Welcome & details, History, Mission and Principles

Bylaws & Patronage Refund information, writing a paper about us

varieties of co-ops, Co-op Quilts and traditions, codes for bulk products

   
Started in a Davis living room in 1972, the Davis Food Co-op has grown into a full-service food cooperative owned and operated by over 9,000 local households.
   We've operated at 620 G Street since March, 1984. In 1990, we were able to buy our building. We renovated and remodeled in 1992 and 1997.
   We're proud to be open seven days a week, from 8 am to 10 pm. (Hours vary on July 4th, Thanksgiving, and around the end of December.) The Co-op provides you with a unique, healthy array of foods that can support many diets: from that of the young family to the nutritional particulars of a special diet; from that of the health-conscious shopper to the person who questions the use of chemical pesticides on their fruit and vegetables.
   Nowhere else in town delivers over 40 different varieties of organic produce every day of the week, features over 750 items in bulk, or naturally-raised, chemical-free beef and chicken.
  But the Davis Food Co-op's most important characteristic is that it is a cooperative. We exist to serve our members, and depend on your support and involvement to exist.

More History of the Davis Food Co-op

  ...is available in a booklet of articles by member Chris Laning, reprinted from the Davis Co-op News. Titled "Looking Back, it gives a view of the years 1972 to 1984. You can read it, although it IS long, by following this link.

More basic information about our Co-op

  ...is available where we welcome you.

The Directors of the Co-op have adopted the following Mission Statement and Ends Policies. They are looking for interested members to comment both on the Policies, and on appropriate goals, visions, and directions for the Co-op. These policies are designed to answer the questions, "what difference will the Co-op make, for what people, at what cost?"

Mission, E:
We build community with food and cooperative principles.

Please view our full Ends Policies to learn more about this mission.

...please send a message to our Directors individually.

Follow this link to our Co-op Bylaws

The Davis Food Co-op adheres to the principles of cooperatives as revised and adopted by the International Cooperative Alliance. These were modified in 1995, at the ICA gathering in Manchester, England; we're happy to make our community ties an explicit part of our Principles.

DEFINITION
   A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.

VALUES
   Co-operatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility, and caring for others.

PRINCIPLES
   The co-operative principles are guidelines by which co-operatives put their values into practice.

1st PRINCIPLE:
VOLUNTARY AND OPEN MEMBERSHIP
   Co-operatives are voluntary organisations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, without gender, social, racial, political, or religious discrimination.

2nd PRINCIPLE:
DEMOCRATIC MEMBER CONTROL
   Co-operatives are democratic organisations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary co-operatives members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and co-operatives at other levels are organised in a democratic manner.

3rd PRINCIPLE:
MEMBER ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION
   Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative. At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the co-operative. They usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: developing the co-operative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-operative; and supporting other activities approved by the membership.

4th PRINCIPLE:
AUTONOMY AND INDEPENDENCE
   Co-operatives are autonomous, self-help organisations controlled by their members. If they enter into agreements with other organisations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their co-operative autonomy.

5th PRINCIPLE:
EDUCATION, TRAINING AND INFORMATION
   Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives.
   They inform the general public -- particularly young people and opinion leaders -- about the nature and benefits of co-operation.

6th PRINCIPLE:
CO-OPERATION AMONG CO-OPERATIVES
   Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional, and international structures.

7th PRINCIPLE:
CONCERN FOR COMMUNITY
   While focusing on member needs, co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies accepted by their members.

Adopted in Manchester (UK)
23 September 1995

• Producers like farmers, artisans or industrialists use co-ops to market or process their goods jointly. The Artery at 207 G Street in Davis is a local example.
• Workers in areas as diverse as bicycle sales, baked goods production, and grocery sales use co-ops to create employment that offers many of the benefits of ownership: wages or income that directly corresponds to the economic results of the business. Arizmendi Bakery in Oakland and The Cheeseboard in Berkeley are two regional examples.
• Consumers use co-ops to gain better prices, acquire unique goods and services, or to meet social or cultural desires. The Davis Food Co-op is in this category.
• Private businesses or public entities can use cooperatives to gain purchasing power through bulk buying, obtain products or services that are difficult to obtain individually, or share administration of certain projects to reduce overhead costs. Hibbert Lumber and Ace Hardware are both local examples.

Our new "Co-op Quilt" draws on several traditions.

T shirts are America's form of tribal identification (and yes, you can buy T shirts at some pow wows). It makes sense that the birth of a "new wave" of cooperatives - especially food co-ops - in the 1970's would have spawned a lot of T shirt designs in turn. With the help of quotes from stories by co-op educators Theresa Carbrey (from New Pioneer in Iowa) and Chris Durkin (from Harvest in Massachusetts), we'd like to tell the story of how those T shirts were combined with the tradition of working together to make quilts.

