Crowdsource Us

The Co-op recently launched an IndieGoGo crowd with a goal of raising $10,000 to match the seed grant funding we received from the Food Co-op Initiative. 

Here's the rundown of why getting this funding, and ultimately getting the Co-op itself up and running, benefits us all.

Co-ops Are Great Because...

They offer a member-owner model that allows people to shop with their values and benefit from it. The Richmond Food Co-op is focused on making it easy to get healthy, sustainable and affordable food. Even better? The cooperative brings together an engaged community to make it happen. We are a truly community grown venture united by a common vision of creating a better food future for Richmond.

Simply put, we are working to open a full-service grocery store that stocks real food that you can trust. 

Bonus: 

There is a democratic process that governs the business which means each member has real impact.

Start-up co-ops that open are more likely to succeed than traditional businesses because there is already a loyal and invested customer base.

Food + Community = Co-op 

The Richmond Food Co-op will be a 100% locally owned, 100% locally governed grocery store focused 100% on supporting our local farmers, economy and community; not to mention increasing affordability of good food through a member/owner model.

This Co-op is Great Because...

This idea grew from two friends, to a group of 15 pioneering steering committee members, to a family of nearly 500 Member/Owners which continues to grow every day. We are half way to our goal of 1000 member/owners to open!

There is momentum and interest fueling this venture forward - our roots are strong and we have a large social media following, earned media coverage, and recognition from the larger cooperative community.

We are an organized and results driven group with 7 talented Board Members,a committed and passionate Project Manager and a dedicated volunteer force.

Richmond is Ready!

We have recently received a $10,000 seed grant to help fund our start up costs and we need your help to match the funds! 

Help Fund THIS Campaign Because...

This venture demonstrates that when self-responsibility and care for community come together great things happen. We urge you to lend your support and contribute to make this great thing happen.

Plus there are some great things you can look forward to with your donation - from stylish Co-op wear to yummy dinners with Co-op Board members. 

Like What You've Heard?

Watch this quick video for even more compelling reasons to give.

Contribute today!

Don't forget to tell your friends! Tell your family! Tell your neighbors! Shout it from the rooftops. Help us get out the word about the Co-op (and the campaign). It's a quick and easy way to help get the Richmond Food Co-op open. 

In Our Own Words: Member Testimonial (Inderdeep H.)

I joined the Co-op because I love healthy food. I came across the Richmond Food Co-op at a First Friday a while back, where they had a booth. It sounded like a very interesting grass roots initiative. I signed up for their mailing list. I received emails about their events such as pot lucks, meet and greet happy hours and their efforts to grow the membership through such initiatives. I thought to myself – “hey these guys have very fun events”. So, I decided to go one of their information sessions. Susan and Michele made their pitch – and I was sold! I became the 300th member/owner and I am a proud card carrying member of the Co-op!

I grew up in India – where it was not uncommon to go pick up fresh produce from the small market or a cart outside a local farm on a daily basis. The fruits and vegetables tasted delicious and distinct. The colors and the smells are so deeply ingrained. When I came to the US, and got vegetables from the grocery store – I wondered why the vegetables were so tasteless!

I try to eat healthy and believe that local organic sustainable food is a key to that lifestyle. Food should not be transported thousand miles across the country. The key things about the Co-op that are very attractive to me is other than their mission to open a grocery store selling affordable and healthy food, is their entire supply chain – collaborating with local farms and other like-minded businesses. Additionally, the process is democratic and we are all co-owners. What more could you ask for?

I really enjoy spending time with the members of the Co-op, they are engaged and informed and fun to be with. There is diversity in their backgrounds and a wide age range. The founders are passionate about the values of the Co-op and so are many of the members. I would strongly encourage non-members and fence sitters to take the plunge, so that we can have a community of a thousand members or more. We then will all be able to enjoy great affordable food from the Co-op and make some delicious meals!

-Inderdeep Huja, Co-op Member/Owner

Know Your Board: Kelsey Miller

The reason the Co-op's vision resonates with me is simple: I see it as a way for Richmonders of all socioeconomic standings to get fresh, local produce onto their plates while keeping dollars in their wallets. If you’re on the receiving end of our monthly board updates and you attend our monthly meetings, then you know how we’re all working towards that common goal.  

So how do we live our food values until opening day? Here are three ways that I’m using my dollar to vote for good food pre-Co-op.

1. Put a Plant In It: There are few living situations that are completely devoid of growing opportunities. From Chia Pets to full-fledged raised garden beds, there’s a gardening method that’ll suit just about any house setup.

The Problem: Alas, one cannot live on basil and tomatoes alone.

The Solution:  The Co-op provides Mozzarella to make a caprese diet a little more manageable.

2. Sharing is Caring: Richmond has so many great options when it comes to community shared agriculture, making this the perfect base around which to build meals.

The Problem: The CSA calendar only gets us so far and then we’re left cold and hungry in the months of December, January and February.

The Solution: Even when winter weather necessitates buying products that are a little more preserved than fresh veggies and fruits, the Co-op means we can continue to support local vendors.

3. Breaking the Chain: Again with the Richmond love--we have so many options for restaurants that are locally sourced, making it easy to skip the chains and go local.

The Problem: These local restaurants need to know that this is what their diners want if they’re going to keep moving closer and closer to being 100% locally sourced.

