.”
Some of the social goals of the Mandela Food Cooperative include:
• Support for new businesses in the immediate area through the Cooperative’s umbrella organization, Mandela Marketplace.
• Entrepreneurial training and work experience for low-income residents working within the store’s cooperative ownership structure
• Profit sharing at Peoples Community Partnership Federal Credit Union (West Oakland based)
• Increase purchasing from small farms within a 170 mile radius of Oakland that do not otherwise participate in retail markets;
• Wholesale distribution of produce and other fresh foods to local convenience stores
• Active participation in community services including operating market booth at senior centers, catering for local organizations and churches, and donations to emergency food programs
The Mandela Co-op also forms a part of the growing local worker co-op trade association, the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives, better known as NOBAWC ("no boss").
In terms of the broader effort, Mandela Foods forms just of one of many facets of the work of the nonprofit Mandela Marketplace. Among its other programs, are a youth program, weekly market booths at senior centers, a program that works to bring healthy food into other neighborhood corner markets, and a program that works with family farmers to help them access urban markets.