Retiring Park Slope Food Co-op cofounder ponders a life in produce

The Park Slope Food Co-op is a Brooklyn grocery store owned by community members, each of whom must work shifts in exchange for being able to shop there. It's one of the oldest and largest food co-ops in the country.

Joe Holtz, one of the founders of Park Slope Food Co-op and its longtime general manager, is retiring after 50 years.

He joined WNYC’s "All Things Considered" to talk more about his time as part of the co-op. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.

Sean Carlson: You were only 22 years old when you helped to found the co-op with nine other people. Tell us more about how it was founded and why.

Joe Holtz: Well, there were many food co-ops that were founded in the late '60s, early '70s. It was known as the New Wave Food Co-op Movement because the old wave was in the 1930s. We wanted to be able to afford to eat better food. And as our consciousness was raised about the way food was produced in this country, and as we learned more about better food and eating lower on the food chain, we also were people who believed that it was important to have community successes in our country. That our country was very much focused on individual success and the group of people that founded the co-op really believed in people working together. They felt like cooperation means working together and that, um, we should try and have a community success.

Of your 50 years being at the co-op, what's one of your favorite memories?

One of my favorite memories: I was able to get a 24-hour taxi service and put a hand truck in the taxi and pick up two members and go to the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx in a big snowstorm and get there kind of when the market was just reopening and come back with a truckload of food. And then had food for that week's shopping. That was a great memory.

One of my best memories is going to the landlord and saying “Bob, we want to lease the building from you, but we don't just want to do a straight lease. We want to lease it with an option to buy. And we'll come up with the down payment by then.”

That really led to the stability for the co-op.

What's one of your most difficult memories of being at the co-op?

You know, we have this newsletter called the Lime Waiters Gazette. Whenever anybody would write something wrong in the Gazette, I would write in the next issue, I would respond. And this person who was leaving the co-op wrote a letter that I felt really hurt by.

And I say, “Okay, maybe I shouldn't have responded to every little thing that was wrong.” So that was a difficult time. But really, when I think about it, if I had to do it over again, the fact that we have a press that's basically a free press. I think that's a really important part of the co-op. I think the free press is an important part of any democracy.

You talk about the co-op having longtime members and folks who have worked there for like decades. Why do you think people continue to share their work for the co-op decade after decade?

Human beings, I think are social, you know, and I think the co-op tapped into that aspect of people — that people like working together. I think that the co-op tapped into that in a very effective, organized way. And so people see the fruits of their labor. They see the wonderful food. They see that it's at a better price. Why is it a better price? Because the biggest expense of running a grocery store is paid labor.

I know that there are many families that were able to eat much better. We're able to afford to eat much better because of the co-op, and that makes me feel good. It makes those families feel good.

So why are you retiring now?

Each year I stayed, it was because it was interesting and challenging, and I kept saying, well, this is still a job that fits me really well, and I really like it, and I love the co-op, but the co-op became 50 in 2023 and I don't think it's responsible planning for me to someday come to work on a Monday, come to work on a Tuesday, and then Wednesday not come to work maybe ever again, and so I don't think that's responsible planning.

But at the end of that, you have all of this institutional knowledge. You're irreplaceable to a certain degree.

I'm going to make sure that everybody on the staff has my email address, but I'm going to try and make it so that people can find me and that people can ask me things. So today, when our annual fire extinguisher inspection happened, and I've been handling that for decades, so I made sure someone else handled it today. And that person did a great job, and that person signed up for next year to do it. Because I won't be there next October. But also, I talk about the big picture all the time. And so I think the big picture is in good hands.

What do you hope for the co-op's future?

I think our co-op should help other people do our model, or our co-op should start opening up more locations. Because, you see, we don't have a waiting list, but we have kind of a difficulty, because we have more people that want to join and still make the place function properly. I know the reason I'm here is because I'm retiring, and I think there are some people wondering, well, what's going to happen to the co-op?

I want to let people know that we have a great team and that they're going to be able to manage the future. And a lot of it is because of the style in which we did top management, which was sharing and collectively addressing things so that the wisdom is not just in one or two people.