The Solution: Supporting a thriving, successful Co-op--and moving away from Big Box stores--means that we as individuals and as a community can make our food values heard, continuing this move towards 100% local sourcing.

To sum it all up, you are what you eat and I see the Co-op as making all of us member/owners local, sustainable and healthy.

-Kelsey Miller, Board Treasurer

In Our Own Words: Member Testimonial (Tracy C.)

“This is an historic moment of opportunity for the co-operative sector. With political institutions in many nations struggling to keep up with a rapidly changing world, it is essential that citizens become increasingly resourceful, enterprising and co-operative in order to face the inevitable social and environmental challenges we face as a world community.” – Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade

I am weary of big food. It deprives our bodies and corrodes our communities. Big agriculture grows mammoth amounts of inedible corn and soy that are then processed beyond recognition into dead, nutrient poor compounds marketed to us as food. Big business creates hundreds of new products like this every year in a constant effort to expand market share, to get us to eat more. Big money generated by this ongoing process drains out of our cities and towns, turning into profits for shareholders, political donations to protect corporate interests, and of course, research into more 'innovative' food products. 

Many of the people working to harvest, process, prepare and serve our food in this industry have few rights, do not make a living wage, are often made sick and injured by their work, and are treated poorly. Animals are tortured in outsized meat operations. We are fed pain and misery and injustice. This system craves growth, the only 'ethic' it knows. 

Cooperative businesses are a meaningful alternative to agribusiness and the corporate food industry. They challenge the trend toward further consolidation and the extraction of profit from local areas. They challenge the economic logic behind the production, distribution, and consumption of big food. They create democratic spaces in which we can work locally to resolve moral conflicts embedded in the global food system. Food co-ops provide healthy food, construct healthy economies, and build healthy communities. They promote food justice. They transform the food system by reviving and reinventing traditions of local, sustainable agriculture and small businesses committed to local areas.

My father, a WWII veteran and child of immigrants who grew up in the Pennsylvania countryside, planted a sizable garden in our backyard every spring. My mother cooked many of our family meals with the harvest of tomatoes, onions, parsley, peppers, beans, peas, corn, zucchini, and carrots. At the end of the season, she put up mason jars of tomatoes on shelves in the basement and used them throughout the winter months. Mom often handed one or the other of us a few dollars to buy a few dozen ears of “Joe’s Sweet Corn” from a farmer’s truck parked at the end of our road. Sometimes we supplemented with veggies from the Lasser’s front yard farm stand three houses over. Our milk and eggs were for years delivered weekly to our front door by Weik's Dairy less than a mile away. We ate apples and peaches from the trees in our yard. Mom and I picked wild blackberries to make pies and cobblers. When I went to my friend Chrissy’s house to play, we nibbled elderberries and gooseberries from the bushes in her yard. When someone died, we were nourished for days by covered dishes and baked goods delivered from neighbors, family, and friends.

Decades earlier, my father's mother kept a cow and sold milk to her neighbors. My grandfather walked door to door with his pushcart selling goods in their rural community. When I was sixteen and working my first job at a local diner, I met an older cook named Lois who positively gushed about my grandfather when she learned my last name. When Lois was a small child, she and her family looked forward to Grandpa stopping by with his cart. She told me she would never forget his kindness and willingness to accept other things in exchange when they didn’t have cash for goods. 

I have inherited a legacy of love, solidarity, and community. We all have. These food habits and cooperative relationships were not an aberration. Memories of them cannot be dismissed as sheer nostalgia or cliché. They were and are a meaningful way of life for many people. Such practices have merely been sidelined, pushed to the margins as our food system relentlessly expanded, corporatized, and globalized. No more. People are growing their own food, developing relationships with farmers, preserving food and exchanging with others. Our food co-op embraces shared power, community building, and fair food as practical and necessary strategies for the survival of our neighborhoods and families.

I did not join the Richmond Food Co-op to benefit myself with a grocery discount and a vote on the products we sell. I joined to become an active participant in our food system. I joined to connect with others who also see cooperative relationships as the way forward. I joined to keep my food dollars in my city. I joined to endorse an ethical and democratic business model in which all members have a say. I joined to contribute to ongoing changes in the local food system. I joined to pass on that legacy of love, solidarity, and community.

-Tracy Citeroni, Co-op Member/Owner

Earth Day 2014!

Earth Day 2013 Memories

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. —Jane Goodall

Happy Earth Day! This year as you think about your impact on this world of ours, we invite you to join us in doing our part on the local level.  The choices we make on a daily basis around where, how and what we consume not only reflect, but actively shape this world. The Richmond Food Co-op offers you the opportunity to make those choices meaningful. Commit to the our earth, our future, and our Co-op.

Welcome Earth Day and honor this commitment to a happy, healthy food future for Richmond. Help us reach our member half way mark this week! 500 by Earth Day! 

This kind of a commitment calls for celebration - join us Thursday for happy hour at En Su Boca to toast to a healthy and happy food future in Richmond. Bonus! We will be giving away an En Su Boca gift certificate to one lucky person committed to growing the Co-op - become a member at (or before) the event, or bring a not yet member friend with you to be entered to win!

Earth Day also marks the beginning of our tabling season - to volunteer at the Co-op information table this Saturday (or at a future event later this spring/summer) send us an email. 

It starts with you!