Seward
Community Co-op was founded in 1972 by Jerry and Deane Dodge, [Butch?] Hughes,
Phyllis Scott, and Don Barton. The co-op was opened in a storefront located at 22nd
Street and Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The co-op's founders secured a
$3,000 grant from JUMP, a coalition of area Protestant churches supporting urban
renewal projects, to purchase the former Superette building. Money was raised from
community members and through the Model Cities program to purchase the co-op's
initial inventory. Like North Country Co-op and other new co-ops in Minneapolis, the
store was run on volunteer labor. In addition to the founders, Leo B. Cashman and
Kris Olsen put many hours of work into the new store and remained member-workers for
many years.
Management of Seward Community Co-op was very loosely controlled by the workers, with
some input from residents of the Seward neighborhood. The core workers became known
as the "collective." The collective solicited community input by holding community
meetings, which usually involved a potluck dinner and a business meeting wherein
they tried to address volunteer schedules, pricing decisions, what products to
carry, and similar issues. By 1973 the collective's membership changed from that of
the co-op's founders to a new core of workers which included Mark Johnson, Lori
Zuidema, Barb Jensen, and Michael Beard. There was no general manager for the store
and no board of directors overseeing the collective. After 1974, the members of the
collective, now sometimes known as "coordinators" or "store coordinators" began to
receive a small wage for their labor.
Many of the people who joined and began to work at the co-op were friends of the
founders or the existing collective members. Volunteer workers who put in more than
4 hours or more per month at the store could buy their food at cost plus 10%. The
store hours were irregular and often there was no cashier on duty; shoppers wrote up
their own orders and put money in an old cash register on the honor system. Neither
was there a standardized bookkeeping system or one bookkeeper. Any collective member
could write checks for bills and vendors; collective members even wrote their own
payroll checks.
1975-1976 brought the turmoil of the "co-op wars" to Seward Community Co-op. The
Co-op Organization (CO), a radical political group begun by individuals within the
co-op movement, began pushing a pro-communist, pro-revolutionary agenda. The CO
preached that "middle class hippies" were not able to understand or address the
"working class plight" and that co-op organizers were "social elitists." They felt
that the co-op community must turn toward a sustained anti-imperialist, anti-racist,
and anti-capitalist struggle lead by the working class, not by the hippie
counter-culture. The CO also claimed that the co-op community was too disorganized
to be effective in pursing this social-political struggle. The CO had members in
many co-ops around the metropolitan area, however their membership was strongest at
the Beanery Co-op (Minneapolis) and People's Warehouse (Minneapolis).
The CO had members in most of the co-ops around the Twin Cities and tried to push
their political agenda on the management of the co-ops. By 1975 the CO had seen
moderate success in increasing its following, but was hungry for control. The CO
physically took over the People's Warehouse and tried to occupy several storefronts,
including Seward Community Co-op. Two workers, Kris Olsen and Leo Cashman, were
beaten and thrown out of the store by CO members on January 9, 1976. The violence,
controversy, and intensity of the political rhetoric scared away casual shoppers and
divided the co-op movement between those who felt that a co-op's purpose was to
provide wholesome, natural food and those who felt that co-ops should provide
products that appeal to the "working class" at prices cheaper than conventional
supermarkets and at the same time deliver a message of revolution. The CO not only
tried to undermine the food policies of the co-ops, but the cooperative element as
well, since they felt the members should not have to volunteer at the storefront.
Moreover, the CO wanted co-ops to discard their cooperative, democratic management
systems and replace them with Democratic Centralism under the CO's direction. The
co-op movement successfully resisted the CO.
Seward Community Co-op, as did the rest of the co-op movement, stumbled as customers
returned to regular supermarkets and co-op organizers fought internally about food
policies, democratic management, community needs, and how to cope with reduced
revenues. In response, Seward Community Co-op legally reorganized as a cooperative
in May 1976, issuing stock to members, establishing patronage refunds, and electing
a board of directors at the annual stockholder meetings. Even though a board was
established, it had little power compared to the collective, which ran the
storefront and made all management decisions. This imbalance of power and lack of
real constraints on the collective caused internal disputes to continually arise. By
1978, the board of directors had become non-functional; those elected were often
disinterested in the welfare of the store or were unwilling to keep up the fight
with the collective. At this time, the nine member collective ran the storefront
with little input or assistance from the board or the general membership. The
collective was not forthcoming about practical information concerning the store's
operations or finances. The next two years saw, within the collective, much
infighting over wages, commitment to the cooperative ideal, and feminist politics.
