The Oklahoma Food Cooperative

By 2002, Bob Waldrop was committed to getting local food into the mouths of Oklahomans. His passion came from his convictions as an activist Roman Catholic and from his longing to bring back the family farms of his childhood in southwest Oklahoma. He also moderated a 7,000-member group on Yahoo called “Running on Empty 2,” which debated the implications of diminishing oil supplies and the emerging opportunities for local food production.

His first project, OklahomaFood.org, generated speaking invitations from all over the state. The reactions to his talks and listserv entries, he recalls, were “that’s all very interesting Bob, but you’re obviously a fanatic, which is obviously true—I’d almost be disappointed if someone didn’t think that—but how can we make this more normal and convenient? I was running around a lot to get local products at the source, plus time and gas to get all those places, so it was a fair question.”

“In December 2002, it all came together in my own mind that we needed to create a local co-op that would only serve local food. We determined we didn’t have enough people, food, or capital for stores. In my research on co-ops in general, though, I discovered that most start as food buying clubs. So, we asked the question: What if we reinvent this buying club concept based on local foods?”

Thus emerged the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. “We felt this new entity would need to have both customers and producers in one organization. This was hugely controversial. Experts told us that these two groups would work at cross purposes,” since producers would want high prices and consumers low prices. The solution was for the co-op not to buy wholesale and sell retail, as most co-ops do, but rather to let every producer set his or her own retail price and then charge for each transaction.

A dozen gatherings were then held around the state, where they drummed up interest and solicited ideas. Anyone was welcome to come. “We had both a Lesbian Unitarian minister and folks from the conservative Church of Christ at the first meeting. We all had the maturity, I guess, to recognize that if we focused on any one agenda, we could move something forward.”

There was an early debate about whether to be a cooperative or a nonprofit. “We wanted to spread equity, so felt we should organize a co-op where people could buy a membership share, just like a share of Conoco or Texaco. We were right: this created a huge emotional buy- in for members, and many of our buyers and producers volunteer.”

Another decision was not to charge an annual fee for the member-owners. “As a matter of fiscal discipline, we felt we should cover operations through revenues— use membership share cost for operating capital.” The cooperative originally charged $50 a share. “Now I wish we’d charged more because it all costs more and takes longer than you expect.”

Operations began in November 2003. “The first month we had sixty members, with twenty as producers, though only fifteen had something to sell that month. We all showed up the third Thursday at a local church to compile all the products bought into delivery baskets, separated by consumer. This was the first delivery day. We generated thirty-five hundred dollars in sales to thirty-six consumer members. We thought we were the biggest thing since sliced bread.”

Sales nearly doubled the second month. Today, monthly sales are over $65,000.