The death and Renaissance of Milwaukee Food Co-ops

In September of 2025, Riverwest lost its eponymous food co-op on the corner of Clarke and Fratney. Covid had been the nail in the coffin to the Riverwest Co-op’s demise, yet its end could have been foreseen for several years. 

“Out of 3000+ members,” said John Van Akkeren, the interim president at the closing of the Riverwest Co-op, “there were maybe 15 people there. Even at the terminal meeting to decide to dissolve the co-op, there were maybe 50 people.”  

While Outpost, one of the country’s largest food co-ops, is thriving, seeing their highest active member owner numbers since they opened back in 1970. They are building out a 9,000 square foot industrial kitchen with 24,000 active member owners and over 350 employees. 

The dichotomy of the two stories poses an interesting look at the state of food co-ops in Milwaukee. In the increasingly consolidated grocery marketplace, single brick and mortar food co-ops are left unsupported and belly up. That consolidation is ripping the veil off Big Agriculture’s sinister scheme, waking people up to the detriment of industrial agriculture on our land and communities, fostering a desire for better, more nutritious, more wholesome Earth-first options to feed families.

This is triggering a renaissance of the founding ethos behind co-ops that emerged out of the era when surplus war chemicals were still being sprayed without inhibition and Rachel Carson was sounding the alarm bells. Riverwest Co-op and Outpost reveal the various factors at play in our city that are seeing both a death and renaissance to this model of grocery. 

How did we get here?

After World War II, the economy shifted to prioritizing bigger and faster with machines and chemicals were turned into agricultural infrastructure and inputs, advancing the narrative that petrochemicals sprayed on our food and oil-based machinery will enhance production to feed the ever-increasing world population. Suburbia was spreading, families prioritized cheap and expedient. But the hippies rising out of this post-war era quickly grew privy to this disguise.  

The desire for wholesome, unsprayed, organic food grew as the ‘70s set in. Outpost opened its first shop in 1970 during the height of the Vietnam War unrest. First called Kane Street Co-op, one of its cofounders, Michael Stevens, later started Beans & Barley. 

“There was a push to consolidate mom and pop grocery stores into large conglomerate type supermarkets,” says Margaret Mittelstadt, Outpost’s director of community relations. Opening Outpost “was a response to agricultural legislation that was proposing farmers to switch from growing food crops to growing commodity crops that lead to the big push of the processed food we see in our grocery stores today.” 

Outpost’s founders and others in their thought camp worried “that there would be a glut of unhealthy food and they wanted to make sure that there was something that they could feed their families that was wholesome and not laced with chemicals,” Mittelstadt continues.  

So people pooled their resources to start a buyers’ co-op, to go in together on buying necessities in bulk. “That is typically how co-ops form: there is an un-met need in the community. It can be for grocery stores, or it could be for childcare, it could be for housing, it could be a bank,” Mittelstadt explains. “Oftentimes we find that people are looking for community when there is unrest. People are rising to that desire for wholesome healthy food while finding connection and community at a co-op.” 

The Riverwest Co-op started back in 2001, under similar pretexts, as a buyer’s club by the Riverwest Workers Co-op. The operation eventually moved into the old Schlitz tied house on the corner of Clarke and Fratney that hosted the co-op for its entire 24-year tenure. “The Co-op started as a work of love, a work of rebellion,” says Shelly McClone, a RW Co-op co-founder who now owns Lion’s Tooth Bookstore in Bayview. 

“It was formed as an intentional community to give people real ownership and be a part of the food system,” Van Akkeren says. “Whilst we couldn’t ignore the capitalist mode of business, we tried to subvert itas much as possible.”  

“We wanted to be in control of not just where our food was coming from and what products we are carrying, but also how the business is ran,” adds Wendy Mesich, an original volunteer and one of two first paid staff members at the RW Co-op. “We really wanted the members and volunteers to have direct say in the operation.” 

What are food co-ops anyway? 

Food co-ops and mainstream groceries differ mainly in their structure of ownership and stakeholders in the company. Instead of higher up pulling strings from the top down for profit, co-ops are owned by those who shop the aisles. Member owners are then given special privileges: they can run for board seats, vote in board meetings, get special discounts and decide how profits are spent within the company. 

