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A group of San Diegans, tired of paying high grocery prices to area food sellers, gathered around a picnic table at Ocean Beach one day in 1971, and decided they were going to pool their money to buy food in bulk. They organized a worker’s collective and called themselves the People’s Co-op.

Before long, People’s Co-op moved off the beach into a small house; outgrowing that space, it took over the lease on an old pool hall. In 1985, People’s Co-op made it official: It organized as a food cooperative and called itself the Ocean Beach People’s Organic Food Market.

Today, Ocean Beach has its own 13,000-square-foot market, employs 103 people and records about $10 million in annual sales.

Cooperatives and buying groups have been around for years and share one thing in common: They provide members the leverage to negotiate lower prices for goods and services.

Here’s another example.

Back in the early ’80s, while attending an office suppliers meeting, talk of the advantages of belonging to a buying group caught Chris Bihary’s attention. A partner in the independently owned Queen Anne Office Supply in Seattle, Bihary says high freight costs at the time were killing him.

He learned that if Queen Anne became part of a buying group, it would contact vendors and negotiate prices on their collective behalf. He was in. “It allows us independents to compete,” he says. “We get better prices, better shipping and rebates for the store.

Author: Carol Hopkins

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