The Co-op Food Stores

added 05/01/08

by Terry Appleby

With a sad final gasp, the Hyde Park Cooperative ceased operations and closed its doors in late January 2008. Much like the Hanover Co-op, Hyde Park Co-op was a Depression-era co-op, founded in 1932 by people inspired to meet their common needs through a “jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise.”

Hyde Park flourished for many years, with a committed membership and strong leadership. At one time it ran the largest supermarket in Chicago, and by the early 1950s, sales reached $1 million a year. When they opened a new store in 1954, the great Mahalia Jackson sang gospel hymns to the assembled cooperators.

The Hyde Park Co-op had its share of adversity through the years, but the membership remained solidly loyal to the organization. According to the co-op’s oldest member, 99 year-old Leon Despres, the store was the first in Chicago where the butchers “took their thumb off the scale.” It was a center of diversity and community life, with members representing all races, creeds, and cultural backgrounds. One source called the co-op “the informal meeting place for a half-century of community organizations.” It also was an early source of consumer and nutrition information, long before those became widely available. For many years it was one of the best-run stores in the city.

Times changed for Hyde Park, and their once-thriving market could not serve its members well in the end. The ultimate cause in the downfall of the cooperative was the decision in 1999 to open a second store in a nearby neighborhood. When the decision was made to open the large new store, there were promises about redeveloping the area that never materialized. Hyde Park was left with an expensive store in an area that could not support it, and the store closed in January of 2005, leaving the organization with a long-term $1 million-a-year lease on an unused building. The co-op tried various ways to get out from under the lease without success. With all resources going to pay for the shuttered store, the organization was unable to make needed repairs and maintenance on its remaining store. By 2007, following a year in which it endured a major power outage and a robbery, and owing millions of dollars to vendors and their landlord, the members finally decided that the old co-op had done enough. Facing the decision whether to close the doors or declare bankruptcy and struggle on, the members decided to quit.

In writing the obituary of the Hyde Park Co-op, many pundits have speculated that the activist co-op had lived past its usefulness. Bloggers complained about the bad produce and the bread that was never in stock or about the broken cash registers that didn’t get repaired for months. One public radio commentator even compared the store to an old uncle you really didn’t want to see! Yikes!

The Hyde Park Co-op died an undignified death. Its value now is to serve as a lesson about what happens when a co-op with a mission can’t manage being a grocery store. As general manager of our co-op, the first lesson I take from the demise of Hyde Park is, if you can’t keep the bread on the shelves you can’t do any good in the world. Honest butchers are only valuable when they have something to sell. What a sad lesson for a proud old co-op.

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