For every $100 spent at a chain, only $13 remains in the community; $45 remains when spent at a hometown business
Marla Petersen in front of the co-op's wheat grinder, stocked with Wyoming wheat
As a downtown business owner, I have an up close view into the interdependent web of the Laramie family. I sell used books, a recycled commodity, nothing I farm from the good earth, mind you. I’m a middle man, rifling through boxes to separate the wheat from the chaff, so that what makes it onto our shelves is worth the browsing. That’s all I offer: discriminating taste. I do what I can to keep my prices reasonable, but I guess a part of me recognizes that I’m relying on the goodwill of my fellow Laramie-ites to make sure I stay in business. I’ve had many customers tell me they come to me first before they try Amazon or another chain (which will remain unnamed, like Lord Voldermort), and it’s that kind of loyalty to local that I feed my family on.
So I can’t help feeling a twinge of irksomeness when I stop into Whole Foods or Vitamin Cottage on one of my tri-annual forays and see their giant, fancily-fonted signs proclaiming how many millions of gallons of local milk they use in their bakery a year. It’s a complicated problem because I’m glad to know that the local dairy is selling so much they will compete with national brands at the regional level. But when the Fort Collins Food Coop, which has been selling that same brand of local milk since the early 70′s, is only staying in business because they own their own building, something is not right in Denmark.
In trying to understand the economic trickiness of “buying local from a big box,” I chatted with Marla Petersen, the manager of Big Hollow Food Co-op. The co-op is another example of a local middle man business, except in their case the business is owned by some 500 members. Their mission, Marla says, is not to make sure everything in the store is certified organic, but that they connect as many local food producers with as many customers as possible. “For local foods, we have a very small, and in some cases no, margin because we want to be able to offer these goods to the public and be able to give producers what they need to make so they can continue to produce….We have not raised the price on many items in the store, even when the cost from suppliers has increased. An example of this would be our Morning Fresh milk and our local wheat. These prices have been stable for more than three years. We want people to be able to count on them.”
Marla explains that she doesn’t have the same flexibility to keep prices stable when it comes to the general stock that comes from the same distributor that the chain stores use. “Like many small businesses, we struggle to compete with large ‘corporate’ businesses who are able to negotiate better prices from suppliers based on their buying power. A good example of this would be Vitamin Cottage; they have negotiated a deal with UNFI, our primary supplier, for the best buying rate in this region. It might be even better than Whole Foods. Comparing Big Hollow to them is like comparing a mom and pop grocery store to Walmart.
“We opened with a small amount of capitol that was raised by selling memberships,” Marla says. “Since then we have lowered our margins two times…. [But] these decreases in prices are not always easily recognized since the cost of goods is always increasing.”
And also because, as consumers, we have been conditioned to believe things are significantly cheaper at big chains, when often they aren’t. Frequently, I’ve seen local products, such as eggs or milk, are quite a bit more expensive at big chains, not to mention the cost of gas to drive to a nearby city which should be factored in to the price of goods. The choices for local products at the chains, especially meats, grains and fresh produce, are also limited compared to the co-op or Whole Earth Grainery. Local meats, in particular, are mostly absent from big box stores with most freerange meats shipped in from the California or the East. And in buying beef and bison from local sources such as the Butcher Block, we are preserving the way of life of our own neighbors. The more we support our local middle men, the more diversity and better prices they will offer us since their loyalty to us as costumers is infinitely stronger.
