Willimantic Food Co-Op Records

The Willimantic Food Co-op (WFC) originated as the Willimantic Buyer's Club (WBC), a private pre-order food buying club, which began operating during the early 1970s [1974/1975?] in the basement of St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Valley Street in Willimantic, CT. Throughout its existence members have referred to the organization as the Co-op. Members pooled their money, ordered in bulk, and met once a month to distribute food. It was a community-owned business that obtained capital from its members, and its success depended on their cooperation and participation. Lifetime dues were one dollar and an additional one dollar per month deposit was required.

For the first three years the membership remained at about forty families. By 1978 the WBC consisted of eighty households, or approximately one hundred fifty to one hundred seventy individuals, from Willimantic and adjacent towns including Coventry, Columbia, Mansfield, Chaplin, Lebanon, and Ashford. Membership further expanded in 1979 following the 1978 dissolution of the UConn Cooperative Buyer's Club at Storrs.

In March 1979, a VISTA worker was assigned to the WBC for outreach purposes to attract low-income people as members. The goal was to reach the low-income, senior citizen, and Hispanic communities. According to the December 1979 WBC by-laws, the organization was a center from which other cooperative efforts in the larger community could begin. The Co-op was to engage in educational and informational activities for the purpose of spreading knowledge of cooperative principles, theories, and practices as well as other information of interest to consumers. It was also to assist other cooperatives and nonprofit organizations.

The merger of the WBC and the UConn Cooperative Buyer's Club in [1978/79?], limited space at the church, and growing community interest encouraged the membership to establish a storefront and to offer cooperative food buying to nonmembers. The storefront was to have a central location that was close to Eastern Connecticut State University and off-campus housing, and which would enable maximum access for the majority of Willimantic's low-income, senior citizen, and Hispanic communities. In February 1980, the storefront opened at 861 Main Street, Willimantic, and the name of the cooperative was changed to the WFC. It was a member of Connecticut Co-ops, a statewide federation and cooperative food warehouse, and by 1982 the WFC had five ad hoc committees: Outreach, Inventory, Finance/Planning, Phone, and Jobs.

People joined the WBC and the WFC to save money and to gain some control over the type of food available, but getting volunteers to work in exchange for a discount on food became increasingly difficult. By 1982, the WFC had to remove its compulsory work requirement at the store in order to attract more members. It also increased its inventory to bring in more customers. Despite these changes, the store continued to face two problems: it was started without enough capital, and the Co-op tried to stay organized as if it was still a private buyer's club.

After narrowly avoiding bankruptcy, there was a major restructuring of the Co-op's finances and other organizational matters in the mid-1980s. During that period, it also became a member of Northeast Co-ops and presented outreach education services to community groups such as the Lion's Club and the Rotary Club. By the late 1980s there were personnel changes which led to stable staffing and other improvements, and the Co-op acquired much equipment when the New Haven Co-op declared bankruptcy.

From its beginning, the WFC had much in common with other organizations that were part of the food co-op movement, which dates back to the 1800s in the United States. In the twentieth-century, food co-ops were popular during the Depression of the 1930s, provided an ideal way of shopping for many youth in the 1960s, and surged with inflation and became a life-style alternative during the 1970s. By the early 1980s, co-ops were largely a middle-class or working-class phenomena but tended to be associated with a young urban counterculture and the back-to-earth movement of the 1960s. The food co-op movement had developed as the result of people's desire and demand to be in control of who supplied goods for their sustenance. It also offered a political alternative to a profit-oriented centralized food industry, where profit precluded good health and nutrition. The WFC was founded as an extension of alternative movements that came out of a tradition of world peace, respect for the earth and all living beings, community involvement, and control of the essentials of our lives. Alternative groups were encouraged to post advertisements, pamphlets, newsletters, and similar materials in the Co-op storefront as long as they were not racist, sexist, militaristic, or otherwise contrary to the principles of peace, justice, environmental responsibility, and respect for others.

In 1991, the WFC moved to its present location at 27 Meadow Street, Willimantic. At that time it was a one-million-dollar-a-year business with a membership of about sixteen hundred. Due to the business decisions made in the mid-1980s, it survived and is the only remaining natural foods co-op in Connecticut. All other co-ops in the state went bankrupt. The WFC continues to provide members and the general public with natural foods at reduced rates.