Our large parking lot will be closed between these dates! You can still park in the smaller parking lot near Sycamore Ave, or🚶🚴♂️ 🚁 🛵 🚌🛴🚊 🚢 🚂 to the store!
Did you know that TPSS is part of a co-op of food co-ops? We were pleased to welcome Tandy Harvey, National Co-op Grocers’ new CEO, and Brittany Baird, Strategic Development Manager, to tour the store today!
National Co-op Grocers is a business services cooperative of retail food co-ops throughout the US.
They represent 169 food co-ops operating 241 stores in 40 states! NCG provides the capacity of a chain while maintaining the individuality of each co-op.
TPSS has been a part of NCG since it started in 2004! They have been an amazing resource to us, especially during our renovation in 2024.
💭 Envision a better economy with us!
We the Owners captures stories from the founders and employees of three employee-owned businesses, New Belgium Brewing, Namaste Solar, and DPR Construction, sharing the workers’ perspectives on shared ownership structures, empowering corporate cultures, linked reward and risk incentives, and human-capital innovation models. The film follows the companies as decisions are made from founding and expansion, succession and recruitment, to layoffs.
We the Owners is screening on Monday, May 18th at 7 PM at Rhizome DC. Get tickets at the link in our bio!
Tickets are $5 and include popcorn and drinks!
We were inspired by watching Food for Change: the Story of Cooperation in America last night during our third annual film festival with @rhizome_dc ! Cooperatives emerged from the Great Depression as impoverished workers saw cooperative control as an alternative to the monopolies that dominated the food system, among other industries. Cooperatives boomed in the late 1930s and then declined as the nation’s productive capacity focused on the Second World War. Coming out of the wartime period, co-ops were stigmatized as communist endeavors. Meanwhile, the grocery landscape was transformed a focus on efficiency, including the use of pesticides and advertising-driven consumerism for convenience. By the 1960s, interest in co-ops grew again as consumers began to prioritize quality food and in the 1970s co-ops multiplied as an answer to the nation’s economic and environmental challenges. Grown with idealism and grit, many of the co-ops established during that time did not survive due to lack of business expertise, mission focus, product/market mismatch, and more, but the ones who have survived point to cooperation across cooperatives as a key ingredient in their success.
It was grounding to be reminded that our challenges aren’t new and that our story is part of a long lineage of people seeking to build a more equitable food system.
Next week we’ll watch We the Owners: Employees Expanding the American Dream. Join us!
Our spring member meeting was a great time of connection! It was a beautiful evening at Koiner Farm. The topic of greatest interest was our Second Store Project and we took time for Q&A and dreaming about what a second store should be like. If you have questions of your own, visit TPSS.coop/expansion to learn more!
We were lucky to have the founder of Wizzie’s tea providing delicious samples in the store today! Made locally, Wizzie’s tea is flavorful and not too sweet. Drink it straight or make it into a mocktail! You can find it in the front refrigerator (see second picture).
