Grand Rapids Food Coop Initiative celebrates its first anniversary

The Grand Rapids Food Coop Initiative held a first anniversary picnic on June 4, 2017 at Aberdeen Park. GRFCI members, and their friends and family members enjoyed a potluck celebrating food and community. Members grilled hamburgers, veggie burgers, and hot dogs, shared their own stories and recipes with each other, and celebrated this milestone with cake and song.

What is the GRFCI?

The GRFCI began a year ago with a mission to create a new full-service grocery store in central Grand Rapids that will be owned by the community itself. This grocery store will be a welcoming place for the whole community with the aim of both meeting your grocery needs and bringing people together to build community ties and friendships. This grocery store will be a place to gather the community for events like educational workshops on everything from healthy eating to sustainable food systems. In addition, all GRFCI members will share in the profits once the grocery store is up and running.

This food coop will offer food that is as local and affordable as possible from all food traditions and members will offer classes on cooking and food itself. Its focus is on the availability of food to the city’s people, focusing on natural, whole, and organic foods. It will also create good jobs for people within the community and help create ties between local farmers and food producers and the people who eat their food. In order to make the coop a reality, the GRFCI needs more members - 1000 of them. The anniversary potluck picnic was also a celebration of a new members and a broadening circle of reach.

To be a part of the GRFCI’s next event, become a member of Grand Rapids Food Coop Initiative today and help us build the cooperative community that is in our beautiful city’s future. The GRFCI is growing, but it needs your help and your vision too in order to become a reality.