Dear cooperators and friends,

What’s better than one award? How about two?

FCI was proud to present *TWO* awards to outstanding food co-ops at CCMA last month.

The Bill Gessner Startup Food Co-op Award is awarded to a late stage organizing startup that has demonstrated:

  • an effective use of the most up-to-date best practices throughout their organizing
  • strong community support
  • realistic prospects of post-open sustainability

This award was created in honor of Bill Gessner, by his friends and colleagues, in the food co-op movement.

Congratulations to our 2025 Bill Gessner award winner, SunCoast Market in Imperial Beach, CA! 

Slide of SunCoast Market winning the Bill Gessner Startup Food Co-op Award

This San Diego County community is majority Hispanic/Latino and home to a significant Navy population. SunCoast has served its community through cooking classes, a drive-thru produce & grocery service during the early pandemic, and organizing a monthly farmers market.

Construction of their retail grocery store is underway and they are targeting a late summer or early fall 2025 opening.

The FCI Startup of the Year Award honors a startup that displays notable excellence in one or more of four areas:

  • community organizing
  • strong & viable business planning
  • bold & effective innovation in co-op development
  • implementing new approaches to meet the needs of communities under-served by food co-ops

Congratulations to Detroit People’s Food Co-op for winning Startup of the Year!

Gabby Davis, JQ Hannah, Lanay Gilbert-Williams, Chris Dilley pose in front of the CCMA main stage after Detroit People's Food Co-op wins the Startup of the Year Award

Pictured from left to right: Gabby Davis, JQ Hannah, Lanay Gilbert-Williams, Chris Dilley

Detroit People’s Food Co-op met *all* of the award criteria through:

  • Incredible community engagement and visibility in the community that resulted in 4,000 owners by opening day, with nearly 1,000 of those becoming members in the weeks leading up to opening
  • Business planning that leaned heavily into expert retail grocery resources and consulting, while also challenging these partners to develop methods and processes that better serve historically red-lined and other communities that have been systemically excluded.
  • Organizing with, and often led a coalition of Black-led startup food co-ops to solve for how to adapt current startup food co-op support and expertise to their community and innovating new practices where what they needed did not exist.

DPFC has won multiple awards, such as the 2023 Up & Coming Food Co-op Conference’s Best of the Best and recently celebrated their 1 year anniversary of opening their grocery store.

FCI STAFF NOTE 

The entire FCI staff team attended the annual CCMA Conference, a national gathering of food cooperative leaders including co-op managers, board members, staff, and allies to the sector. It is organized by the great team at the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, and this year the co-op host was Whole Foods Co-op in Duluth, MN.
Chris Dilley, Mercedes Gosby and JQ Hannah at CCMA standing with the Full Circle Fund Drive posters.
CCMA is FCI’s chance to put on display the importance and brilliance of the startup food co-op movement in front of the hundreds of food cooperators from established food co-ops across the country. FCI got to do this not only by presenting the two startup food co-op awards, above, from the main stage, but it also got the opportunity to spotlight the story of the Detroit People’s Food Co-op (DPFC), which opened its store for business on May 1st, 2024.

Lanay Gilbert-Williams and Gabby Davis, Board President and Treasurer of DPFC, respectively, co-presented with FCI’s own Chris Dilley, a breakout session titled, “Innovations from the Next Generation: What My Co-op can Learn from Detroit People’s Food Co-op”, to dozens of food cooperators in a complete Gabby Davis, Lanay Gilbert-Williams and Chris Dilley give a talk at CCMA about the story of Detroit People's Food Co-oply packed room!

CCMA is a unique opportunity to learn directly about the huge impact that food co-ops are having, as well as the challenges they’re facing.

Today’s startups become tomorrow’s established food co-ops, and dozens of the 187 startups that have opened in the last 20 years with FCI’s support were at CCMA, now counted among the established food co-ops.

Help us support the organizing of over 100 more startups by donating to our Full Circle funding campaign today.

STARTUP ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Stage 1: As of June 1, Blackberry Food Co-op is now incorporated in Cottage Grove, OR. Blackberry is a co-op organized to take on the ownership of the beloved Coast Fork Farm Stand as the owner looks to retire. The co-op is now making a transition plan to take over operations gradually.

Stage 2: Prickly Pear Food Co-op in Truth or Consequences, NM, (population: 6700) reached the 200 Member milestone at their food distribution event on June 10. As an HFFI recipient, they’re planning for a market study and preliminary pro forma next.