According to Mesich, the Riverwest Co-op founders were also interested in learning “how to work in different structures. How do we work cooperatively and how does that translate to building stronger communities? What kind of skillsets and processes need to be in place in an organization that is run by the people for the people? It was about what the community could build together and have together.” That sentiment is shared nationwide.

According to the National Co-op Grocers, a co-op of other co-ops whose members leverage prices for consumers, help connect local vendors and farmers to their local co-ops and give guidance on operations, “Co-ops are about local democratic ownership, community food security and solidarity with workers across the supply chain” by prioritizing financial security for workers with livable wages, healthcare benefits and retirement savings.

The Riverwest Co-op expanded to include an attached vegan/vegetarian cafe in 2004. Lifetime memberships to the co-op were a meager $120, or $20 a year for six years. The co-op ran exclusively off volunteer labor for the first two years, and then had a pool of 100 rotating volunteers, with Wendy Mesich and Shelly McClone becoming the first two paid employees on a staff that remained small. At their height, they had 6,500 registered members. 

“Why were people members? Because they wanted the 5% discount, and if you volunteered, that 5% became 15%. Then when you’re in there for El Rey day or produce day, that becomes 25%. Coupons, deals, whatever you can find at Pick N’ Save, they are not giving you a 25% cut on prices,” Van Akkeren says.  

Local Needs

Profits from sales remain within the co-op to be decided on and distributed democratically. “Reinvesting in the co-op, our owners respond to the needs of the community. It’s not about making money to maximize profits for shareholders,” Mittelstadt adds. “The typical corporate business becomes driven by the shareholders and not the needs of the community. Owners typically live in the area, they own their co-op, so when profits go back into the co-op, it supports that business that they support in turn. It becomes a mechanism to keep profits local, within the company to make the company better and making it back to the owners that shop here … those local vendors can buy other things from local vendors, and it continues to circulate locally. It creates jobs, better schools…”

Because co-ops are smaller, they can prioritize local vendors by bringing in more niche or locally produced products that creates a cycle of community support. “Because we are smaller, we are more nimble, we can source really unique products that aren’t anywhere else,” Mittelstadt says. “People want to support something that is authentic, it feels real to people. That authenticity often drives people to come to the co-op.” 

“Our product is best understood by shoppers who understand and care about the ingredients and handling in their food. It’s so helpful to us to be partnered with co-ops because they attract our ideal customer base,” says Sabrina Pitts of Spring Green’s tortilla-makers, Tortilleria Zepeda. “Co-ops helped us learn what was required for labeling and packaging and growing a food brand. “[The barrier to being involved with co-ops] for us has been distribution, until we recently got in with Co-op Partner’s Warehouse Distribution, which has been so wonderful,” she adds.  

Food Sovereignty

National Co-op Grocers defines food sovereignty “as the right of individuals and communities to define and control their food system.” Food co-ops support food sovereignty in local communities. According to NCG, the average food co-op sources from on average 169 local farms and producers, while other grocery retailers of a similar size source locally from about 41 local farms.    

“These cooperatively directed food retail businesses are much more than places to shop,” says Katherine Price from Fizzeology, a small batch seasonal ferment company out of Viroqua. “Real humans work together, shop alongside each other, and collectively shape the marketplace with their buying power. It is an admirable thing to be a part of.”

“With larger stores, you lose that originality with the product fixture because they are not typically going to be buying from smaller vendors or smaller farmers,” Mittelstadt said, “they are going to be buying in large quantities to support their needs. They tend to be so large that managing a small account is not smart.”

“Early on in our business co-ops were a way for us to start wholesale channels. Being new to the arena and working with the co-ops allowed us space to grow and learn about the process in a supportive atmosphere,” said representatives from My Soul Brew, a local kombucha company. “We were able to create relationships with our buyers and ask questions that bigger retailers don’t have time to answer.”

Big Ag Steps In

Co-ops prioritize local or at least regional products on their shelves, both in produce and shelf stable items. That produce specifically is much more nutrient dense than their conventional counterparts, for several reasons. 