These disagreements combined with worker apathy caused a lot of staff turnover
within the collective. Membership in the co-op as a whole began to drop as well.
In early 1977 the ever present concern about the appearance and structural soundness
of the co-op's building surfaced again. Plans were made to construct an entirely new
building and to purchase additional land next to Seward Cafe. To support this
endeavor a "capitalization plan" entailing a 1% surcharge on purchases was
established. Nearly $16,000 was raised in this manner but it was never used to
remodel or rebuild the store. Instead the collective placed the money into the
general operating fund to cover existing expenses. The co-op was struggling
financially, but the decision caused anger among the general membership. Finally, in
1979 three sound business decisions were made: 1) shoppers would now have their
purchases tallied and money collected by a cashier, 2) the collective members had to
fill out time cards, 3) the mark-up on products was increased to match expenses.
These actions helped put the co-op on firmer financial ground, though it was
undermined by the collective's decision to give its members a wage increase. The
collective argued that workers should be receiving a living wage and that wage
issues were partially responsible for high turnover in the collective. In 1980 a
bookkeeper was hired; the decision proved ill-fated as the bookkeeper embezzled
money from the already unstable co-op.
By fall 1981 the collective had dropped to six people, the board was entirely
inactive, and the co-op was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. In September 1981
Annie Young was hired into the collective to lead member development and in October
Scott Beers was hired to do the bookkeeping. Membership in the co-op had seen steady
decline since the mid 1970s. That winter the collective, the core of which was
Cathleen Williams, Stuart Reid, James Hallberg, Scott Burgwin, and Annie Young, made
some tough internal decisions. They went two weeks without pay and took a pay cut
for the coming year; hired LOTTSA Financial Services to do the accounting; made
policy changes to give the board more effective powers; and set out to revitalize
the board and create a long range plan for the co-op. In addition to the collective
members, Scott Beers, Mary E. Gutknecht, and Leo Sanders were integral in keeping
the store operational. The board and the collective took management classes,
eventually deciding to adopt a general management structure and a "business"
mentality. The changes were effective; the board began to revive, developing a long
range plan and a budget. However the days of collective management were over for
Seward Community Co-op.
P. J. Hoffman was hired as the co-op's first general manager in November 1983. Also
in that year the collective sought and received a Minneapolis Community Development
Agency (MCDA) grant to remodel the building. By 1984, when the renovations were
completed, Seward Community Co-op's membership had dropped to 50 households. In 1984
Seward reincorporated as a "consumer" co-op. Membership was now based solely on
buying stock in the store and the volunteering requirement was dropped. The board
kept the stock purchase price at $3 per share and the minimum stock purchase to one
share in order to encourage membership and patronage. After many years of decline
Seward Community Co-op again began to thrive. In the three-year period of June 1984
to June 1987 membership soared to 1,000 households and sales grew 54%.
In 1986 Gail Graham became the store's second general manager and a second round of
building expansion planning began. In spring of 1987 the membership voted to
increase the stock purchase requirement from one share at $3 to a minimum of 25
shares at $3 each ($75) per household to help finance the new expansion.
Shareholders already holding one share were expected to purchase up to the full 25
shares within a certain time period. The expansion was completed in January 1988,
giving Seward Community Co-op another boost. Between June 1987 and June 1989 sales
increased another 34%, collective member wages increased by 10%, and the membership
stabilized at about 460 households. Seward profited throughout the 1990s, becoming
one of the largest and longest-running cooperatives in the Twin Cities Metropolitan
Area. In 1991 it attempted to rescue the failing Park Pantry (Saint Louis Park,
Minnesota), though they could not keep it afloat. The membership voted on
consolidation with the Wedge Co-op (Minneapolis, Minnesota), Lakewinds Natural Foods
(Minnetonka, Minnesota), Mississippi Market (Saint Paul, Minnesota), and Valley
Co-op (Stillwater, Minnesota) in 1993. 56% of voting members voted "yes" on
consolidation but the bylaws required two-thirds majority support for approval, thus
the final decision was not to consolidate. Seward Community Co-op continues to
operate independently today.
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Availability:
The collection is open for research use.
Preferred Citation:
[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Seward
Community Co-op Records. Minnesota Historical Society.
See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional
examples.
Provenance:
Many of the records were collected by Kris Olsen, a long time member, volunteer,
and employee of Seward Community Co-op.
Accession Information:
Accession number: 15,557; 16,773
Processing Information:
Processed by: Lynn Leitte, July 2002; additions by David B. Peterson, July
2013
Catalog ID number: 990017376100104294
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