![]() ![]() What is a person if not just a slightly more dexterous arm than the ones that robots so far have?īlessedly, I am not alone in fearing self-checkout. I saw a self-checkout in the Urban Outfitters in Herald Square and almost called the ACLU: Some lucky employee sits on a stool near the self-checkout stations and does nothing but remove ink tags from things before you buy them? Sure. I’ve heard they are in grocery stores throughout the city, but I refuse to look. Far from novelty or spon-con child’s game, self-checkouts pop up everywhere now: at the new Target in Barclays Center where I buy my useless seasonal objects and knockoff Urban Outfitters clothes at the CVS where I buy my disgusting seasonal candy at the Panera Bread where I buy a seasonal autumn squash soup and half a grilled cheese. Pretend to work in a grocery store? Pretend to have money? Pretend you alone are in charge of what you eat and all you are going to eat forever is Cinnamon Toast Crunch and alphabet soup? Amazing.īut (for me, at least) that was the late ’90s. In the mini Wegmans “Super Kids Market,” children select groceries (plastic produce, but real cereal boxes and genuine Chef Boyardee cans) from real grocery shelves, put them in real (miniaturized) Wegmans shopping carts, ring them up on functioning cash registers with real grocery scanners, and print themselves real receipts with a real Wegmans logo at the top. The museum has rotating exhibits, but its centerpiece is an elaborate model of a Wegmans grocery store, sponsored by Wegmans, which is owned by the Wegmans family, which is the area’s sole billion-dollar dynasty. On the underdeveloped side of the Genesee River, next to the bus station, sits the “National Museum of Play,” an odd institution founded by Margaret Woodbury Strong - a Rochester native who inherited millions of dollars and used it to collect thousands of dolls. This ownership leads to creating a grocery store you can feel proud to be part of.Rochester, New York, is a notorious model of terrible urban planning and idiotic corporate sponsorship. The co-op model ensures that every voice is heard and that the people who shop and the people who work, can all have an impact. When’s the last time you wanted to make a change in a grocery store and felt like you could really do it? When was the last time you felt proud of your grocery store? At Weaver Street Market, shoppers and employees have a true voice because they are also the owners. The co-op model means everyone has a voice Its Round Up program, which encourages customers to round up when paying for purchases, has given over $2 million in money and goods since 2015 to community food partners. Weaver Street Market also contributes to local nonprofits working to end food insecurity, fundraising $338 thousand in 2022, according to the report. Compared to a chain grocery store, it had an additional $12.4 million impact on the local economy. "When you buy at a co-op, the beneficiaries are the people who work and use the store, not an out-of-town owner or hedge fund or stock share."Īmong its many products, Weaver Street sold more than 1.2 million local eggs, 207 thousand containers of local berries, and 178 thousand loaves of local organic bread in fiscal year 2022, according to its annual report. "Co-ops offer communities a lot of benefits - like access to food, good jobs, gathering spaces - but the most unique thing about co-ops is that they inherently keep equity local," said McDonald. It may seem simple, but for the four communities that Weaver Street Market now serves -Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough and Raleigh- the venture has been a game changer. Jon McDonald, bread bakery manager at Weaver Street Market’s FoodHouse summarized the founding like this: "A group of people were looking for a way to organic and natural foods, so they began the co-op to solve this problem." In addition, they wanted to ensure that their venture had a sustained, positive impact on the people within their communities. For Weaver Street Market, founded by current General Manager Ruffin Slater, and a group of like-minded people, that goal was to provide their community with high-quality, locally-sourced food. In short, co-ops are people-centric and generally have a mission to achieve a common goal.
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