Community-Run Grocery Stores

By: Dakota Cherry

Non-profit, community-run grocery stores are not a "socialist concept", but rather a proven and effective way that municipalities can tackle rising food prices and reclaim some control over our local food system. In fact, Guelph has had a non-profit grocery store for 10 years now, called The Seed, which has operated without any stable, long-term funding from the City it feeds.

If looking for larger-scale, long-standing examples, one of the best can be found with the U.S. military’s commissary stores. Run by the Department of Defense to provide affordable food for military personnel, retirees, and their families, this model has operated effectively for decades (check out this CBC podcast for more information).

The idea is pretty simple. If cities can run libraries, community centres, and public transit, why not explore a model where they also play a role in making food more affordable? Especially when food banks are stretched thin and five grocery companies control 75% of sales, according to Canada's food security strategy report (pg. 9) That concentration of power comes with real consequences. We’ve already seen it in cases like bread price-fixing, where grocery chains were caught colluding to inflate the price of a staple food to further line their pockets.

City-run grocery stores offer a different approach, not to replace the private market, but to introduce a public alternative that prioritizes affordability, and in the very least, provides natural competition to keep the money-hungry conglomerates at bay.

These stores essentially operate like a non-profit where all revenues go directly into maintaining operations, buying food wholesale at cost from places like the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto, and selling it for only the amount needed to break even. Any surplus is reinvested back into the operation, for example, to subsidize foods imported during Winter months.

We already have deep expertise in this area with researchers like Dr. Sara Edge, who has worked with these types of cooperative models in Toronto, as well as others from the University of Guelph and local organizations like the SEED, Canada's first sliding-scale online grocery store. Providing an in-person storefront of this only makes sense - especially in Ward 5, which presently has no food bank satelitte locations, forcing those in-need to make a 2-hour bus trek to the central food bank location.

If Canada is going to explore this model, Guelph is an ideal place to start: thoughtfully, in partnership with the people who understand our food system best, and in the home of Canada’s food university.

For more information on how this type of project would be funded, please see our article: What does the $3B National Food Security Strategy Mean for Guelph?