We are proud to introduce the management team of the Friendship store! This talented group of leaders brings a wealth of experience and diverse backgrounds to the co-op.

Raynardo Williams, Store Manager
Samuel Bjorgum, Produce Manager
Nick Cronin, Assistant Store Manager
Karl Gerstenberger, Meat & Seafood Manager
Angel(ika) Matthews, Deli Manager
Diane McCarthy, Wellness Manager
Vivian Mims, Front End Manager
Rebecca Yuzefovich, Grocery Manager

Raynardo Williams, Store Manager

As a former entrepreneur, I am accustomed to the work required to bring a vision like the Friendship store to fruition. I’m used to being very hands on; I like getting my hands dirty on projects. My undergraduate degree in business administration is from National American University and I hold a master’s degree in management from Hamline University. This financial service and retail management background means I’m used to immersing myself into projects like the Friendship store, working long hours as I did as a retail manager for Aldo Shoes.

I think the goal with the Friendship store is to make it a staple in the community by upholding and representing our owners and constantly taking steps to create something that reflects the Seward Co-op Ends Statement.

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Samuel Bjorgum, Produce Manager

After working a season on an organic vegetable CSA farm in Wisconsin, I started working in a co-op produce department (at a different co-op). That was 10 years ago, and I’ve been working in co-op produce retail ever since. I have been employed at Seward Co-op for seven years, and I am excited to serve South Minneapolis as Produce Manager at the Friendship store. I’m passionate about sustainability, resilience, and justice in our food systems, and I love providing visually engaging displays of fresh nutritious produce. In my free time, I paint in my studio and attend art events with my partner Justine who is also a visual artist.

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Nick Cronin, Assistant Store Manager

I was raised in South Minneapolis, and I graduated from South High (Go Tigers!). I have spent the majority of my professional life in food service as a chef. Outside of work, I am the father of two amazing little children. I am so excited to be a part of the Friendship store. I firmly believe that the Seward Co-op continues to be committed to the same goals it has been committed to for the past 43 years: living-wage jobs; support for small, local farmers/producers; and investment in local neighborhoods. I believe that the Friendship store will play an integral role in connecting the people of the Bryant-Central neighborhood with nourishing food that is essential to a long and balanced life. I also believe Seward Co-op is an engine for socioeconomic change and that the work we do day in and day out makes the world a better place.

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Karl Gerstenberger, Meat & Seafood Manager

My zeal for food and co-ops started early. My grandparents were Hanover (New Hampshire) Food Co-op managers starting in the 1940s. I grew up in a household that valued organic vegetable gardening and scratch cooking/baking. I started cooking professionally in 1994 at Stars/Chez Panisse/Oliveto (San Francisco/Berkeley/Oakland), where I learned to appreciate farm-direct suppliers, wood-fired cookery, and meat craft. My transition into the meat processing profession started in 2008 with courses at Iowa State and the University of Minnesota, which led to a sausage production manager job at Lorentz Meats. I’ve been at Seward since 2010, where I’ve worked as a butcher since day one. I’ll soon be a graduate of the Saint Mary’s Master of Management–Cooperatives and Credit Unions program.

My responsibility at the new store will be managing the Meat and Seafood department. I’m looking forward to serving our new neighborhood, developing a fun and skilled team, and increasing the economic viability of local meats. I’m very excited to help create a path for people to learn the craft and trade of cutting meat. Learning and personal growth are what it’s all about.

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Angel(ika) Matthews, Deli Manager

I was born and raised in Duluth, Minn. We moved to St. Paul in 1994, and I attended Humboldt High School on the west side. I graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in the Twin Cities in the spring of 2007 with a degree in culinary arts. After a few years I moved to Madison, Wis., in the summer of 2009. In the late fall of 2009 I was hired as the sous chef for Fresh Madison Market, which was a new grocery store set up in the campus area of the University of Wisconsin. In 2011 I applied for a sous chef position with the Willy Street Co-op. I had never really understood at the time what a co-op was or the level of production their off-site kitchen produced in one day. Let’s just say I had my work cut out for me. Three months into the sous chef position I was promoted to the Production Kitchen Manager role, and I stayed in that position for four and a half years. Working for Willy Street was one of the most challenging and rewarding jobs of my career, and I am truly grateful that I was able to experience it. When I started with them they were very much in the same boat that Seward Co-op is in now, opening a second store and becoming a multi-site organization.

