September 2016
One of the busiest restaurants in Ashland doesn’t have creekside dining and doesn’t take reservations. In fact, you have to get in line, order and wait your turn, and no one seems to mind. It’s the Deli at the Ashland Food Co-op, and it does a steady business from start to close.
The Ashland Food Co-op is a local phenomenon, an idea that began in 1972 as a buying club for people who wanted healthier foods at reasonable prices. “They had a dream to change the food system,” says Outreach and Marketing Manager Annie Hoy.
That dream continued and today the consumer-owned Co-op, located at First and A Streets, is the epicenter of the town’s healthy-food consciousness. It has some 10,000 member/owners and is one of 300 not-for-profit, member-owned food co-ops nationwide. It is the only Certified Organic Retailer in our region and offers a carefully curated variety of local, organic and non-GMO products, and prepared foods.
According to City records, the deli/restaurant at the Co-op pays more meals tax than any other dining establishment in Ashland. The Co-op has 175 employees who earned $5.3 million in wages last year, and 25 percent of the market’s total sales came from the sale of local products.
“Not bad for a business that began in somebody’s garage,” Annie said A long-time Ashland resident, Annie began working for the Co-op in 1993, after leaving Jefferson Public Radio. She had worked with her father in the grocery business in Texas, so she knew the industry. But she chose radio after focusing on communications and broadcasting in her studies at the University of Oregon.
“I never thought I would end up using the practical knowledge of merchandising and marketing in my future work life,” she says. When the Co-op job opened up, she used what she’d learned to develop a public relations and outreach program for the community.
“The Co-op had just moved into a new building and was growing at a record pace,” Annie said. “It quickly became a community leader in all things having to do with support for the local food economy, and the health and well-being of our residents.”
The Co-op’s classroom at 300 N. Pioneer Street holds free Monday evening lectures for the public on a variety of health topics, and offers cooking classes throughout the year. The classroom also provides programs for kids, like summer cooking camps, movie nights, and cookie decorating parties.
For more information: www.ashlandfood.coop or call 541-482-2237. And you can like them on Facebook.
