Clipper City Co-op Holds First Annual Meeting

Cath Tease, part of the four-person Steering Committee for the co-op, said the entire timeline for opening a Co-op grocery store filled with locally-sourced produce in downtown Manitowoc is driven by the amount of members recruited instead of money raised.

Food co-ops, like Clipper City, are member-owned grocery stores often with an emphasis on providing organic and locally-sourced foods and products. Anyone in the community would be able to shop at the grocery store. According to the Food Co-op Initiative, there are more than 1.4 million co-op members in the United States.

Saturday’s meeting was attended by more than 50 members who were asked to vote on candidates to form the co-op’s first Board of Directors. The nine-person board will be announced later in the week after a full count of votes made in person and online.

Albert Sears, a professor at Silver Lake College, is one of the 10 candidates hoping to be elected to the Board of Directors. Sears said he cares about increasing interest in local food and making it more available to the community.

“Our market study, done about a year ago, showed that we could sustain one (Co-op grocery store) and that we could put one anywhere,” Sears said. “The vision for the co-op has always been somewhere downtown. I think that is really key to help strengthen the downtown area, strengthen the businesses there but attract more businesses as well.”

Another board candidate, Jennifer Van Slooten, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc, said she has a lot of experience in shared governance she could put to use if elected to the board.

”I really like the emphasis on community engagement, that is one thing that makes a difference from other places you might buy food,” Van Slooten said. “It is sustainable and it tries to support other local businesses and producers.”

The other candidates for the Clipper City Co-op’s Board of Directors are Tease, Naomi Raddatz, Lucy Kujawski, Tony Fodden, Shannon Hollahan, Amy Fettes, Jan Van Eycke and Mariah Castro. Online voting for the candidates ended at 2 p.m. Saturday and the in-person voting closed at the end of the meeting.

According to Tease, the co-op is still in the very early stages of being. After a Board of Directors is chosen, they and the Steering Committee will work together to accomplish various goals that ultimately ends in opening a co-op grocery store.

In 2017, some of the goals the board will work on are updating the Articles of Incorporation, and establishing a financial committee, a site committee and a general manager hiring team.

While the timeline the Steering Committee has been working from says the grand-opening is still a few years down the road, it is really based on the number of members involved. To open a store in Manitowoc would take approximately 1,000 members to be feasible. Currently, there are 189 members in the co-op. The timeline assumes approximately 25 members would be recruited each month.

“If this is going to be a stand-alone business, we need owners (members) to commit, not only to helping us but to shop there,” Tease said.

To become a member, people must purchase a $200 share in the co-op, essentially becoming shareholders in the business.

While nothing has been planned yet, Tease said there will be two large recruiting events in 2017 – one in spring and another in fall.

Co-op member Jennifer Hollahan from Manitowoc said she joined because she would like to be able to acquire locally sourced foods without driving out of town one day.

“We are in farmland, we shouldn’t be getting food from I-don’t-know where,” Hollahan said. “We live in America’s food basket so we should have more local food available to us.”

Like many other members of the Clipper City Co-op, Hollahan has high expectations of the organization she joined.

“I would like to see a really vibrant cooperative that has some staff and some volunteers and I would like it to be real integrated into the community,” she said. “I’d like it to be in a food desert, which is basically downtown. I would like to see a place for people to get educated about food and I would like it to be integrated with the Farmer’s Market.”

More information about Clipper City Co-op can be found at www.clippercitycoop.com.

Alisa M. Schafer USA TODAY NETWORK – Wisconsin

November 5, 2016 Herald Times Reporter