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Diane McCarthy, Wellness Manager

I was raised in Minnesota and currently live in South Minneapolis near the Friendship store. I worked for Lakewinds Food Co-op and opened the Wellness Department in the Richfield store in a little over a year ago. My leadership style has been most impacted by being a mother. That has taught me to lead, cooperate, problem solve, be a good listener and work very hard. I am most excited to build an excellent team that understands Seward Co-op’s mission in the community and that can have fun at the same time. I feel my challenge may be to find a balance between work and home life, but the support of the Seward family will be there for me also. A fun fact about me is that I am from a large family and I am twin.

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Vivian Mims, Front End Manager

As a young girl, I was immersed in my community with a vast array of opportunities to see things optimistically. I believe a big part of my customer service skills developed as I was surrounded by my parents’ employers, extensive travels and their social activities. I was the youngest of four and the only girl. I attribute my inclusion of all individuals and socially responsible practices to my familial structure and experiences. I graduated from St. Paul Central High School and attended the University of Minnesota for two years, where I was the UMN’s first African American Homecoming Queen (without perks). I spent several years away from Minnesota. I continued to expand my socially responsible practices as the wife of an officer in the United States Air Force and mother of our two children. My daughters and I moved back to Minnesota for their formative education, and they both have B.A. undergraduate degrees. Moving was a great decision. I was able to obtain an associate degree in hospitality management, and I have a desire to complete a B.A. sometime soon. At my last place of employment, Courtyard by Marriott, I served as Operations Manager.

As Front End Manager of the Friendship store, I’m looking forward to all of the new experiences and providing exceptional customer service to all who enter the co-op.

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Rebecca Yuzefovich, Grocery Manager

I was born and raised in South Minneapolis. For the past 14 years, I lived in Israel on a kibbutz (a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture). I moved to Israel where I met my husband and had three children. While living on the kibbutz, I worked in various branches including laundry and clothing repair, children’s daycare and HR at one of the factories. For the past seven years I worked in our community grocery store in various roles including stocking, front end, replenishment buying, lead buyer, and assistant manager. In the last three years I was the General Manager for the store. I love working with people and enjoy the dynamic vibrant energy of working in grocery. I am excited to bring a wide variety of nourishing and healthy options that we can introduce and provide to our customers.

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Dear Seward Co-op Owners,

Just months from now is the scheduled opening of the Friendship store, which is a realization of the co-op’s long-term vision of expanding our community-owned business. In October 2015, nearly 2,000 households that are current owners of Seward Co-op will have a store less than 1½ miles from their home. We are writing to address the conversations the board of directors has been having, and the questions and comments we have been hearing regarding the Friendship store.

We started this project over two years ago when The Carrot Initiative, a non-profit formed by residents of the four neighborhoods around 38th and Chicago to attract a grocer to the community, invited Seward Co-op to consider opening at the former site of the Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. Their building had been on the market for a couple of years. It proved to be a good site. We decided to call it the Friendship store to honor this history. We believe it will be a place to bring neighbors, family and friends together.

Since our very first community meeting at Sabathani Community Center in July 2013, co-op board, management, and staff have been engaged in conversations and outreach with the neighborhoods surrounding the Friendship store. For example, members of the co-op management, staff, and board have attended and participated in the Future of East 38th Street community meetings; engaged in conversations and education with community members through door-to-door outreach; and attended many neighborhood events, fairs, and educational programs. The board is energized by the support and encouragement the co-op has received in our direct conversations with members of the community throughout the surrounding neighborhoods of Bryant and Central.

At our May meeting, the board welcomed owners who presented a petition and wished to discuss the decision to postpone the conversation regarding creating a Mutual Benefits Agreement (MBA). After that meeting the board expressed its continued agreement with the decision made by Bryant Neighborhood Organization (BNO) and co-op management that our focus needs to be on opening the Co-op Creamery Café and Friendship store. We responded to those owners who signed this petition to inform them of our continued support of that decision.

