With Co-op Fortnight 2024 happening from 24th June until 7th July, we hear from Cooperative Food Organiser Kelly Fritzsche about her work facilitating neighbourhood food co-ops across Plymouth and how they’re making a difference – from more affordable food prices to reduced food waste and from new skills to new friends!
Kelly’s role began in November 2022, building on her fifteen years’ worth of experience working with co-ops and in community settings. Based at Four Greens Community Trust, her work across the city is funded by NHS Devon in partnership with Plymouth City Council and forms an important strand of efforts to improve food security within local communities.
At the heart of the neighbourhood food co-ops model is that developed by Cooperation Town, initially established in London in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Food co-ops are part of the Cooperative Movement, which means that they follow the seven Cooperative Principles. Unlike a food bank, where recipients are means tested and have no say in how the service is run, food co-ops are owned by their members, who decide together what to buy and how to run the co-op. They are not-for-profit groups, set up to meet members’ needs and are controlled by the people who join them. They are based on solidarity, not charity. While members have to contribute towards the cost of their shopping, food co-ops offer a great value for money.
They are the most affordable – and sociable! – way to get food.Cooperation Town
In the year since our last Co-op Fortnight feature, Kelly has set up five new food co-ops based in North Prospect, Southway, Cattedown, Plymouth University and Riverside. Up to twenty people join as members and come together in an accessible community location such as schools or churches. They each pay the same amount of money (e.g. £3.50 a week) to buy food, including surplus fruit and veg supplied by FareShare South West. Food co-ops are owned and run by the members, meaning that as well as purchasing food and saving money, co-op members learn new skills along the way.
From our Food Co-op trials we have seen members saving money on food, making friends with other members and supporting each other, learning new skills within the co-op and attending cookery courses and maths courses. The difference here is based on members working together to make a difference for ourselves.
Cooperative Food Organiser Kelly Fritzsche
A joint partnership between Millfields Trust, Four Greens Community Trust, Food Plymouth and Plymouth City Council secured £255,000 of Shared Prosperity Funding to set up six new food co-ops and two co-operative social supermarkets within the city. The first social supermarket will be trialled at Four Greens Wellbeing Hub from summer 2024, with a second at the Millfields HQ building in January 2025. Social supermarkets are run on co-operative principles, with up to 150 members able to purchase essentials at a low price. There will also refrigerated delivery van to deliver to collect and deliver food and, finally, a small scale trial manufacturing unit turning surplus fruit and veg into jam and pasta sauces in partnership with JarSquad and Millfields Trust.
The movement is open to everyone, and the co-ops should help in a number of ways – the most obvious being financial due to the increased food prices because of the cost-of-living crisis – with each co-op also including education for members ranging from learning new skills such as cooking on a budget to having access to a Citizens Advice drop-in service.
Find out more in this recent case study by Co-ops UK: 2024-Case-Study-Food-Coop-Plymouth