“The common denominator that links everyone together is food,” said Kat Granger, a Fergus heirloom tomato and pepper producer and board member of the Guelph Wellington Community Cooperative.
The co-op, a new not-for-profit in Wellington County aims to bring the community together through food.
“That is starting to connect local producers and local consumers,” Granger explained.
The co-op’s first project is a community food hub. This is essentially an online farmers market with very little overhead beyond the cost of the food.
“The food hub … it’s basically a distribution system, not-for-profit distribution system between the producer, whatever that person is producing, it could be anything, and the consumer,” Granger explained.
She will likely use the co-op to sell produce from her business, Full Circle Garden in Fergus.
The way it will work is co-op consumers will pay a one time membership fee of $40 and then they will choose what food they would like to purchase from which local producers.
The producers could range from large farming businesses to someone who has a garden and over-produces an item and is looking for an outlet to sell the produce. They will control their own inventory on the site.
Overtime producers will be required to buy five shares of the co-op amounting to approximately $200.
However, the benefit to the producer is that the co-op organizes product pick up and distribution to the consumer.
Because of the co-op structure all consumer and producer members will own part of the organization and will have a say in how decisions are made.
“Co-ops are owned by the people, for the people,” Granger explained.
Granger also said the co-op plans to offer volunteers food credits for putting baskets together on distribution days, giving lower income community members the opportunity to access healthy food in an affordable way.
Co-op president Andrew Eisen, from Guelph said the food hub is not yet up and running but the website is now set up and producers and consumers can register as members.
He said he hopes to have the food hub up and running by late July.
For more information visit https://www.facebook.com/gwccoop