At the June board meeting, representatives of Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization (CANDO) were given time to state their reasons why Seward Co-op should accept the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) that they drafted as a starting point for negotiations. The board discussed their request and decided to continue, as planned, with the decision made by Seward Co-op and BNO to defer this conversation until after the Friendship store opens. You can find a letter to CANDO on our website.

The board agrees that management’s efforts to enter into an MBA is the correct approach. The proposed CBA is not congruent with co-op values. However, we want to be clear that this does not mean that the co-op’s board and management have ceased our conversations with the community or compromised our goals, aspirations, or ideals related to the Friendship store. To the contrary, many of the provisions that have been proposed in the CBA have already been addressed by the co-op, independent of the recent proposal by CANDO. For example:

• The co-op voluntarily set construction hiring goals that are used by the City of Minneapolis.
• The co-op has set hiring goals to be a more inclusive workplace.
• The Seward Co-op Nourish program offers both a needs-based ownership option and a discount.
• Seward Co-op has used the Minneapolis living wage model for more than eight years. Factoring in discounts, benefits and insurance, all vested co-op employees earn at least $15 per hour.
• Seward Co-op has engaged in outreach and partnerships throughout the neighborhoods surrounding the store. We have supported, and will continue to support, many Bryant-Central based organizations and nonprofits.

Our website has more information about the co-op’s efforts with respect to the Friendship store. In addition, we must note that the CBA proposed by CANDO has several provisions that could potentially put the co-op in fiscal jeopardy, including a stipulation that the co-op can be fined $1,000 a day (up to $100,000) if it does not operate in accordance with the CBA. We cannot accept these kinds of terms as a starting point for any conversation.

The board believes that management’s actions and decisions on these issues are entirely consistent with and further Seward Co-op’s Ends Statement and the International Cooperative Principles. The board supports management’s efforts to ensure that any agreement that the co-op enters into be consistent with the International Cooperative Principles. Finally, and fundamentally, the board believes that the co-op has had, and will continue to have, a positive effect on the communities within which the co-op operates.

From the beginning of this process, we heard concerns regarding racial equity and social justice. We invite owners to review our Scorecard to see our progress on our goals. Make no mistake, we still have work to do, and we look forward to doing that work in the months and years to come. We thank everyone who has been involved with the Friendship store to this point. Promoting healthy food, living wages, affordability, accessibility, and concern for community have long been a priority of the cooperative and we look forward to building trust and meeting the expectations that our shared values require.

In Cooperation,

Leah Janus – President, Board of Directors
Joe Riemann – Vice-President, Board of Directors

For a list of common questions we have received and how we are responding, follow this link.

Significant progress has occurred over the past couple of months, and we’re excited to share these updates with you.

Friendship Store

Friendship Store is taking shape! We are now five months into what we estimate to be a 12-month construction schedule. After a delay earlier in the winter due to utility relocations, we have seen considerable headway in the past few weeks. The two-story frame of the building is beginning to take shape (see pic above). The steel structure of the building should be completed this week. READ MORE

Welcome, Raynardo Williams

Seward Co-op has hired Raynardo Williams as the store manager of the new Friendship Store. As a former entrepreneur, Raynardo is accustomed to the work required to bring a vision like the Friendship Store to fruition.

“I’m used to being very hands on,” he says. “I like getting my hands dirty on projects.” READ MORE

Co-op Creamery

Work on the Co-op Creamery at 2601 E. Franklin Ave. continues. In late January 2015, co-op administrative staff moved into the Creamery Building’s second floor offices from the Franklin store. This move has helped to alleviate space constraints at the Franklin store offices. The staff at the Creamery will support all Seward locations. READ MORE

Welcome, Chad Snelson

Creamery Cafe Production Manager: Seward Co-op has hired Chad Snelson as director of operations at Seward Co-op’s Creamery Kitchen and Co-op Creamery Neighborhood Café. At this point, with the café still under construction, it’s been a lot of planning and forecasting for Chad.