Stage 3: Electric City Food Co-op in Schenectady, NY, is making great strides toward Stage 4! They’re working with NCG on feasibility, have achieved 85% of their funding plan, and plan to launch their capital campaign Friday, July 4 with a theme of Declaration Day, “Speak Life into Liberty & Justice For All.”

Stage 4: Prairie Food Co-op in Lombard, IL, elected to move forward with INFRA for supply contracts and promotions, and has hired their permanent General Manager, Gabriel Smith. They are putting the finishing touches on their new store, and are on track to open Wednesday, July 9. Hope to see you there!

Coopiversaries! These co-ops are celebrating 1 or more years of being open this month:

UPCOMING EVENTS

The Food Co-op Development Framework Action Guide – an Overview: To be released Tuesday, July 8th, 2025:  Launched in Fall 2024, our team has been hard at work creating written resources on what the new Food Co-op Development Framework is and how to utilize it. Now, the first printed guide to the Framework is about to be released! Written through a collaborative input process, this free digital guide will be on the FCI website and in your inbox in mere weeks!

Framework Action Guide August Webinar: August 6th, 2025, 1p – 2:30p Eastern: Want to learn about the new Framework and guide live and be a part of the discussion? FCI’s JQ Hannah will teach a live webinar about our newest FCI Action Guide. Registration will open Tuesday, July 8th. Look out for the registration links in the announcement email.

Up & Coming: September 11–13th, 2025: Registration is OPEN for the Up & Coming Conference for Startup Food Co-ops in Kalamazoo, MI! We are thrilled to be sharing space with Black-Led Day for the 5th year in a row, which will be held Thursday, September 11th, organized and hosted by the National Black Food & Justice Alliance.

SUPPORT THE NEXT GENERATION OF STARTUPS

FCI is currently supporting over 120 actively organizing startup food co-ops from Hawaii to Maine and 70+ new communities have called us in the last 12 months. We can support all of them in their efforts, but we can’t do it alone. 

FCI’s Full Circle funding campaign is our annual ask for established food co- ops to join us in supporting the next generation of food co-ops by donating to FCI’s work.

We’re proud to say 52 established food co-ops joined our 2024 Full Circle supporters list, collectively raising just over $82,000 for the startup movement.

Sam McCormick, General Manager of Assabet Co-op Market, makes a pledge to the 2025 FCI Full Circle Campaign

Sam McCormick, General Manager of Assabet Co-op Market, makes a pledge to the 2025 FCI Full Circle Campaign

Our 2025 goal is even higher to meet this moment: to increase our Full Circle supporters list to 60+ food co-ops with a total of $100,000 raised.

To get all the information you need for your co-op to join our Full Circle supporter’s list or to ask any questions about FCI’s work and startup food co-ops, please reach out to our Interim Executive Director, JQ Hannah, at jq@fci.coop. 

DONATE

NEWS STARTUPS NEED TO KNOW

Argus Farm Stop, in Ann Arbor, MI, was recently featured in a New York Times article. A farm stop combines the best parts of a farmers market and a grocery store. Most source their produce and goods within 200 miles of their store, and a growing number are cooperatively owned! This article explores some Argus Farm Stop article in the New York Timesof the advantages of this model, especially for consumers and farmers. Chris Dilley, FCI’s Director of Startup Support, attended and spoke on a panel about the intersection between the farm stop model and cooperative ownership at the 2025 Farm Stop Conference in March. Read Chris’ conference recap.

  • America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) has a new fund, the Food Access and Retail Expansion (FARE) Fund, which is for food retailers and food supply chain businesses. Funding amounts for their latest cycle: Up to $250,000 for implementation grants, up to $100,000 for early-stage planning, pre-development, and technical assistance and loans ranging from $500,000 to $5 million available to eligible projects. You can apply on a rolling basis for the loans & technical assistance. For grants, there are deadlines for sending the inquiry form and then for applying. More information on their website.

Get Started with Food Co-op Initiative

Food Co-op Initiative provides exceptional resources for people in the U.S. working to start a retail food co-op that meets the needs of their community. New startups can use our materials at no charge and are able to reach out to our staff for phone consultations and additional technical help.

Popular Resources

Let’s Start a Food Co-op! What do we do first?

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Guide to Starting a Food Co-op

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QuickStart from FCI Classroom

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April 2025: Co-ops are built for moments like these Food Co-op Development Framework Action Guide front cover The Food Co-op Development Framework Action Guide