[ada1981]

I co-own a grocery store with ~16,000 other people (FoodCoop.com). We've been around since the 1960s and do about $50MM a year in revenue. It certainly has crazy political issues -- there has been a political war within the org for the last few years surrounding just getting together to vote on boycotting certain products, but we offer the freshest, most local and most affordable food in NYC (and this is in one of the most sought after neighborhoods in the city -- Obama once lived in a brownstone down the street from me).

I've been pushing to get our data exposed via API for developers to build apps and one of them I'd like to see built is a delivery service for owners to use.

[feedjoelpie]

Hello, fellow Park Slope yuppie!

Y'all have a good thing going. I just don't think the co-op model necessarily translates to that many scenarios. Park Slope Food Co-Op depends a lot upon volunteer hours, and operators are customers. I think that's been the distinction in every co-op or co-op-like that anyone has cited as successful. They're customer-owned as much as they're employee-owned.

[ada1981]

Very true.

All of our owners also must work 2.75 hours a month, and you can't shop at our coop without being an owner.

I have seen some other coops where they have separate pricing for owners vs. members vs. regular folk, but I don't know how successful they are.

About half the reason I joined the coop was to get a look under the hood of how a coop like this works - so far I've been fascinated and learned a lot about human psychology and politics.

In some sense, Uber drivers are also customers, in that they are buying the leads and software from Uber corporate.

I also think if there are ways to have customers also be owners that can be a really great set up.