“Planning is fun,” says Chad, “but actually doing it is way more fun.” READ MORE

With a Honey Cashew Chicken recipe and scrumptious dish in hand, Seward Co-op’s Tom Vogel (Marketing Manager) and Ladonna Sanders-Redmond (Education and Outreach Coordinator) went on Kare11-TV yesterday to talk co-ops, Equal Exchange cashews, and our Friendship store expansion.

Just six weeks into our capital campaign, Seward Co-op owners have invested $788,500 — 31 percent of our $2.5 million goal. With roughly ten weeks left in the offering, we are well on our way to securing the investments needed to build the Friendship Store and renovate the Creamery. In addition to purchasing shares of Class C stock or making a loan to the co-op, Seward Co-op is offering another opportunity to contribute to the success of these projects. Beginning this week we will be selling a t-shirt designed by Minneapolis artist Tammy Ortegon and 100 percent of the proceeds will go towards our capital campaign.

The Friendship store is anticipated to open in the summer of 2015. Recently we closed on the six properties owned by private individuals and the Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. The co-op now owns seven of the eight project properties, and we are in the process of purchasing the final property, which is owned by the city. We continue to work with the architects on design development and have scheduled a groundbreaking event this summer on July 12. This progress is exciting and each day makes the Friendship store more and more tangible.

The redesign and renovation of the Creamery Building is also underway. Currently, we are addressing the accessibility of the building through the design of a new entryway and elevator. We are also in the midst of a remodel of the second floor, which will offer much-needed office space. We are excited about the developing design and how our choices will positively impact the possibilities for the first floor where we plan to include food production facilities and a small café.

In the past five years, Seward Co-op’s ownership has nearly tripled, so it’s not surprising that owners have already invested $674,500 — 27% of our goal — in Seward’s Friendship Store & Franklin Creamery Projects.

But in case you didn’t know about Seward’s twin expansion projects or haven’t heard anything recently, here’s a brief recap/update:

1) The Friendship Store — Groundbreaking for the Friendship Store is slated for this July, and the store could open as early as summer 2015. It will be a full-service natural foods grocery on the corner of 38th St. and 3rd Avenue South. Sometime in July, we’ll have a big celebration for the groundbreaking. Stay tuned.

2) The Franklin Creamery on Franklin and 26th Avenues (pictured, from 1924) is being leased by Seward Co-op for badly needed office space (upstairs) and to expand our bakery, sausage and other meat production. The downstairs space may include a small retail café (so much depends on how much investment money we raise).

The Franklin Creamery was a dairy and milk delivery co-op back in the days when nearly all food was local — and a lot of it was cooperatively owned.

The initial campaign launch to ask Seward owners to invest began on March 11, with the co-op looking to raise at least $2.5 million by June 30, 2014. To do this, we’re offering an investment opportunity to owners; we aren’t asking for donations, these are stocks and loans with a rate of return.

In short, we’re offering Seward owners an opportunity to make money while in turn, empowering their cooperative to grow.

Our target return on investment for what we call “Class C Stock” is 4%, which many owners have reported is a better deal than their credit unions and banks have been offering. “Owner loans” are another option and interest rates for owner loans vary between 3.5–5.5%. More information is available in the offering summary, found in investment packets that you can pick up at the Customer Service Desk in the store. Or, call 612-314-2012 to speak with Jill Livingston, Seward Co-op’s Owner Capitalization Coordinator.

If you’d like to stay current on Seward’s investment progress, there’s a tracker on the left hand side of this page, and Jill is posting weekly updates on the “Invest in the Co-op” page as well.

We have 75 days to gather $2 million.

How can you help?

1) Become an owner. You can’t invest if you aren’t an owner (that’s the law).

2) Invest. Call Jill and decide what kind of investment is best for you.

3) Spread. The. Word. Do you know other Seward owners? Start talking, sharing links to articles like this one, and encourage them to invest and spread the word, too. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, email, dinner parties. We all have to start talking about how much we can make the Friendship Store and Creamery project a reality.

