Co-op News Round Up 2/9

All the co-op news that's fit to print, February edition

🌹The Mercado Central cooperative in Minneapolis is running a Go Fund Me to try to avoid closure due to the chilling effects of ICE activity on their customer base

🌹There are two Change petitions regarding a situation at PFC Co-op in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The board announced in an email on 2/4 that the GM had been removed and replaced by the board chair.

🌹Suncoast Market Food Co-op opened on 2/2 in Imperial Beach, CA. The co-op signed a lease on the space back in Oct 2022 and worked hard to get to opening day. Congrats to GM Andre Chavez and his team.

🌹This article by Oscar Perry Abello in Next City discusses cooperative financing models being employed in Brooklyn to support food systems change.

🌹A recently released report details the Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem. The report includes recommendations for other groups looking to build on the work done in Chicago.

🌹The board of the Food Co-op Initiative (FCI) announced that JQ Hannah has been named permanent Executive Director. JQ had been serving as Interim Executive Director since Feb 2025.

🌹Jon Steinman, author of Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants, went on a mini-tour to visit 5 co-ops in the mid-Atlantic. While the weather disrupted some of the events, recaps can be found on Jon's LinkedIn page.

🌹Amazon announced the shuttering of all Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go banner stores. Some locations will be converted to Whole Foods, while others will cease operations entirely.

🌹The Institute for Local Self-Reliance released a new resource to help map grocery consolidation and areas without access to fresh groceries around the country.

🌹The United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives released their 2025 State of the Sector analysis of worker cooperatives and democratic workplaces.

🌹Lastly, we commend this article from the Cooperative Grocers archives about healthy board dissention written by Todd Wallace in 2012. It covers evergreen topics for how boards can relate to and disagree with one another.