Jeremy DeChario

Bringing a community together through food

Emma Vallelunga

Jeremy DeChario knows communities can come together through good times and bad. His role as general manager with the Syracuse Cooperative Market has given him a special appreciation for the wholesale, local grocery experience and what it means for the people of Syracuse, who now have two store locations to call their own thanks to his hard work and dedication.

DeChario moved to Syracuse from Florida with his partner 11 years ago and has been working at the co-op ever since.

“She got into grad school at SU, and we picked Syracuse over New York [City] or D.C. because it was an affordable place to live, and it seemed like a good spot for us,” DeChario said. “I was born in western Massachusetts, so it felt really good to be back here.”

From starting out as a part-time cash register to other jobs around the store, DeChario worked his way up to become store manager at the co-op’s original location on Kensington Road. Historically, the grocery store has operated in the Westcott neighborhood of Syracuse for more than 45 years, focusing on locally-made, high quality and organic products that both promote the local economy and build a stronger community. But DeChario had bigger dreams for the future of the co-op.

“I really started working on an expansion project seven years ago,” he said. “I really wanted to bring a grocery store to downtown Syracuse. It was something I was very interested in, being a part of the growth and experience of downtown.”

The nature of the COVID-19 pandemic made grocery stores like the co-op essential to Syracuse communities, so when sales were rising, DeChario knew it was time to open a second store when he became the Co-op’s general manager. But plans for that were already in the works as early as 2019, and the perfect opportunity fell into place with the brand new Salt City Market.

“We started working with the Allyn Family Foundation and the Syracuse Urban Partnership to be an anchored tenant in the Salt City Market,” he said. “We had planned on opening in March or April. The biggest thing with the pandemic was acquiring the manufactured components, like the grocery shelving and things like that, with the reduced capacity limits that people are operating under at the moment.”

The Salt City Market, a $22 million project to build a multicultural food hall in downtown Syracuse aimed at bringing together the city’s most diverse food vendors and businesses, opened its doors early this year. While the building’s other floors are office and apartment spaces, renovated into the ground floor next to the market was a new space for a second Co-op, which officially opened this April with a soft opening. At the grand opening, DeChario cut the ribbon, and he said the feedback has been extremely positive.

“We didn’t want to do a grand opening before we were really ready, so the soft-open let us tune some systems and make sure we had everything out,” he said. “So far, everybody just seems to be really glad that we’re here, and I think we’re working to make sure our product mix is correct for the area and the new customers that are coming into the Co-op for the first time.”

The new location inside Salt City Market serves as downtown’s first full-service grocery store, something the area was lacking as the population grew in recent years. It’s convenient for many reasons: visibility from the Marriott Syracuse Downtown across the street, accessibility to bus lines for easy transportation to other parts of the city and walkability for downtown residents and workers to grab a nice lunch and their groceries at the same time. “Our hope is that people come in for lunch and do a big shop, especially once the offices open back up,” he said. “Not everyone wants to do a grocery shop when they get out of work, but if they can get it out of the way during their lunch break, so much the better.”

The co-op is proud to be community-driven and memberfocused, but customers don’t need to be members to shop at either location. It functions like any normal grocery store, and while it is member-owned, both locations are open to the public.

“I think people found that they enjoyed a different grocery shopping experience than [what] some of our competitors offered,” he said. “People want to go into a store that feels manageable and not 120,000 square feet of a hundred different varieties of every single item. They’re just able to come in and do a full shop in a shorter period of time.”

DeChario has other future plans for the second location. He said acquiring a beer license for the downtown store is already underway, just like the Kensington location, as well as establishing a goal to grow their prepared-foods section.

“We really want people to feel like it’s their grocery store, because it’s literally their grocery store,” he said. “Food brings us all together at the same table, and I feel like that’s what the co-op community is really about. It’s about people that have an interest in food in a community that’s accessible to everyone.”

When it comes to what inspires DeChario to continue serving Syracuse at the co-op, he said it isn’t about him. It’s about being there for the community that comes together, helping it thrive through hardship and building a better co-op for future generations to come.

“Over the last 47 years the co-op has been here, it’s had a lot of new owners, a lot of growth and changes to reflect the unique needs of the community,” he said. “It’s our job to be good stewards for our members so that the co-op exists in another 47 years, and that’s what’s so motivating about it. It’s on us to make sure that my son, in 20 years, can shop at the co-op, just like folks that founded the co-op have kids and grandkids that shop here now. It’s everybody’s co-op. It’s my endeavor to be a good steward of this community asset.” SWM