After years of private ownership, Tom’s Market in Yellow Springs could become a co-op grocery store.
That means community members would cooperatively own the local grocery store. It would operate with community input and focus on locally sourced goods.
According to the Cherrelle Gardner, executive director of Co-op Dayton, this move was prompted by the owner, Jeff Gray, looking at stepping away from ownership of the store. Gray's family has operated the store on Xenia Avenue since 2001.
“Jeff, as the owner of Tom's, knew that he wanted to keep it local and the Community Foundation approached him about the idea of a co-op as a strategy," she said. "Not to just keep it local after this transition, but to keep it a local long-term.”
As part of this arrangement, Gray is negotiating the sale of Tom's Market to the Yellow Springs Community Foundation.
"We're united on this, so that feels good. And I've always believed we have very common values in the community, so it's panning out in this discussion."
The Jeanna Marie Cox, the foundation's executive director, ,said if an agreement is reached by Jan. 31, the foundation would hold the business for a period until the co-op is created and then the community foundation will buy all or some part back out of that investment.
In the meantime, a co-op task force is spending 45 days gathering information. The task force includes representatives from the Yellow Springs Community Foundation, Hall Hunger Initiative, the Grocers Association and Co-op Dayton.
She said another important aspect of this effort is fighting a rise in food insecurity in the Yellow Springs area.
"Having access to food in town is really important. It's of the utmost importance for all of us that are here and people that are moving here," she said. "And then there's also the issue of local growers and food co-ops all over the country have really deep relationships with local growers and farmers."
Surveys, town hall gauge support
In order to go forward with a community-operated store, Cox said they knew they first needed community support. They started distributing surveys to customers and villagers on the prospect
Results of that survey show that as of Jan. 9, 96.1% of the responders voted in approval of starting the co-op at their local market.
The top five priorities from all 280 responses came down to simply having a grocery store in town and maintaining affordable or competitive pricing, local ownership, quality, variety, staffing and fair wages.
"We're united on this, so that feels good," Cox said. "And I've always believed we have very common values in the community, so it's panning out in this discussion."
The task force next set up a town hall meeting to hear directly from community members about their questions or concerns.
The response was overwhelming. A crowd formed at the Jan. 14 meeting and spilled out into the halls of Yellow Springs Presbyterian Church’s Westminster Hall.
"We recognize that for a co-op to work in Yellow Springs, we have to Yellow Springs-ize it."
"No one has come to me with a negative comment or concern," Gray said. "I mean there are a lot of questions, but it's I think it's people who are in support But they just want to know more about it."
Members of the task force presented a flexible timeline and examples of other co-ops in Ohio or surrounding states.
Many of the attendees had questions about what the community's financial responsibility in the co-op would look like, how co-op shares work, maintaining the market as an essential local resource and keeping local farmers involved.
'We have to Yellow Springs-ize it'
According to Gardner, the engagement from the community in Yellow Springs reminds her of when Dayton founded the Gem City Market co-op on Salem Avenue.
“To see community come together to ask the hard questions, to share the stories, shows this community who wants to take ownership of the resources they see in community and has that mindset of self-determination," she said.
Cox said the next step is taking these responses into consideration as they formulate what a successful co-op would look like in Yellow Springs.
"We recognize that for a co-op to work in Yellow Springs, we have to Yellow Springs-ize it," she said. "So we're trying to take the information and expertise that we can get to and bring it together and say, 'How does that work in Yellow Springs?' to make it work here.'"
