Wednesday, August 23, 1978
11
Food co-op offers quality variety and slice of past
By NANCY FLEEKER
Staff Writer
Students who are concerned about "unnatural" ingredients in their food or high grocery prices may find relief at a local farmers' market, St. Lawrence's cooperative grocery store.
"We're a group of people that have banded together to be able to supply the food and items that we want at prices that are reasonable," Chuck Magerl, store coordinator, said.
The store has a friendly neighborhood atmosphere; everyone seems to know everyone else, milk comes in glass bottles and teas and spices are stacked from floor to ceiling in a wild assortment of measuring containers.
The Mercantile, in its fifth year, stocks natural and specialty foods. It also carries items such as soap, detergents and light bulbs as a convenience for their customers.
Co-op members can buy most foods at lower prices than are found in other grocery stores.
LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP fee is five dollars per household.
A household is defined as a group of people with a desire to share the membership responsibilities. The members need not live in the same house.
Before a member can join, a representative from the household must attend an enrolment.
Each adult member is required to pay a $10 shareholder fee.
Members who can't pay the entire fee can make arrangements to make monthly payments.
"We don't want the financial end to be a hassle for anyone." Merai said.
"The only distinction legally between us and any other business is that members are"
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As shareholders, members may participate in co-on decisions.
*I actually, most co-op members aren't interested in the business end of it as long as they have a job.*
The co-op makes a profit and pays taxes,
he said, but all profits are put back into the
account.
The number of hours members work each month is determined by the number of
A household of one or two members is responsible for two hours of work each week.
"Anything extra beyond that is just for a sense of satisfaction," Magerl said.
The work could be cutting cheese, saooking, cleaning up or a number of other cheeses.
All households are required to have a representative at the quarterly co-op meeting.
FAILURE TO attend the meetings or fulfill the work requirements can result in cancellation of membership unless the person making that it has become an inactive member.
Magerl said that members who notify the co-op of their inactive status can return as an account.
Members who miss one month of work can either pay five dollars or buy the groceries on a regular basis.
Each item is marked with two prices. The lower one is the co-op price.
Mageri said that some dairy products and produce had a lower retail price than in other stores.
Soap and detergents may be a few cents more because it is difficult to compete with other stores' high-volume prices, Magerl said.
But the Mercantile's quality makes up for some higher prices, he said.
*A LOT OF THE produce is organically grown and has no chemicals.* "Magerl said."
He said that many customers began shopping at the Mercantile because of prices and quality of the dairy products and food, and not because of the specialty foods.
"A lot of people come into the store just to buy the cheeses, he said. "Our selection is by far the largest."
As an example, he said that a local supermarket's longhorn cactus about
30 cents more per pound than the co-op's longhorn cheese.
All milk is bought from a small dairy near Topeka.
"Spices and teas are incredibly cheaper than in a supermarket," he said.
"There's not any waxy or paper taste," he
said. "The most favorite milk I've ever
had the chardonnay."
"We like to think that a lot of our items besides just being less expensive are also valuable."
HE SAID THAT egga were sometimes more expensive than those in grocery store
"But it's really hard to put a dollar-and-cents value on the difference in quality," he
The Mercantile also has its own bakery in a small building next to the store.
Magerl said that all of the bread was made with natural ingredients and no preservatives.
He said that some of the store's higher-priced items were special foods.
"A LOT OF THE THINGS that are in here
foreign to a lot of people," he said.
Many of the shoppers who came only for dairy products and produce later became industry professionals.
The specialty items include fruit juices,
whole grain chips and yogurt chips, he
eats.
There are knickknack shelves at the front of the store filled with speciality foods, he said.
Each bucket has a card taped under it with information about the contents.
The store has buckets filled with grains, dried fruits and nuts and granola mixes.
One label tells the customer how much corn the average American eats, who grew it and where.
Another gives instructions on how to cook rolled oats.
He said that frozen ment would be sold because the co-op could not afford a butt.
THE MERCANTILE will expand its off-ersitions this fall and sell meat. Megael said.
He said many customers had requested that the store start selling meat.
He expected the meat to be the same quality as their other products and said it would probably be less expensive than at other grocery stores.
"We have farmers who sell us produce, who are just wanting to sell us meat," he
Mageri said that the co-op meets all requirements set by state and county health.
"They come around unannounced and irregular," he said. "But every recommendation they've made has been reasonable."
"THERE are co-ops, even in Kansas, that have had dire threats, but we've never had that either from the county or the state."
mager! said that many people joined the co-op for reasons other than the price and availability.
"There's a real social sense too," he said. There's a thing about coming in here and having to be the center of attention.
The co-op began as a buying club in the back room of the Mercantile, which was then a specialty food store owned by Harry and Judy Krooser.
Each member of the buying club ordered
sundries on Sunday afternoons, Mager said.
When the Kroegers decided to sell the store, they offered it to the club.
THE CLUB, which had 100 members at the time, raised the necessary $5,000 in two weeks through individual loans, Magerl said.
"We throw open our doors as co-op, but then we had to close the membership because we couldn't meet the supply," he said.
The co-op moved to another downtown location five years later.
When a neighborhood grocery store at 700
miles went out of business last year, the
co-op went
The co-op owns the store, the bakery and the house next door.
Although the majority of the original members were 30 percent, said, "only only 30 percent are now."
The co-op has more than 500 member households.
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