By Adam Rabiner
The Park Slope Food Coop (PSFC) is undoubtedly the most famous food cooperative in the world. That’s due in part because it’s old, “EST 1973,” as its iconic green and red neon sign proudly proclaims. With over 17,000 members, it’s also really successful for a food cooperative, recognized for quality products, low prices, and industry leading metrics. However, what really sets the PSFC apart from other food cooperatives, let alone supermarkets, is its adherence to its founding principles of cooperation, especially its almost unique insistence on members’ work requirements. The two hours and forty-five minutes per month asked of members as a condition of membership has drawn its share of attention, not always positive, in the local and national media. But while press has not been lacking over the years, the PSFC had not been the focus of serious study. In this respect, the appearance of the documentary, Food Coop, is long overdue.
Food Coop’s tone and personality reflects in some ways its subject. It’s quirky, informal, spontaneous, familiar, and very real. Little of the film is formally scripted. The movie’s verisimilitude comes through for members especially, who are intimately acquainted with the sights and sounds of 782 Union Street: the traffic noise and sirens, the beeping machines, the aisles we walk down every day, the crowds and checkout lines.
Film maker Tome Boothe introduces us to the PSFC, making the point about its unique volunteer culture, by walking around and asking workers, “Can I ask you a question, what do you do for a living?” A stocker teaches pre-school, a guy breaking down boxes in the basement is a designer/animator; another at checkout is in social services, there’s a psychoanalyst, and a pair of film-makers. Some of these faces are familiar, former General Coordinator and fruit/produce buyer Allen Zimmerman, founder Joe Holtz; others could be our friends or neighbors (indeed, at the one hour mark a person I’ve known for years filled the frame).
Food Coop is also very much a Brooklyn film. A Walker, the head of the Working Families Party, is interviewed heading into equally recognizable territory down Union Street to 7th Avenue then towards Flatbush Avenue. In another scene a bicyclist peddles to his home in Gowanus where he tells us how The Coop helped him meet people serious about food after depressing experiences with his local deli and Key Food. A food activist takes us to Bedford Stuyvesant, a food desert, where she contrasts The Coop’s merchandise and prices with those of a local bodega where a moldy lemon costs $.50. A couple welcome us into their home in what appears to be Windsor Terrace or Kensington, displaying their week’s shopping and contrasting how much less each item is than at Whole Foods ($2.31 vs. $2.50 for a can of tomatoes, for example).
But the camera also ventures into The Coop’s more hidden spaces, offering new discoveries for members only used to the shopping floor. We visit a cheese packing squad down in the basement grooving to the CD, Music to Process Food By – Volume 43. We spend a bit of time with a worker in the frigid and claustrophobic dairy cooler. We also pick up a surprising thing or two, for example that long-time produce supplier Amy Hepworth does not put a dollar amount on her invoices but left it to Allen Zimmerman to be fair or that organic chocolate does not necessarily mean better quality.
Food Coop jumps around, alighting upon things familiar to members. It features interviews with the bulk and cheese buyers, office staff, child care workers, and a couple who do composting. We see new members being briefed at their orientation and choosing which squad to work on. The film examines the workings of Disciplinary Committee and looks at the Environmental Committee’s campaign to eliminate plastic bags, as well as the Coordinators’ resistance to this proposal. It tags along with Dan, a squad leader, and his beleaguered team during a closing shift at the height of the holiday season on December 24th. We follow a shopper heading home by subway and bus, a nearly two hour trip, undertaken, understandably, only once a month.
What kind of crazy person schlepps bulky grocery bags half way across New York City by public transportation, even if it is only ten to twelve times a year? Food Coop depicts a unique institution that in all its messiness and diversity has inspired a passionate and dedicated community willing to go to those lengths.
The Park Slope Food Coop (PSFC) is undoubtedly the most famous food cooperative in the world. That’s due in part because it’s old, “EST 1973,” as its iconic green and red neon sign proudly proclaims. With over 17,000 members, it’s also really successful for a food cooperative, recognized for quality products, low prices, and industry leading metrics. However, what really sets the PSFC apart from other food cooperatives, let alone supermarkets, is its adherence to its founding principles of cooperation, especially its almost unique insistence on members’ work requirements. The two hours and forty-five minutes per month asked of members as a condition of membership has drawn its share of attention, not always positive, in the local and national media. But while press has not been lacking over the years, the PSFC had not been the focus of serious study. In this respect, the appearance of the documentary, Food Coop, is long overdue.
Food Coop’s tone and personality reflects in some ways its subject. It’s quirky, informal, spontaneous, familiar, and very real. Little of the film is formally scripted. The movie’s verisimilitude comes through for members especially, who are intimately acquainted with the sights and sounds of 782 Union Street: the traffic noise and sirens, the beeping machines, the aisles we walk down every day, the crowds and checkout lines.
Film maker Tome Boothe introduces us to the PSFC, making the point about its unique volunteer culture, by walking around and asking workers, “Can I ask you a question, what do you do for a living?” A stocker teaches pre-school, a guy breaking down boxes in the basement is a designer/animator; another at checkout is in social services, there’s a psychoanalyst, and a pair of film-makers. Some of these faces are familiar, former General Coordinator and fruit/produce buyer Allen Zimmerman, founder Joe Holtz; others could be our friends or neighbors (indeed, at the one hour mark a person I’ve known for years filled the frame).
Food Coop is also very much a Brooklyn film. A Walker, the head of the Working Families Party, is interviewed heading into equally recognizable territory down Union Street to 7th Avenue then towards Flatbush Avenue. In another scene a bicyclist peddles to his home in Gowanus where he tells us how The Coop helped him meet people serious about food after depressing experiences with his local deli and Key Food. A food activist takes us to Bedford Stuyvesant, a food desert, where she contrasts The Coop’s merchandise and prices with those of a local bodega where a moldy lemon costs $.50. A couple welcome us into their home in what appears to be Windsor Terrace or Kensington, displaying their week’s shopping and contrasting how much less each item is than at Whole Foods ($2.31 vs. $2.50 for a can of tomatoes, for example).
But the camera also ventures into The Coop’s more hidden spaces, offering new discoveries for members only used to the shopping floor. We visit a cheese packing squad down in the basement grooving to the CD, Music to Process Food By – Volume 43. We spend a bit of time with a worker in the frigid and claustrophobic dairy cooler. We also pick up a surprising thing or two, for example that long-time produce supplier Amy Hepworth does not put a dollar amount on her invoices but left it to Allen Zimmerman to be fair or that organic chocolate does not necessarily mean better quality.
Food Coop jumps around, alighting upon things familiar to members. It features interviews with the bulk and cheese buyers, office staff, child care workers, and a couple who do composting. We see new members being briefed at their orientation and choosing which squad to work on. The film examines the workings of Disciplinary Committee and looks at the Environmental Committee’s campaign to eliminate plastic bags, as well as the Coordinators’ resistance to this proposal. It tags along with Dan, a squad leader, and his beleaguered team during a closing shift at the height of the holiday season on December 24th. We follow a shopper heading home by subway and bus, a nearly two hour trip, undertaken, understandably, only once a month.
What kind of crazy person schlepps bulky grocery bags half way across New York City by public transportation, even if it is only ten to twelve times a year? Food Coop depicts a unique institution that in all its messiness and diversity has inspired a passionate and dedicated community willing to go to those lengths.