Plans underway to open new food co-op store in Richland

By Laura Kostad for Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business

The Tri-Cities is getting another shot to support a local food co-op.

Alan Schreiber of Schreiber Farms in Eltopia is leading the effort.

The fifth-generation farmer is leading a steering committee focused on opening a cooperative grocery store in Richland that will offer locally-sourced, predominately organic fresh produce, meats, seafood and other foods, personal care products and home goods.

Plans for the Tri-Cities Food Co-Op include a deli and eating area and small event gathering space featuring art by Pacific Northwest artists for sale. The organizers envision hosting live music, cooking classes, workshops, product tastings and meetings there.

Steering committee members also include Ginger Wireman, Eve McQuarrie, Melinda d’Ouville, Liesl Zappler and Dimple Patel.

A home in Richland

The committee and its community backers have been working with the landlord on tenant improvements at 1420 Jadwin Ave., the former home of Atomic City Thrift.

It’s not the first time the 1960s-era building has been home to a grocery store.

In 1966, it was a retail food mart and in 1983 it was a Price Chopper supermarket. It also once housed a martial arts studio and Paws Natural Pet Emporium.

The co-op held a public meeting in

January at the Richland Public Library to discuss plans, hear feedback and stoke member and volunteer interest. It hopes to open in early summer.

It will hold more public meetings as plans progress.

Eating local Schreiber, an organic fruit and vegetable farmer for 17 years, manages 120 acres north of Pasco. He sees an unmet need in the Tri-City region for a dedicated food coop that focuses on fresh, local organic food in a grocery store format.

Schreiber said he’s surveyed local grocery stores and found that organic representation just isn’t there. In one store, he noted that there was 330 feet of conventionally-grown produce and 15 feet of organic produce. He reported that none of it was from local growers.

“Every city of consequence has a food co-op. Tri-Cities is by far the biggest town in the greater Northwest that doesn’t,” he said, noting that small towns with co-ops include Mazama, Tonasket, Orcas Island and Twisp.

In addition to farmers markets and other direct-to-consumer sales, Schreiber sells his produce to community food co-ops in Canada and all over the Northwest, such as Seattle’s 16 PCC Community Markets, Skagit Valley Food Co-Op and Bellingham’s Community Food Co-Op.

The model challenges the idea of what is considered local in a time when food is commonly transported thousands of miles to consumers across international borders, oceans and continents.

Or, perhaps it doesn’t, given that context. Entering local markets outside of the directto-consumer arena has proved challenging for Schreiber.

“It makes my head explode how much is produced here and it almost all gets shipped out of here,” he said. “You can’t get local organic stone fruit (in the grocery store) any time of the year here, even though it’s grown in this area. A lot of what’s grown in the Yakima Valley and Columbia Basin goes to packing houses and is shipped out of the area. We can certainly get a lot more than we are getting.”

“I can’t get my produce into a grocery store in TriCities. To me, they’re just not interested. Grocery stores are not as interested in local-seasonal. The bigger they get, the more they want the guy who can deliver a certain quantity all year round,” he said.

He added that even if a local grocery store wanted to buy his produce, due to how the grocery supply chain works, the store would have to place an order with the distributor Schreiber sells his produce to.

All of Schreiber’s produce then goes to Seattle where it is shipped to western Washington markets, then the portion des- tined for Eastern Washington goes to Spokane to be distributed. Only then would the orders from Tri-City grocery stores be trucked back to Tri-Cities, he said.

“I want a store I can just drive 15 to 20 minutes to and drop off my produce. That’s the way it should be. The food has uCO-OP, Page A31