In short: Families are making significant savings on their grocery bills by forming small shopping co-ops.
Cooperative business structures account for less than 1 per cent of the supermarket sector in Australia.
What’s next? The peak body for co-ops is calling for more government support for the business model.
Without knowing about how things are set up in your local co-op, maybe you could investigate setting up a two-stream system of ‘budget’ and ‘organic’. Or you could just set up an entirely separate co-op.
Maybe, space and rental costs for the shop are pretty limited and pretty high. I sort of want to start my own but I’m a human garbage fire between the nerve pain and the depression making the fucking hard yards of getting started extra hard.
Idk what to really do. With the death of community hubs it’s really difficult to get enough of a group together it’s not a heroic effort generating interest and that sort of organising is not anything I’m good at or even really know how to approach :(
Yeah, fair enough. I don’t have any first-hand experience, but advice I’ve heard is that if you can get just one other committed person on board, you’re halfway there.
If you’ve got a local Food Not Bombs group, that’s a good place to find people that are into cooperation. There’s other community groups around that might have people who are interested or that are willing to provide infrastructure of some kind - men’s sheds come to mind. Otherwise, it’s worth a try posting on local Facebook groups.
There’s probably a guide or blog written around getting something like this set up. I should have a dig around.