Because this is how co-ops grow — you, me, and our neighbors lifting this project up on shoulders. There is no national management or corporate CEO that will swoop in and grow the co-op for us. If Seward is going to grow, we have do it ourselves– stock by stock, and loan by loan — old school, just like Franklin Creamery Co-op did it way back in the day.

What do you say? Ready to roll up your sleeves and lend a hand growing a co-op?

A committed ownership is at the core of Seward Co-op’s success. In the past five years our ownership has nearly tripled. This growth is directly linked to our financial achievements, as well as our role as a positive contributor to our community and the environment. As we prepare for the upcoming expansions, owner support through co-op patronage, the purchase of Class C stock, and owner loans will enable the co-op to serve even more of our community and allow us to continue to thrive.

The Friendship store is anticipated to open in the summer of 2015. Recently we closed on the six properties owned by private individuals and the Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. The co-op now owns seven of the eight project properties, and we are in the process of purchasing the final property, which is owned by the city. We continue to work with the architects on design development and have scheduled a groundbreaking event this summer on July 12. This progress is exciting and each day makes the Friendship store more and more tangible.

Once open, the Friendship store will offer the Bryant-Central neighborhoods more fresh, healthful, sustainable food options. It will provide a communal space for gathering and education. The Friendship store will be a part of the community, respond to its needs, and give back through the SEED program and other efforts. We anticipate this second store will create 80–100 new living-wages jobs with benefits. We hope many of our new employees will reside in Bryant-Central neighborhoods. Furthermore, with 15 percent of our owners currently residing near the Friendship store, its presence will likely ease the congestion at the Franklin store resulting in a more pleasant shopping experience at both locations.

A month into our capital campaign, we have experienced great enthusiasm and generous support from our owners. This past week we surpassed half a million dollars in investments with $674,500 raised —27 percent of our goal. Thus far, investments have ranged from single shares of Class C stock at $500 to loans over $100,000. This speaks to the diversity of our ownership. With appealing investment opportunities and compelling projects, we are confident that in the next few months we will receive the support from our owners needed to make our expansions a reality.

“If you build it, will they come?”

That’s the essential question of NPR’s article It Takes More Than A Produce Aisle To Refresh A Food Desert that’s been making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds this week.

As it happens, the article is a nice bit of synchronicity for Seward. As we contemplate the how’s, when’s, and why’s of opening the Friendship Store in South Minneapolis, our co-op community is thinking lots about “food desert” issues of late.

The NPR article, above, asks hard questions about food access by covering a new study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which examined the impact of a new store on a Philadelphia food desert. Researchers “surveyed residents of one low-income community in Philadelphia before and after the opening of a glistening new supermarket brimming with fresh produce. What they’re finding, [Penn State Prof. Stephen] Matthews says, is a bit surprising: ‘We don’t find any difference at all. … We see no effect of the store on fruit and vegetable consumption.'”

Surprising to Prof. Matthews and NPR, maybe.

To those of us in the business of selling natural foods (since 1972, in Seward Co-op’s case), we know you can’t just open a store anywhere and expect hordes to come a-shopping, particularly if the product mix is unusual for the locals. The study found that only 26% of the local “low income” population was shopping at the store. I wouldn’t call that a failure to eliminate a food desert, I’d call that another day in the grocery business. Unless the store in question is driving an aggressive marketing campaign and/or taking a loss on prices (the article does not say what steps the supermarket took to attract local customers), no, people aren’t going to change where they shop.

And why should they? People shop where they find good value and where they feel comfortable and welcome. And that’s true, ahem, regardless of a neighborhood’s relative income level. Drop an awesome store lush with local produce in a wealthy neighborhood or middle-class suburb, and it won’t automatically change buying habits because of the virtue of its veggies, either.

But that begs the question: What’s the real measure of success here? As of 2006, over 50% of Minneapolis lived in a food desert, with South Minneapolis being one of the most vast. Is the goal to simply reduce that desert acreage by opening groceries strategically (the London study says no)? To change dietary habits of the local low-income population? To reverse epidemiological data showing that diabetes is rampant in a given low-income area? To drive down the city’s mean BMI? To put Popeye’s out of business? To make a lot of money? Is it fair to expect that a run-of-the-mill grocery store would undo a food desert in the first place?