“You’re buying the food when it’s at peak ripeness instead of buying something that came from a truck,” Mittelstadt said, and picked weeks before it’s fully ripe and developed all its nutrients. Co-ops prioritize organic, not relying on petro-chemical inputs like fertilizers and -cides that snuff the development of the fullest potential nutrient density. But because they are small, co-ops are also not afforded the same discounts and prices as large volume box retail grocery stores, forcing them to charge prices that are often out of reach for the average consumer.

One thing that supported the growth of natural food co-ops in the past was that its products were not widely available,.” Van Akkeren says, “Big Ag has now since realized the money to be made by offering a full line of vegan products and organic products.”

Small is Expensive

“One of the things that we were criticized for long before I got involved was that we were very white bread, a lot of People of Color expressed not feeling a great deal of welcome when shopping or trying to get involved,” Van Akkeren said. “I would say that is an issue with co-ops in general, they tend to be whiter, more affluent, just by nature of the product, they are expensive.”

The consolidation of the grocery market to favor large contracts and volume sales has created an environment where the small guys don’t stand a fighting chance. Smaller, organic- and local-centric distributors got bought out by the top dogs like UNFI, what started as a small organic distributor and has turned into one of the largest in the country, some 15 years ago. Now operating at such volume, those distributors offer the big box retailers’ prices that they do not offer the smaller co-ops. 

“UNFI doesn’t even send reps to such small guys, and they weren’t giving us discounts because of the [limited] buying power we had,” Mesich said. Or the lack thereof, really. “We were such small potatoes. I would see similar products at Whole Foods or Pick N’ Save or Outpost and see them on the shelves at a price we couldn’t even buy them for. We’re at the bottom of the barrel—our closing did not hurt them. They didn’t even notice. It’s all about the economy of scale.”  

“A barrier that comes up with specific co-ops is the same barrier that exists getting into other retailers as well. Distribution and the logistics of how the product is getting to the brick and mortar,” Katherine Price of Fizzeology said. “The difficulties that exist within the distribution world that tip the scales in favor of bigger brands often with an emphasis of ultra-processed foods.”

That economy of scale has done the small grocers and farmers dirty now for decades. “When you’re small, it’s hard to remain competitive,” Mittelstadt said. “It’s really difficult to compete in price when you’re up against deep discounters that deliver food right to your door.” 

“Our agriculture system since the Nixon era, none of it functions without massive subsidies—how most of the evil things in our society work. While masquerading as functioning perfectly fine,” Van Akkeren said. “I think the consolidation in the grocery system very much mirrors in Wisconsin the combined feeding operations and the failing family farms—all that land will get consolidated into massive factory farms.” 

“The largest seller of organic products in the United States right now is Walmart purely because of volume. Which has kicked out so many small stores,” Mesich said. “But at the same time, in so many small towns, Walmarts are the only grocery store. They get tons of tax breaks for billionaires of this huge company.” 

What went wrong at the Riverwest Co-op? 

Highly profitable years in 2015 and 2016 provided a small financial safety net for RW Co-op, but in 2017 they started seeing declines in sales, in correlation to other retail box stores starting to carry vegan and vegetarian options. Although those options are not local in the slightest, they have a brand reliability and loyalty capitalism preys on that the average American has become immune to. 

“There was not a lot of institutional knowledge being passed down,” Van Akkeren and others mention. “There needs to be continuity for the culture and specifics to be passed down from person to person.”

Then, the pandemic hit. 

“Covid really brought into focus how food insecure we really are,” Van Akkeren says. And how disconnected we became. “We are much more online, and when people are particularly busy or not super involved in their food perhaps, just eating to subsist, they are more likely to subscribe for their groceries or get them delivered,” Van Akkeren continues. 

Prices have stayed skyrocketed, labor costs have increased with supply chain issues persisting, while quality has not improved, rather, declined, in a phenomenon known as the enshitification of, in this case, the quality of American food.

Rents in Riverwest have skyrocketed. Wages have stayed the same while prices of basic necessities have risen off the charts, leaving no one with spare leisure time to volunteer anymore. “Making ends meet is tougher and tougher and people don’t have time to volunteer, which would have been the only real way for us to save the place,” Van Akkeren says.