Dr. Ann Hoyt is the professor at University of Wisconsin, Madison who studies food co-ops. (She's Director of the Urban Cooperative Initiative there.) She's quite a figure in the co-op world, in part because of her long work to develop the annual conference of the Consumer Co-op Management Association (CCMA) and the annual Cooperative Management Institute. She's also got credibility, because she's been involved in a lot of cooperatives. It is perhaps not surprising to learn that she acquired a lot of T shirts in the process...

She was looking for a new way to raise money for the Howard Bowers Educational Fund, which supports education for consumer cooperative managers through scholarships to the Consumer Cooperative Management Association (CCMA) conference.

Ann served on the board of the Howard Bowers Fund at the time that the idea of a Co-op Quilt was born. Ann had admired co-op T-shirts from around the country and, borrowing an idea from a friend, decided to use co-op T-shirts to make a quilt. Each year the auction of various co-op items at the annual CCMA Conference was a major fund-raiser for the Howard Bowers Fund. By 1996, Ann had enough T-shirts to begin the quilt.

She cut the logos from the shirts and fastened them to backing. Anne Hopkins came from Good Foods Co-op of Lexington, Kentucky to help assemble the quilt. Anya Firszt, manager of the Williamson Street Co-op in Madison, joined the work. The women quilted all weekend the week before the 1997 CCMA conference. Ann reports, "It was a wonderful experience. We laughed and talked the whole weekend. Curious friends and visitors dropped by and helped." The quilt hem still remained undone when the 1997 conference opened in Alexandria, Virginia. Keiko Sakuma-Neubauer from Kokua Food Co-op in Honolulu stayed up all night to finish it before the CCMA Bowers Fund auction.

That year, the quilt was auctioned off to the Midwest Cooperative Grocers' Association (CGA), who purchased it for $2,500 in a pooled effort. [...].

Ann had intended that the auction of the quilt be a one-time deal, but people at the conference discussed it informally and decided that the Midwest CGA had, in fact, bought rights to display the Co-op Quilt for one year. Ann gleefully reports the Co-op Quilt and posters had raised over $30,000 for the Bowers Fund after the 2001 auction. [See Chris' full article at this link.]

You may have seen posters of the original quilt in our Conference Room, or in Eric Stromberg's office. It was so pretty, so intriguing, so tempting... Davis Director Allision Alcalay came back from "losing" the auction determined that our co-op should have something like it!

She spent hours on the phone for the better part of a week, trading Davis bags or T shirts with co-ops around the country for one of their T shirts. Co-op members Rebecca Fredericks and Katherine Chastain stitched and quilted the shirts into a beautiful quilt, distinguised by a "Proud to be a part" Remodeling 1997 Davis T shirt in the center. It has hung with pride in our store.

...Except that we couldn't ignore the needs of other co-ops! Many times now, a "Davis Quilt" has also been auctioned to benefit the Bowers Fund. Members of the Hyde Park Co-op (three stores on the South Side of Chicago) completed a third quilt in 2001, in time for the CCMA Conference in their town. Theirs is the "spicy" quilt, as they used black material with bright chili peppers for the borders between T shirt panels.

It was so appropriate that Hyde Park participate in this grass roots movement, because of their debt to Mr. Bowers. Howard Bowers served as the manager at the Consumers' Cooperative Association in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in the 70s and 80s. He took the GM spot at the Hyde Park Co-op in the late 80s and did a fine job of reversing negative financial trends at this full line "regular products" grocery store.

Throughout his life, Howard was generous in coaching others, sharing information on how to manage a co-op with the many inexperienced natural foods co-op managers from around the country who sought his advice. Howard also taught at the Co-op Management Institute in Madison.

Many people mourned Howard's death from liver cancer in 1993. To honor Howard, the Hyde Park Co-op started a fund to support education for consumer cooperative managers. The Consumer Cooperative Management Association joined in fund-raising to provide scholarships. [See Theresa's full article at this link.]

Why a fourth quilt? We love donating to support scholarships for co-ops that are less able to offer training to their staff and Directors. But we miss having a quilt on our walls. Eric thought there was no reason not to commission another. When member Jane Shapiro volunteered her design and sewing services, our dream became a reality. Now, with two quilts, Davis can offer one at auction and still have something spectacular to greet shoppers when they walk by our North entrance.

Shoppers often stop to point out the co-ops they've been to before. Our latest quilt features a Davis "Simply Tastier" T shirt in the center, but it also has a rather daunting array of other cooperatives represented.

Click for an image of the Tastier Quilt, with member Jane Shapiro standing to the right (quilt held by Doug Walter & Julie Cross).