Downtown Vancouver may soon lose one of its most valuable assets. For years, downtown Vancouver was a food desert with extremely limited access to groceries. As the inner city prospered, more individuals and families moved into the downtown area, and the need for local access for food grew.
The Vancouver Food Cooperative store opened just over a year ago on Main Street, just north of Evergreen Boulevard, with a wide range of grocery and household items. Open to the public, the Vancouver Food Cooperative store is member-owned and nonprofit, with emphasis on healthful, local products. But even not-for-profit businesses need cash flow to survive.
Those of us who worked so very hard to bring this needed grocery store to our community are broken-hearted to see the store so close to success, and yet not strong enough to sustain itself. Especially when all it would take to keep the doors open, and to expand its products — for it to succeed — would be for those who said they wanted the store to simply shop the store.
A purchase of $30 dollars a month by the member-owners alone would add the strength needed to keep the doors open. More would mean expansion and an opportunity to even better serve the needs of our community.
