Willy Street Co-op opened in Madison in 1974. It started in a very small building shared with a bakery. The members wanted natural foods and more control over what they ate. Within its first year, the Co-op moved to a larger space and was able to provide a greater variety of produce, bulk and prepackaged foods. The current market at 1221 Williamson Street is 9,500 square feet and includes a teaching kitchen, deli, juice bar, and bakery. In the first five years, the Co-op grew from 1,300 to 4,000 members. It now has over 20,000 members and annual sales of close to $20 million. The cooperative is economically viable, meets the CGIN Living Wage for its employees, and is an institution in the community. The market has been so successful that it is in the process of opening a second store on University Avenue in Middleton. The Co-op held a bond sale and was able to meet their goal of $600,00 in just three weeks. By early May 2010, they had raised $1 million for the new market.

Willy Street Co-op’s goals place an emphasis on natural, wholesome, local foods. It is also concerned about the affordability of its products and has ethic and environmental expectations for its suppliers. The Co-op offers classes on wellness and nutrition, home delivery and catering. It also follows sustainability practices which include installing a rain garden, helping build a cob wall to promote natural building methods, installing solar hot water and solar photovoltaic panels on the rooftop, and using compostable and recycled containers in the deli.

To learn more about Willy Street Co-op, please visit their web site.

If you are interested in learning more, check out some of the resources below.  You may be able to find some of these books and movies at the library.  If you have a Netflix account, you can watch most of these documentaries on-line.

Movies and documentaries I have found enlightening and informative include King Corn, Food, Inc.,  The World According to Monsanto, and The Future of Food.  Watch for a follow-up to King Corn called Big River which will be released soon. 

Some of the best-known authors on the subjects include Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver.  Pollan is a journalist who is passionate about food that is ethically raised.  His books include  The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, and Food Rules).  Barbara Kingsolver wrote about how her daughter’s decision to not eat meat from animals raised on feedlots led to her family’s journey to eat local for one year in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. (Hint: it helps that they had a HUGE garden.)

There are also many web sites and food-related efforts on organic, sustainable, and local foods.  Many of you may have followed the efforts of the Canadian couple that ate only local foods for a whole year.  J. B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith kept an on-line journal and have written a book on their experiences, The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating.  They talk about all they learned about food, food miles, the struggles and joys they experienced, and how eating local has changed them.

Having a co-op resource in Green Bay that will provide us with the freshest local produce, organic and sustainably raised products, bulk groceries, and more is something we all can enjoy.

From the NFGN site:
Local governments can be powerful partners for changing the food system. As the Good Food and local food movements continue to gain momentum and visibility, local officials are becoming more interested in how these initiatives can help their communities. Mark Winne, author of “Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty” and top national expert on Food Policy Councils has a wealth of experience to share about local policy work as a tool for food system change.

What are the best ways to approach local officials and build partnerships with them over time? What types of strategies are most effective for Food Policy Councils and local food policy initiatives? What kind of impacts can they have on the food system and the community?

Mark will give you a crash course on how to be most effective in your efforts. Don’t reinvent the wheel! Learn from the successes of others.

We are just getting ready to launch our membership and marketing campaign.  Thanks to the hard work of Arketype in creating a name, logo and membership brochure (all of which will be unveiled very soon) we will be getting the word out in a much bigger way!  Some of you have said that you would like to volunteer to turn the vision into a reality. Now would be a great time! 

We’re looking for people who would like to help in developing awareness of the food cooperative grocery store and get the message out.  For example, we need people who would like to:

• Help in the development and maintenance of the website
• Get the word out by writing press releases and features about the grocery co-op and the need for it
• Speak to various groups about why we need a grocery co-op and why they should help get it started 
• Talk to future members at our booth at the Downtown and Broadway farmers markets. 

 If you want to be in on the ground floor of this exciting , and help bring a grocery store cooperative to downtown, this is a great time to get involved! Email:  Crystal@downtowngreenbay.com

If you know someone with grocery management experience who would like to work with the committee to make the vision a reality, please contact us at: Crystal@DowntownGreenBay.com.

The steering committee will be taking some additional steps in the coming weeks and are hoping to lean on some of you or your friends’ expertise for assistance:

• We are looking for architectural services to develop a store layout, floor plan, provide building elevations and conceptual cost estimates for an existing building renovation.
• We are also looking for someone with grocery store management experience to lend their expertise.
• We are looking for entrepreneurs who have used a shared commercial kitchen to help on the feasibility of our proposed kitchen venture.
• We will also need some individuals interested in marketing or public relations to help us reach out into the community.
Please let us know if you, or someone you know, would be interested in helping us take the next steps in moving this project forward.

We are also looking for volunteers for some fun, upcoming events, specifically the Green Parade that is taking place during Earth Week on April 24th at 11 am. Please let us know if you are interested.