“I was able to live on the small salary at the co-op back then, paying $700 in rent for a 3-bedroom apartment,” McClone said. “That same apartment is now probably $1,500 in Riverwest.” 

“The fact that there was cheap rent and you could move here and work and still have the time and energy to give to different community organizations, whether it was the co-op or the artists association or the radio station,” Mesich said. “But it has changed over time. Along with everything getting more expensive as far as running the business.” 

“As inflation has risen, people are more desperate really,” Van Akkeren adds. “They can’t forgo lower prices versus cultural values that they would like to espouse.” 

People cannot volunteer their time anymore when they are being pinched in every direction. People do not have the bandwidth to be giving away free labor, which is fundamental to a community-based operation like the co-op. The social circumstances have forced a hand at deviating from the original, founding ethos of co-ops. “It taught me that an intentional community that lost its intention cannot really persist,” Van Akkeren said.  

“We found that a lot of people wanted to have an opinion but didn’t want to put in any work behind it besides say that they shop there all the time,” Van Akkeren continues. “Well, shopping isn’t enough. The intentionality behind this community involves more than that, and if you’re not going to be on board, it can’t persist.” 

“A co-op is only as strong as the people who show up,” Mesich says. “We struggled for years to have a full board. It took years to fill committee slots which put more weight on staff without being able to raise wages.”

Van Akkeren adds that co-ops self-governance “is not necessarily the most functional” system. “Things take longer,” Mesich said. “It takes longer to pivot when trying to get 8-20 people to agree on a major decision.” 

“There was no general manager, so everything was consensus based,” McClone said, “which is amazing when it works, but when there is opposition all the time, it becomes very difficult.” 

Neighborhood Groceries

“You know what you don’t get at Pick N’ Save?” McClone says, “Is the ‘Hey Shelly, how are you doing today, how are the kids?’ You don’t get those personal interactions, you don’t know the people. You knew you could go to the co-op and run into somebody you know and have a conversation with community. That’s what makes me love Milwaukee, is the small ma-and-pop stores, the small businesses that make this place special to me.” 

Industry trends a snuffing a place of its rich cultural history. “There is such a dignity of walking into your neighborhood grocery store to get the food that you need, that you can pay for and leave … It is an emotional experience and when that place where you felt safe and you can get your needs met is no longer there, it pulls the rug out from underneath you,” Mittelstadt says. 

“Not having to get into a car to get your groceries,” Mesich adds, “to be able to grab those last-minute things. I live within spitting distance of the co-op and I have these moments where I need garlic and I’m like ‘oh, I can’t run down the street anymore.’” 

“It has been demoralizing and devastating,” says Oli Smith, a Riverwest local. “Basically, the only non-alcohol related meeting place in the neighborhood is now the Daily Bird. I miss running into friends, strangers and friendly volunteers. I can’t overemphasize the hole it has left in our neighborhood’s cultural fabric.” 

The Riverwest Co-op’s last day of service was September 21, 2025, after a long valiant effort to keep their doors open despite the factors working against them. 

What to do? 

We have the infrastructure to make some simple changes that could dramatically alter the trajectory of our food system and ultimately public health in our country. “The state could assist farmers in finding markets in our communities,” Van Akkeren proposes. “I think there needs to be much more of a path to bring local food into communities.”  

“For a small business to survive in this economy under capitalism, there has to be constant growth,” Mesich said. “Very few companies maintain that level. Anything that can help along the whole cycle of food from seed and fertilizer and farmers to the end consumer needs to be focused more on people and nutrition. But it’s on the bottom line and ballot.”

Subsidizing the small guys and not the corporate extractors could begin defunding toxic food that is killing children at extraordinary rates. But with corporate lobbyists for Big Ag and Big Sugar in the pockets of lawmakers, the small guys got nothing. “The subsidies are there,” Van Akkeren says. “They just need to be directed to the right people.”

“What our government and what our tax dollars support is backwards,” Mesich said. “There needs to be a huge shift in how we take care of the people that live in this country. I think supporting small farmers, making it easier for distribution, making it easier to get the food into the neighborhoods that it needs to be in, is a huge part of it.” 

