Co-op update

The Corma blog picks up a piece from Crain's New York Business I'd missed, on the Flatbush Food Co-op's planned move.

Here are the newsier bits:

The Flatbush co-op, run by Barry Smith, is scrambling to expand its offerings and to add and improve services. Mr. Smith was a pioneer in the area when he opened the store in his basement in 1976, and he doesn't want to be muscled out.

This past summer, the co-op took its biggest step ever: It signed a lease for a new site, just across Cortelyou Road, that had been occupied by an Associated Supermarket. The co-op will move into that location, which has three times as much space, by the end of the year.

``Space has been our biggest problem,'' says Mr. Smith.

The co-op is so cramped that shopping is hard, and making money is even harder. Store margins have been pinched, since it costs more to stock goods in small quantities. And there's little room to display products prominently, much less to add a potentially lucrative deli section.

Caught unprepared

"Prepared foods have been a growth sector for a number of years, and the Flatbush co-op hasn't been able to take advantage of those opportunities,'' Mr. Braverman says.

That will change with the advent of the new store. Organic produce, the store's top category, will get plenty of prime space, and Mr. Smith intends to add more prepared foods and bulk items.

The co-op has pulled off one surprising coup: recruiting an expert from a Trader Joe's on Long Island to be its produce manager. Plans are afoot to hire 10 more employees.