By Tammy Erickson, Franklin Community Co-op Board President
Most of you know that Franklin Community Coop is working toward an audacious physical transformation: converting the ground floor of the historic landmark building that was Wilson’s Department store into an expanded home for our flagship Green Fields Market. From a construction standpoint, the project is staggering — four decrepit foundations, individual antiquated utilities, structural deficiencies, and high needs for environmental abatement. The economic development challenge is even bigger: multiple partners and funding from a wide variety of sources for a renovation that would never be attempted by an enterprise basing decisions strictly on return on investment criteria.
What you may not know is that we are also working on an internal transformation of equal magnitude: a shift in the role we play in our community. Over the past year we have been talking with current member-owners about the values we want to reinforce and the new directions we embrace. We are now listening to a broad range of constituencies in Franklin County to understand what everyone in the community wants in your local grocery store.
Co-ops are unique organizations — they are formed, owned and run by individuals within a community coming together to address a local unmet need. Successful co-ops have adapted over time to roles that are relevant to a particular moment. In the first half of the last century, co-ops were essentially buying groups, providing access to products that weren’t readily available. By the 1960s, a new wave of co-ops emerged to provide organic, fair trade, and local food unavailable from large commercial retailers.
Today, while access to healthy food remains important, it is not the primary unmet need in our diverse, economically challenged community. In our discussions with both current member-owners and the broader community, we have wrestled with what we can offer better than any other retailer. What is today’s unmet need in Franklin County?
Our conclusion is that there is need for a greater sense of inclusion and belonging, of community. Continuing to provide high-quality healthful products that have been our core, while offering a broader array and lower prices, respecting individual choices and preferences, is a cornerstone of this new focus. Investing in physical store features that can be enjoyed by everyone and giving back to other organizations and individuals are also key.
We are already introducing lower priced products in our stores and look forward to doing far more after the expansion. With additional space, we will offer a wider range of products, including many that are less expensive than our current brands, as well as international items, high-quality meats and cheeses, and wine and beer. The storage space in the basement will allow us to buy in greater quantities, reducing our costs, facilitating lower prices overall.
The additional space and downtown location close to public transportation will allow us to be a true full-service grocery, increasing food availability for all. You do not need to be a member to shop at the Co-op.
We are investing in features in the new store for the community. Café space, an attractive fully accessible area for eating and socializing, will allow you to share a coffee or bite from our hot bar with friends. A Community Room, a large, ADA-accessible space with its own bathrooms will be available throughout the day and beyond store hours to organizations for your meetings. A teaching kitchen will enable increased education and share the fun of food.
We support the success of our local food system. Franklin County is the epicenter of a vibrant group of local farmers, growers, and processors. Although over 30% of our current sales are local, the size of our current store limits our capacity for fully showcasing the richness of the Valley. The expansion will allow us to double our local purchases, giving farmers greater assurance of market access. Over time we will convert a portion of the basement to provide storage available to small growers as an emergency shelter, providing greater climate resilience. More infrastructure county-wide will reduce the need to transport food in from other areas, decreasing the environmental impact.
And, we are strongly committed to supporting the local business community. We hope the new store will serve as an anchor for revitalizing downtown Greenfield, attracting foot traffic, stimulating growth for all businesses nearby, encouraging additional investment, and attracting a variety of new businesses to town.
The economic benefit will extend to the city: more union jobs and more taxes — we are a tax-paying, profit-making enterprise. Our increased revenue will support more charitable giving. In a study commissioned by National Co-op Grocers, for every dollar spent at a food co-op, $0.38 is reinvested in the local economy compared to $0.24 at conventional grocers. Our impact is even greater: we offer financial discounts to individuals who donate time to local charities; last year our member-owners gave back over 5,000 hours.
We know that, to some, our Co-op is still regarded perhaps as a clique of aging hippies or as serving only the financially well-off. While we remain strongly committed to our foundational values of caring about human and environmental health and social, racial, and economic justice, we look forward to introducing you to a new evolution of Green Fields Market and McCusker’s over the next several years. We want to ensure that you feel the stores are for you. That you belong. We welcome your thoughts on how.
Printed as a My Turn in The Greenfield Recorder, September 22, 2025