Instead of subsidizing commodity cash crops that are laced in chemicals and using machinery tearing up the land, we could be subsidizing local organic farmers to feed the people of the area. Shifting the funding from subsidizing an economy of scale to funding grocers vending local farmers and products. Bettering our food systems for the health of our community and not for the profits of corporate giants. 

“We really need to be knowing our neighbors. Who might need their lawn mowed, or might need a lasagna dropped off?” Mesich said. “More people will stand up for the things that are right if they know their neighbors have their back. And capitalism has done everything it can to make sure that we don’t trust our neighbors.”

A Viable Option

Outpost’s prices are consistently higher than, for example, Kroger, but with often less than one dollar’s difference. So when considering the hand labor, the non-chemical nature of the products, the regional farmer being supported, the land that is being restored and water that is not being poisoned, isn’t it worth it?

“We’re not going to be everything to everyone. We are going to work with the folks that will resonate with the values that they can feel good about when they come into an Outpost,” Mittelstadt said. “That is what you work on when you can’t always do something about the price.” 

Using discounts as well as SNAP/EBT and WIC benefits can make a co-op just as viable as any grocery option. 

According to the National Co-op Grocers, 93% of their 165-member food co-ops participate in SNAP, with one out of every two of those offering SNAP Double Dollars for Produce. Margaret Mittelstadt with Outpost helped start the FoodShare Program, Produce to the People, in partnership with the Hunger Task Force using USDA funding to get those receiving government assistance an additional 50% discounton their produce. Grant money was then used to reimburse Outpost the difference. A win-win-win. People could get produce for much cheaper, support their local co-op thus local farmers and get nutrient dense healthy food for a fraction of the price while Outpost receives support in supporting the community.

However, that funding ended in 2024 when the Hunger Task Force was denied the grant. During its nearly year and a half long run at all four Outpost locations, Produce to the People touched 33,000 people who saved more than $435,000 on fresh produce, according to Mittelstadt. 

“It was a highly successful program and folks loved it and they could come in and buy local and organic produce and they could get the discount on sale items too,” Mittelstadt said. “I look forward to the opportunity to explore how we could bring something like that back in the near future because it was very popular and I love the idea of bringing people into the store to experience Outpost [who otherwise would not be able to] so they can buy healthy and delicious produce items.”

Where to support local food

In these tumultuous times, coming together is more important than ever.

The Milwaukee area still has plenty of places In the Milwaukee area are places that are still putting in the work against all odds to bring access to local food in our communities. 

• Kinship Community Food Center: Formerly the Riverwest Food Pantry, engaging people to address hunger, isolation and poverty in Milwaukee
• Victory Garden Initiative Victory Garden Initiative: Urban organic farm serving Harambee and the greater Milwaukee area have access to fresh, nutritious food  
• Alice’s Garden:Two-acre urban farm focused on growing community, health and fresh herbs
• Fondy Food Market 
• Farmers Market To Go: Grocery story by and for Wisconsin growers and producers in Brookfield, WI
• Hunger Task Force 
• Tricklebee Cafe: A pay what you can community cafe that offers healthy meals, food  service training and spiritual nourishment. 
• Co-op Partners Warehouse Distribution: Food hub // distributor for organic foods in the Midwest
• Miltown Eats: Local meal kits delivery service. Local ingredients, sustainable packaging, allergy subs, free delivery 
• Cooperation MKE: Lib-soc counter-power organization; rank & file unions, worker-owned cooperatives, community assemblies, mutual aid in so-called Milwaukee
• Sherman Phoenix Marketplace
• Food Right Inc.: Empowering kids and families to choose foods that sustain life-long health through plant based culinary nutrition programs like Youth Chef Academy 

Other food co-ops around Milwaukee and Wisconsin to support: 

• Basics Cooperative Natural Foods, Janesville, WI 
• Chequamegon Food Co-op, Ashland, WI
• Menomonie Market Food Co-op, Menomonie and Eau Claire, WI 
• People’s Food Co-op, La Cross, WI
• Viroqua Food Co-op, Viroqua, WI 
• Oshkosh Food Co-op, Oshkosh, WI
• Whole Earth Market, River Falls, WI
• Willy Street Co-op, Madison, WI 
• Hudson Grocery Co-op, Hudson, WI
• Wisconsin Food Hub Co-op