Fed by a steady stream of sustainably-minded customers, the eagerly anticipated arrival of Oak Park’s first member-owned-and-driven grocery store, Sugar Beet Food Co-op at 812 Madison St., created plenty of buzz during its “soft” opening last Friday.
A scan of the well-stocked shelves revealed that the co-op offered the usual range of items found at conventional grocery stores, but General Manager Chis Roland noted that their products will be sourced locally, when possible, ranging in scope from packaged and bulk food, to cleaning and body care products, plus wine and beer.
“My most important job, obviously, is to all the owners and lenders,” Roland said. “There were a ton of volunteers who came out and have been working as hard as the staff. It has been amazing,” Roland told a crowd of volunteers, financiers and supporters at a pre-opening event. “But we have a long way to go so please be hard on us, because we will get better that way.”
On Friday, among the first local shoppers queuing up in the grocery checkout line was a soon-to-be-card-carrying co-op part owner Jack Bower.
The 25-year-old from Forest Park said he had been looking forward to opening day for a while and was excited to see what kind of locally sourced and natural products he could buy here.
“Well, I don’t desperately need groceries today, so I just figured I would come by and pick up some bread, blueberries, bananas, La Croix water … nothing too complicated,” Bower said. “I am excited about not having to go to Whole Foods when I run out of stuff. That is the main thing for me.”
Nearby, checking out the locally grown and organic produce was Oak Parker Mel Wilson, a community activist, and co-founder of the Oak Park Area Lesbian and Gay Association (OPALGA).
Wilson says he and his partner joined the Sugar Beet Co-op a year ago, at A Day in Our Village.
“There was a whole lot of controversy about what would happen to this building [Grove Apartments, the 52-unit affordable housing development run by Interfaith Housing Development Corporation of Chicago and the Oak Park Housing Authority], and I am glad to see something so nice come here,” he said.
Looking forward to selling her line of handmade soaps at Sugar Beet was Jill Neiwoehner, founder of MamaGrows. The Oak Park mom is one of the co-op’s new vendors as well as an active volunteer with Sugar Beet Co-op since its inception in 2012.
“I have been a huge supporter of Sugar Beet, and I am very proud of everything that all of us have accomplished,” she said. “It is beyond my wildest dreams. I was expecting this to be us selling some produce out of somebody’s garage, and now here we are with a gorgeous grocery store on Madison Street.”
Organically grown
Locals having greater access to locally sourced food has been a resonating theme with this group since early 2012 when two local women, Cheryl Munoz and Jenny Jocks Stelzer, gathered a group of neighbors from northeast Oak Park to start a powerful grassroots movement that paved the way to this opening.
“We now have over 1,100 members, and I imagine the membership is going to grow in leaps and bounds in the next few weeks,” Munoz said during an in-store interview. “I think some people decided to wait to see the store up and running before they became part owners [$250 for families, and $50 for seniors, students and low-income customers]. I think our membership will just keep growing.”
Munoz is now leading a separate but affiliated nonprofit called Sugar Beet Schoolhouse, which will act as a hub for food literacy programming on and off-site.
This start-up’s big pool of money grew out of in-home coffees, garden parties, and a range of fundraisers, including a pivotal membership recruitment drive at Unity Temple.
“Really, this whole story came from Cheryl’s brain,” said Tom Hollinden, Sugar Beet’s board president. “She planted a seed. It quickly grew, and this is the result. When we started the member recruitment campaign, we thought we’ll probably get about 500 or 700 people before we open because that is usually the watermark, and standard metric for opening a co-op.”
They easily surpassed that goal.
“Our board had to raise $800,000 in order to secure traditional loans ($640,000) and TIF funds ($500,000),” Munoz said in a written reply.
Hollinden added, “We need to thank our 72 owners of the 1,100 who were kind enough to do an owner loan, which is great. So our owners raised $840,000 toward our goal.”
Oak Park village trustees approved a request for up to $250,000 from the Madison Street Tax Increment Finance District, part of which the store must pay back once it’s up and running. The trustees also agreed to have the village government co-sign on a $250,000 line of credit.
The total project cost (construction and equipment and other costs to get the store open) was just over $1.8 million, Hollinden said.
As joint tenants of the Grove Apartment affordable housing complex, Sugar Beet, he said, they are nurturing the close relationship with the on-site neighbors above their 5,300 square foot, ground floor enterprise.
In the future, Sugar Beet’s board of directors will discuss the possibility of hiring some of the building’s renters and invite them to become co-op members.
“From day one,” he said, “the feedback from the residents has been, ‘Could there possibly be a better amenity than a frickin’ grocery store? No!’ So everyone has been on board.”
On opening day, Rich Kordesh, an original board member, was struck by what his community has accomplished in four short years.
“2012 is when Jenny and Cheryl started all this, with just four or five of us sitting around a table, blue-skying this co-op idea with nothing other than an easy-to-get incorporation with the state, and now this,” marveled Kordesh, a local author and edible gardener. “Look around. This is fabulous and amazing and a testament to Oak Park. To get from such a new idea to a functioning store with customers and working registers and stocked shelves and all that, it is all very impressive.”
For co-founder Munoz, there is no end in sight. This is the starting line, she said. She and her spouse, Anthony Munoz, will continue to work together as Sugar Beet staff members, with Cheryl leading marketing and outreach.
“Sustainability is about the environment and a lot of things,” said Gary Cuneen, executive director of Seven Generations Ahead, “but sustainability is also about stick-to-it-iveness, and guts and grit. That is the toast I want to make — to that sustainability, to Cheryl Munoz, and all of you who have made this happen. I am just thrilled that this place is happening here in Oak Park.”