The coronavirus has shaken the Park Slope Food Coop to its very foundation. leahbkoenig reports
A map posted to Instagram in late March to help shoppers navigate Park Slope Food Coop’s aisles. Photo: foodcoop/Instagram Like most things these days, the quotidian act of going out for groceries suddenly feels like uncharted territory. Nowhere is this change more apparent than at the Park Slope Food Coop. Over its 47-year history, brownstone Brooklyn’s bastion of 1970s idealism has stayed remarkably resilient. But the coronavirus has shaken the community-minded store to its very foundation.
“We didn’t think the governor was suggesting that all of our 17,000 member-workers were essential,” said Ann Herpel, one of the co-op’s general coordinators. “And it wasn’t safe to expose our staff to so many extra people throughout the day.” But members of the Park Slope Food Coop , perhaps even more than most New Yorkers, are preternaturally disposed to closeness. In non-pandemic times, the place serves as a social hub as much as a grocery store: Friends hug and catch up, shoppers and workers swap recipe ideas, and the occasional passive-aggressive squabble breaks out in the checkout line.
But in a recent emergency memo to members, general manager and co-founder Joe Holtz wrote that since March 23, when the reduced-shopper rule went into effect, transactions have gone down by 80 percent and sales by 45 percent. This has resulted in a $500,000 loss in weekly sales revenue, which typically averaged over $1.1 million. At the same time, the temporary hires have increased overhead. “This is not a sustainable amount for running a cooperative that is this size,” Holtz wrote.
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