Co-ops take time but are sustainable and avoid government pitfalls
With little evidence that government-funded grocery stores are a lasting and effective answer in America’s inner cities, talk is turning to a classic civil society solution to grocery store closures in Milwaukee — community owned food co-ops.
Nine grocery stores have closed in Milwaukee since 2021, five of them on the north side. The city and county, in response, set up a task force to study the issue, raising the possibility local politicians might push what’s happening in some other parts of the United States: taxpayer-funded grocery stores.
In New York City, democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promised to open city-owned stores, with the first expected in 2027. Taxpayer funded stores have also opened or are in the works in Atlanta, Florida, Kansas and Madison.
That now appears less likely in Milwaukee.
Whatever plan the Milwaukee task force comes up with in the face of closures of traditional stores, it probably will include a civil-society option such as a food co-op, observers say. Community leaders pushing the issue for nearly a year say there is considerable interest in opening a new cooperatively owned and operated grocery store.
One organizer said the idea of a grocery store supported and run by members was preferable to the Pick ’n Save chain store that pulled out of the Metcalfe Park neighborhood last July.
“Right now, we’re listening to the community, to what they think works,” Melody McCurtis told the Badger Institute. “It’s the community doing the work. I’d like to see the community making the decision. I’d like to see a community-run grocery store and pharmacy, not another corporate grocery store.”
McCurtis is a deputy director at the nonprofit development organization Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, who organized the Food Justice Collective in reaction to store closures.
McCurtis said the Food Justice Collective is open to some kind of government support for a grocery store. But she and elected officials the Badger Institute contacted for this story conceded that that political will is not there for the city or the county to underwrite a considerable share of the planning for a grocery business with tax dollars.
Nor is there any talk of either local government going into the grocery store business, as in New York.
Mamdani’s plans are classic government overreaction to a politically loaded problem branded as “food deserts” or “food apartheid,” Cato Institute economist Scott Lincicome wrote last July.
“Mamdani’s grocery plan is a classic example of a statist hammer … in search of a ‘market failure’ nail,” Lincicome wrote. “The idea that there’s a broad ‘market failure’ in the U.S. grocery business is simply ludicrous.”
As the Badger Institute made clear with its November 2025 dissection of Madison’s $9 million investment in an unneeded and so-far unopened grocery store, there is scant evidence of any benefit from government involvement in a brutally competitive industry, though co-ops show promise.
Researchers who studied the outcomes of government initiatives to spur grocery store development in so-called food deserts found that despite substantial federal support, only a small fraction of the grocery or convenience store expansions promised by major retailers ever were completed.
Of grocery stores announced for “food deserts” since 2000, researchers found that half of those with some government support were canceled, did not advance beyond planning, or closed after opening.
By contrast, all the grocery stores opened by community or non-profit initiatives during that time were still open when the study was completed.
Maurice Wince, owner and operator of Milwaukee’s Sherman Park Grocery Store that opened in 2022, said Milwaukee’s task force “is both timely and necessary,” but that it will be challenged to understand the limits on what can be expected.
“Operating a grocery store is significantly more complex than many people realize,” he said. “The challenge is not necessarily a lack of commitment; rather, it is the economic reality of operating a grocery business in underserved neighborhoods where margins are often very thin.”
If the solution for Metcalfe Park is a cooperative, evidence from around the country suggests it could be far off, said Courtney Berner, executive director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives in Madison: “Co-ops are viable, but not a short-term solution.”
In 2016, residents in Whitewater formed a cooperative with the goal of opening their own store. Ten years later, there are 905 “owners,” according to the Whitewater Grocery Co. website, but no actual Whitewater Grocery Co.
The reasons are mostly economic. The will is there, but, so far, the money and the building aren’t. Berner said she cannot be sure the owners will open that store.
In Milwaukee, McCurtis said the Food Justice Collective has taken as one of its models the Detroit People’s Food Co-op, which opened its store in Michigan’s largest city in 2024. The co-op has more than 2,700 owner-members who help in making decisions about everything, including inventory. They have created dozens of jobs and markets for local farmers and growers.
“It’s been incredible to watch that grow over the years,” state Sen. Stephanie Chang said at the time of the opening. “It’s a Black-owned, member-operated co-op, and it’s become a real community space. People can get food there, but it’s also connected to local farms and producers. It’s a model that shows what’s possible.”
All it took was commitment — for 14 years. It took that long for the organization to open its store.
When the North Flint Food Market in Michigan opened in December, the Rev. Reginald Flynn, one of the many co-owners, said proudly, “For over a decade, we wandered in the wilderness hoping for what many communities take for granted: access to healthy food, job and career opportunities, and business ownership and control of one’s destiny.”
And in January, nearly 1,000 members of California’s Long Beach Grocery Co-op announced that after a decade, they were ready to settle on the right property for a store. All that is needed now are enough new additional memberships to cover the estimated $4 million to secure the building.
Mark Lisheron is a contributing journalist of the Badger Institute.
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