Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants Kindle Edition

This kindlebook that is Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops In The Age of Grocery Giants by Jon Steinman contains a prolific amount of grocery/food data pertaining to multiple parts of the United States. The following details include: the morning of December 7, 2016 when a new grocery store is being opened in the author’s hometown of Nelson British Columbia Canada, reference to the author’s Deconstructing Dinner podcast that he started in 2006, By 2012 Deconstructing Dinner evolved into a television and web series, some history on one of the earliest grocery store chains A&P that grew stories in thirty nine states and two Canadian provinces, details on the first supermarket that opened in 1930, some of the reasons why the author considers grocery stores to be living museum’s of earth’s bounty, the author provides stories of food co-ops being established I mixed-income neighborhood and food deserts, and more.

For anyone wondering what Food Co-ops are, wanting to start a Food Co-op, or grow a current Food Co-op this is definitely the book to read. I think it should be required reading for all Food Co-op Board of Directors!Jon Steinman provides a look at the history of grocery stores and the industry it has become but also provides hope for our food future through the growth of food co-ops. I did have to really push myself to read the first couple of chapters because of the charts and graphs, but I'm so glad I did as I did gain a new insight to grocery stores and it was exciting to read the next chapters with that knowledge.

Suspicion and uneasiness regarding food availability, quality, and marketing confirmed by history and associations of giant grocery stores. Obvious to me and I hope many others that my community and indeed my family are best served by a Cooperative grocery store.

This brand new book is fascinating, at times infuriating, and at times heartbreaking. Details are given about how the farmers get a shocking $.06 for that $4.50 loaf of bread, are being forced out of business by big agra, distrubutors, wholsealers and other middlemen who all take a cut of what we pay - so that not enough profit is left for them to pay the bills for feed, fertilizer, tractor fuel and other necessities. They are in desperate financial straits, losing their farms and committing suicide in increasing numbers. After recounting this, the book becomes inspiring, though in a qualified way. It's about grass roots community action of the best kind. Action that is necessary, but the results of which are by no means assured. It's a call to action.It documents the ruthless predatory tactics of giants like the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (the A&P) Kroger and a few others, who with numerous intermediary distributors, processors and middlemen dominated the landscape circa 1900. Then, around 1910, the government leveled the playing field so that the farmer and the neighborhood grocery were no longer at a disadvantage. FDR brought further legislation to bear during the depression, and farmers began to prosper again. Then came the Reagan revolution, and the previous anti-trust regulation essentially disappeared, with devastating consequences for farmers, small stores, consumers and people who live in poor neighborhoods where the giants fear to tread. Things have continued to deteriorate since the 1980's.The coop movement which is slowly gaining ground in enlightened communities offers a sliver of hope that we may undo the damage done to farmers, small stores and local economies. The movement will fail though if our only concern is where can one buy a generic product at the cheapest price, with no attention to quality or where the product comes from, or who is getting rich on the back of farmers. Food shopping involves making ethical choices. Are we prepared to take off our blinders and make them?

Reads like a great series of stories! Fun, informative, and inspiring. As a long-time co-op member and food-systems-aware person, I thought I knew just about everything I needed to know. Grocery Story is eye-opening with its data-rich sources in presenting the history of the evolution of the food systems and grocery systems in North America.If you're not a co-op member, it will help you understand the beauty and many great things co-ops can do, and might inspire you to mobilize your community to start one. If you are already a co-op member like me, it will make you fall more in love with your co-op than you already are.Thank you Jon Steinman for this excellent, necessary book, and for your passion in raising awareness on how everything is connected in our world!

This is a really excellent book if you're interested in how the everyday came to be. It traces the evolution of chain stores, the changing ideology of capitalism & competition in the USA, and describes in detail how food co-operatives are a workable alternative to the chain store nightmare. Reading this book motivated me to re-join my local food co-op and made me much more competent at advocating for local food issues, because I now understand much better how the food system as a whole functions, and how it functions in the interest of private corporations, and against the interests of consumers and farmers.One weakness of the book is the absence of a treatment of the food co-op movement in the UK and Europe, where it grew much larger, and for a time dominated the grocery market (25% of overall food sales in 1945 in the UK).

Probably better to read than listen to. Lots of lists. But very interesting nonetheless .