No, of course not. There’s no money in hunger advocacy. Expecting a profit-driven business to prioritize and market to low-income shoppers is like hoping liquor stores will offer affordable poodle-grooming.

The rest of the NPR article is more on-point, by discussing the politics and particulars of hunger with public health researcher Alex Ortega who works to create effective healthy food hubs and educating low-income city dwellers about eating well. The article ends by deciding that the jury is still out as to whether outreach and education work.

The evidence may yet to be gathered on Ortega’s excellent work, but there is an available model that researchers should be looking at, one that specifically targets getting food to the people who want it in areas where the food they want isn’t attainable, and doing it in a way that doesn’t ask farmers to take the hit so that the food can be sold as cheaply as possible.

Food co-ops.

Consider: Seward Co-op has its roots in the People’s Pantry which was started around 1970. From Growing with Purpose about the history of Seward Co-op, the pantry was started because, “People wanted an alternative to heavily processed food” and “a place where one could get natural bulk foods at low cost.” By 1971, the People’s Pantry on the West Bank of Minneapolis had morphed into North Country Co-op which in turn gave birth to Seward Co-op further south on Franklin Avenue in 1972. Numerous co-ops were springing up all over the Twin Cities in the early seventies because the supermarket boom of the early 1960s was no longer serving everyone’s needs — and started creating food deserts. So began the hard work of creating a more socially just food system, where people who wanted healthy food would have access to it.

Changing a food desert is more than just opening a store and effectively marketing it for a few months, though — it’s hard “yeoman’s work ” for many, many years. For Seward, doing our small part to undo the damage that over-centralizing the food system has inflicted on Minneapolis has meant decades of saving pennies, paying good local farmers good prices season after season, offering classes on cooking to co-ops owner-members, and eventually putting together a business that has the financial muscle to open a second store — forty years after Seward Co-op first opened its doors! A business that values only one bottom line — the financial one — might be able to expand sooner, but they’re not really the answer to food access, as the NPR article pointed out. Big, glistening supermarket stores are what created food deserts to begin with. To water food deserts, seed them, and bring them back to sustaining communities again, it’s going to take businesses that value multiple bottom lines.

Specifically, they need to embrace their entire community, not just the shoppers who can afford the fresh veggies and have the time to cook. To change a food desert, grocery stores will have to help their shoppers get creative the way Alex Ortega’s UCLA project did. They’ll also have to take part in WIC and SNAP programs and actually reach out to shoppers who use federal assistance. These stores must have it in their mission statements to embrace low income shoppers, saying, “We see you as part of our community, and therefore, our reason for doing business.” If they don’t, they’re just a grocery store in a food desert.

Seward Co-op is one example of a store that honors multiple bottom lines, that is, we value economic equality, inclusiveness, and sustainability, not just making a profit. Shoppers who receive federal assistance can join our co-op at a reduced rate and receive a 5% discount on all purchases. We’ll maintain this policy when we open the new Friendship Store and we’ll do it without shorting farmers on the hard work they do.

One more thing, NPR and Dr. Matthews. The assumption that those living in a food desert are totally ignorant of food issues, eat unhealthily, are unwilling to pay for fruits and vegetables, and only know how to order drive-through food is a huge slice of Twenty First Century prejudice and very sloppy thinking. Here’s what a Facebook reader had to say about Seward’s involvement with WIC and our policy of subsidizing certain foods in order to comply with that program:

“As a SNAP [a.k.a., “food stamps”] recipient who tries her best to feed her family nutritious, local and sustainable food, but faces the reality that most of these products are out of my reach, I commend you. If more companies cared more about the people in their community, agriculture around the world and the Earth itself more than their bottom line, the world would be a much better place.”

I’d argue that Seward Co-op’s strategy of reaching out to everyone in our community — low-income eaters, local farmers, and every link in between on that “food chain” — is already working if we’re making low-income folks feel like they belong in our Franklin Avenue store.

Like it says on the front of the current building: “Everyone Welcome.”

~

NOTE: Seward opened its doors in 1972, not 1974. The post has been edited to make that correction.