The Damned Hyde Park Co-Op (and why I will miss it)

My local grocery -- the Hyde Park Co-Op -- made the city news this week with word that, before long, our membership will most likely vote it out of existence. The process begins tonight (Nov 18th) with a community meeting, and continues with paper balloting in the coming weeks.

The newspaper reported the trail of mistaken business decisions that left our cooperative holding a lease on a long-emptied property on 47th Street, $1.2 million in rent owed to the University (the landlord on the 55th Street store) and vendors who will no longer vend. The realistic options are either to turn management over to a private firm (in exchange for debt restructuring and forgiveness) or bankruptcy (in which case, a trustee will run or wind up the business).

I've shopped the Co-Op for 27 years. Apart from an occasional sabbatical, I have never left. The Co-Op, I will say for the record, rewarded me for my loyalty. It never tried to sell me a lifestyle. It never became a cold, forbidding bargain barn. Truly, it never found its business footing in this century.

But the Co-Op was my people. I saw my neighbors (and their children) there. I saw my elected officials shopping the same aisles. It's where State Sen. Barack Obama did the weekly shopping before celebrity tapped him on the shoulder. I came to know, and learn from, the long-serving (often long-suffering) employees. My now-eleven-year son learned to shop there, and knew where everything was located, even as the store restlessly moved the displays. (We've had a long-running game -- "if I were a dried mushroom, where would I be?")

It has also been a good grocery store. Some will laugh. Many of my neighbors long ago made for the Roosevelt Road stores or parts further north. They found the Co-Op expensive, disheveled and unfriendly. But it was my one-stop bazaar. My staples were seasonably in stock: reggiano parmesan, fresh-ground peanut butter, King Arthur flour, Dowd orchard apples and the like. If you wanted Ball jars, two pounds of nuts or two scoops of semolina flour, they were there too. The Co-Op filled orders, answered complaints (in a fashion) and stocked according to local demand. And there were the fun oddities, like Smokey Robinson's Seafood Gumbo ("The Soul Is in the Bowl") and Certa Ice Cream mix (no one ever bought it).

Private management would never – will never – follow such a model. Whatever comes next (and the University assures us that it will come very soon), it will knock off the rust, probably fire a third of the staff, and give us what we don't really need: a second-rate chain store.

So good-bye, Co-Op, off to retail Purgatory. Our family will miss you awfully.

This is a lovely eulogy. The Co-op exposed me to a variety of products that had been unavailable to me as a suburban teenager growing up in Jewel / Dominick's hell. As I developed an interest in food, the Co-op helped me grow. Yes, it could be frustrating at times, sometimes hilariously so, especially toward the end ("What do you mean you're out of butter?"). But despite its grossly negligent management, the Co-op was a positive influence on the community, and on me in particular. Thanks for writing this.

We'll be moving down there in the next 6-8 months. Where do we shop now?

This is now my second year living in Hyde Park, and so my second year shopping at the Co-op. Although most people I know do nothing but complain about the prices, and strange selection, for some reason there has always been something endearing about the Co-op that stopped me from complaining about the $4 cartons of eggs. Your beautifully written post on the Co-op made me better understand its charm.

Thanks!

It's official:

"On December 17, 2007 the Board formally voted to accept Option A, by which the Co-Op will be dissolved in return for the University's assumption of most of its debts.

The store will be closed on January 28. Another store will open in its place around February 15.

Employees will lose their jobs but will receive accumulated sick and vacation pay."

I have mixed feelings on this, but I do hope that the hard-working employees will be able to get a job at the new store (reported either to be a Dominick's or Treasure Island), and that the new store will serve the needs of the community better. I live a stone's throw from the co-op, and really wanted to like it, but I am like many who shop up north for better selection, prices, and service.