Somewhere over the Rainbow
you’ll find North Country Co-op

BY STEVE BUTCHER

North Country Co-op recently sponsored a “Welcome Back” open house at the co-op’s West Bank location, at the intersection of 5th Street and 20th Avenue in the Riverside neighborhood, across from the University of Minnesota. The event attracted a mixed crowd of college students, co-op members, and representatives from Minnesota PIRG, and from Peace Coffee. Canvassers wearing Farheen Hakeem sandwich boards greeted voters clad in Becky Lourey T-shirts, all of whom shared the front sidewalk with vendors selling walnut burgers and turkey brats. Placidly contemplating the scene was a single Scottish Highland calf, the descendent of a herd belonging to the British royal family.

North Country Co-op opened in 1971 on the Augsburg College campus in the space formerly occupied by Larson’s Market. According to the co-op’s website, organizers were motivated by two concerns: the gradual disappearance of corner groceries, and the increasing prevalence in vegetables of “dangerous additives and chemical fertilizers.” Employee John Sherman, who joined the co-op in 1976, described a seat-of-the-pants operation that learned as it went along. “We lacked sophistication,” said Sherman. “We didn’t know how to run a store back then. We had a mechanical cash register. We had some refrigeration, but we sold mostly bulk items that we kept in large green garbage cans. I used to order from a form on a single page. Today, it’s the size of a phone book.”

In 1997, North Country moved to its present Riverside Avenue/University of Minnesota location. Its bulk section is now one of the most extensive in the Twin Cities, reflective of a diverse, creative membership that continues to insist on purchasing additive- and chemical-free items. According to marketing coordinator Erik Esse, one third of the co-op’s 500 members are from East Africa, and one of its best selling items is teff, a basic ingredient found in injera, a bread that originated in Ethiopia. “Our store attracts shoppers who are very non-traditional,” said Esse. “This is a place to locate hard-to-find groceries and also meet ethical concerns.”

The co-op separates itself from its larger commercial competitors in several ways. It deliberately fosters a relationship with local farmers and growers—35 percent of its produce comes from a five-state region in the Upper Midwest. It has also committed itself to the principle of “fair trade,” meaning that it agrees to pay above-market prices for such items as bananas, coffee and apples, a practice intended to protect small farmers from economic and political harm. “Fair Trade is an end-run around globalization and open borders,” said Esse. “Higher than market prices means that farmers will be able to defend themselves and won’t be forced to sell out.” North Country also extends discounts to its members in exchange for their labor, either in the store, or for store-related projects. Currently, a single membership costs $75. The fee includes a discount on purchases and an opportunity to serve on the board of directors.

Part of the co-op’s charm is its flexibility—there is no standardized North Country profile. Bill Cooley, a school bus driver, and a grad student at the University of Minnesota’s school of physics, is a working member who donates 6 to 8 hours of labor each month to the store in exchange for a 15 percent discount. “This is one of the few places where you run into people from other places, other contexts,” he said while stocking produce. “It’s friendly to progressive causes; it’s a co-op in reality. We all have a voice in deciding policy.” Cooley is unperturbed by—and even accepting of—the co-op’s often precarious finances. “The grocery business is cutthroat,” he said. “There was a period of time when we were up against it financially, where I gave [the co-op] money. I was at one membership meeting where we were talking about closing. We’re not professional marketers,” he said, “but we’re learning.”

North Country’s growing pains are not unusual, but finding a way to stay progressive and profitable—to mix bulk beans with bean counters—is a constant challenge. Recent data suggest that the national trend is favorable. “Retail food cooperatives in the United States—especially medium-sized and large natural foods co-ops—have been flourishing in the 1990’s and early 2000’s,” said Art Jaeger, communications director at the National Cooperative Business Association in Washington, D.C. “There are about 300 retail food co-ops in operation today in the United States, with estimated gross sales of $750 million in 2001.”

Co-ops also must deal with the ability of mega-mart groceries to quickly adapt to market demand. “When co-ops started to make a comeback in the late nineties it was because consumers wanted more organically grown vegetables,” said Jaeger. “Now, you can go to just about any commercial store and find an aisle full of organically grown produce.” Jaeger believes that co-ops will continue to outpace conventional groceries by personalizing their service. “In a co-op you can go to your produce manager or your deli manager and arrange to have some item imported. But try doing that in a grocery store. I don’t even know the name of the deli manager in the store where I go.”

Its dedicated membership base—discerning, exacting, loyal—is the glue that holds North Country together. “I was a student [at the university] for two years before I even knew about North Country,” said co-op board member and fiduciary overseer Elizabeth Nadeau. “I found out about them during the AFSCME strike; the co-op donated coffee to the strikers.” Nadeau has since found happiness beyond her local Rainbow, driving an extra couple of miles so that she can help wrangle the co-op’s herd of squeaking dinosaurs. To her, support for small farmers means taking a chance on an exotic request. “Because we are independent, we need to know that the person who placed the order will actually buy it,” she said. “But as long as someone somewhere carries it, we’ll get it.”