Since 1975, the co-op has provided students with fresh food and a family. They must must raise $16,000 by June 1 to renew the lease in Stamp Student Union.
At 6:35 p.m. Monday, night begins to fall, Stamp begins to empty and a girl with a snake bite piercing and a Pikachu hoodie begins the Maryland Food Collective’s weekly meeting.
“Silence in the co-op,” Jenna Parry says, and the co-op falls silent.
There are 16 people at this week’s meeting, which is fewer than normal. There are paid workers and volunteers. Students and non-students. Women with short hair and men with white hair. The co-op closed a half hour ago, and the music that blasted earlier that day – a bunch of Miles Davis tracks played via Grooveshark – has been turned off. For a moment, there is silence in the co-op.
When the attendees start talking, they do it in an official way. Motions are brought forward and put to a majority vote. There is spirited, passionate discussion about a new lock system and a new salad recipe. Regardless of the co-op’s stigma as a vegan, hippie haven, it’s a legitimate business with paid workers who can talk as readily about feta cheese as they can profit margins and taxes.
On one hand, the business is performing better than it ever has. On the other, it’s buried beneath a daunting amount of debt.
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The co-op first nestled into its home in the basement of the Stamp Student Union, just a few steps from TerpZone and the University Book Center, in 1975.
That was the “free love” era when food co-ops – most of which focused on organic, often vegetarian dining options – began to spring up around colleges throughout the country, according to junior food science major Doug Koziol, a paid worker.
Then, as the health-food craze died after the ’70s, so did many of the stores. For some reason, though, this university’s co-op pushed through. Koziol attributed it to the staff’s dedication and “scraping-by mentality.”
But, even as the previous iterations of the co-op scraped by, they began to accumulate debt. There was no stable business model or long-term plan for the store.
Now, the co-op is in financial trouble. It’s unprecedented financial trouble, according to its employees, but it doesn’t really seem to be bothering them too much. It creeps around the edges of conversations but rarely dominates them, as though the employees are brushing away noxious plumes of smoke.
“I don’t know,” said Parry, a junior studio art major. “It’s not too bad. It isn’t.”
There’s a fundraising effort at indiegogo.com. The co-op needs $16,000 by June 1 to renew its lease in Stamp. As of last night, on the site, it has put together a paltry $50.
But, again, there’s no pervasive sense of worry. According to alumna Mary Schulte, all paid co-op employees – there are about 17 – recently took pay cuts, from $10 per hour to $7.50, now with no potential for raises. The labor-cost savings will make up most of the difference. The co-op hopes the rest will come from indiegogo, other fundraising efforts and benefit concerts.
“All of us are willing to take that hit,” Schulte said, “because it’s in the best interest of keeping this place open.”
The pay cut is not for naught – the lengthy lines, often snaking around the co-op’s homey interior at peak hours, show people want what the co-op is selling. Koziol got a call last week from students at the University of South Carolina who want to start a co-op and looked to this university as a successful archetype.
Perhaps this university’s co-op stayed alive because the business fluctuates as per the desires of its staff. Every paid worker has an equal stake in the company, and it has never been subsidized by the university or by Stamp. Parry said volunteers, who work for food credit, regularly flit in and out of daily shifts.
“It’s always in flux because there’s always people going, always people leaving,” she said.
When the paid workers are mostly vegan, the menu is mostly vegan. Currently, there are cold cuts and vegetables, vegan cookies and coconut chickpea curry. It’s all still healthy, organic and local – if a local company is bought out by a large one, the co-op will stop carrying its product, Parry said – but the co-op has no desire to be exclusive. It just wants to sell good, healthy food to whomever is interesting in buying.
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Health codes stipulate all co-op employees must have on some sort of headwear, so Koziol wears a red Maryland baseball cap that covers his short hair. He dons a white apron atop his black Geek Squad shirt and has no discernible tattoos. He is nooooooot a vegetarian, and says so as though he couldn’t even fathom the idea.
He originally joined the staff because he liked food and wanted a job and he’s been a paid worker for the past year.
It’s 2:30 p.m. and Koziol and Schulte are systematically scooping tuna and egg salad and various nice-looking soquid concoctions from lived-in plastic containers to clean ones. It’s called flipping the sandwich lines, and it takes about 40 minutes to finish the task.
“I’m really passionate about having a space on campus where there is this kind of food,” Schulte said.
She’s been a vegan for two and a half years and has worked at the co-op since October. She graduated from this university in December, but couldn’t bring herself to leave, so now she works 30 hours a week cleaning, making food and ordering the co-op’s bread, pastries and bagels.
She and Koziol have an easy chemistry, an effervescent conversational flow that might just be contagious. Everyone in the kitchen is busy, but in high spirits.
“Doug’s pretty much a pro at this,” Schulte jokes, as she moves containers of ingredients from the sandwich line to a stainless steel table a few steps away. “I’m learning as I watch him.”
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Nestled in the top-left corner of the bulletin board just inside the co-op, near a flyer that touts Ron Paul as the next president and an ad promoting an upcoming Washington folk concert, there’s a handwritten note, written anonymously on an index card:
I loved the kale salad with tahini dressing. I usually hate salad and hate eating healthy stuff but the kale salad impressed me! Thank you to whoever made it. You have inspired my sloppy ass to make it at home!
And the response, just underneath:
You’re welcome, glad you liked it!
<3 Co-op
jwolper@umdbk.com
