In 1977, the brand new storefront co-op was coming together, the result of volunteers building shelves, plugging in coolers, and setting out the food. Over the years, the migrating co-ops had gone through numerous incarnations. Finally, the Columbia Street Food Co-op emerged in its current form, built on an organizational foundation that would last into the future. We were both part of the launch of this community cornerstone.

Beth Hartmann recalls, “Greg Reinemer and Charlie Lutz had secured the location downtown on Columbia Street and created what is now the Olympia Food Co-op. They picked the name by spelling it out as the Fourteen Ounce Okie Doke (F.O.O.D.) Co-op. And chances are that at least one of them did this work for Evergreen credit, an individual contract.” 

Anna Schlecht was surprised to move here and find there was no food co-op, something she thought was a fixture of any hippie community anywhere. “As an outsider, I couldn’t find the food buying clubs because I hadn’t cracked the code to get into a collective household,” Anna said. “By 1977, I heard rumblings of drama over shifting from the buying clubs to the storefront, which for some people represented a loss of direct democracy over their food. Finally, the storefront opened, offering a great place to buy food as well as to find community.”

Beth first got involved as a volunteer. “The first day I volunteered at the Co-op was the day we laid the linoleum at the downtown store. There were several people there, and it was hard to know where expertise, if any, was coming from. I did my part, carefully placing tiles where the glue had been spread. Being new to Olympia in the spring of 1977, helping set up the Co-op sounded like a lot of fun and a way to get involved in something exciting in my new and happening community,” Beth said.

Since this was the first year of Co-op operation, there wasn’t a lot of history to go on. Process was something that was made up as folks went. No bosses and lots of opinions. In the early days, many meetings were held in the center of the store with very proletarian seating on five-gallon tubs or stacks of grain sacks. Flour dust always wafted through the air, along with the scent of fruit and vegetables edging past their prime. The buzz of the aging coolers provided a steady soundtrack. Notes were taken on the back of old fliers or food order sheets. Nobody wanted to waste any of our cooperatively held resources on bourgeois accommodations. But even if there had been the means, there was an underlying belief that nothing should be wasted—not paper or food. Moreover, we didn’t want to add to the cost of food, an essential commodity for all people regardless of means. And there were lots of poor hippies. 

Anna Gets Hired 
Shortly after Beth helped to lay the flooring, Anna was buying food at the Co-op when she saw a job notice flyer. “Coming from a collective restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin, I jumped at the chance to work in another phase of the community-based food chain. The flyer said to come to the hiring meeting but not much else. The night I was hired, two of us who were interested had to go through a grueling, hours-long meeting to decide who would become the second staffer. Those early hiring decisions were done by a vote, and anyone interested in Co-op business could just show up at the meeting to vote. Both of us gave our candidate pitches and answered questions, followed by a vote, which deadlocked each time. After the third or fourth round of this process, my gaggle of bar friends finally stumbled in through the front door and boisterously sat down. Once they showed up and a final vote was taken, I got voted in as the second staffer. My opponent was totally pissed off, telling me, ‘You didn’t win. You rigged the vote with your drunk friends!’ And she was right. That was my first of many Co-op dramas.”

Quickly, folks realized this was not a good way to run a co-op. In the years that followed, trial and error made for better decision making. This learning was also enhanced by a nationwide conversation held by cooperators via letters, publications, and conferences. But at that time, our concept of how people should work together for the common good was a rough work in progress.

Beth Gets Hired 
“I have only dim memories of how it happened but soon I was the third staffer,” Beth said. “After Charlie decided he’d had enough after the long months of getting this enterprise off the ground, I was lucky to be picked to take his place that summer. While he worked out his last weeks, I went on a hitchhiking trip all over the Southwest, my last great adventure before settling into my new job. I watched coolers for produce and dairy arrive. They must have been purchased at auction as we did later with an expanding store or to replace makeshift shelving. There were beautiful wooden bins for bulk grains and nuts, custom built by some loving member of the community.” 

For a short while, Beth and Anna were the dynamic duo running the store while Charlie started his exit plan. Once Charlie left, Jim C. was hired. Beth, Jim, and Anna became a troika. 

Largely because of Jim’s skills, experiences, and physical abilities, he gravitated toward being the brains on the staff. His cerebral palsy limited his ability to hoist 50-pound sacks and tubs, which left Beth and Anna to serve as the brawn on delivery days. 

Anna recalls the delivery days 
“Then came deliveries: 50-pound sacks of flours and rice from Cooperating Community Grains in Seattle; 55-gallon barrels of honey and oil; milk and yogurt and tofu from the Seattle Workers’ Brigade. It was fun to cut down 40-pound blocks of jack and cheddar cheese for sale. There were volunteers on hand to stock the first produce. I’ve learned over the years that every food co-op has the same aroma made up from all those natural foods. Our Co-op now had that scent and was suddenly ready to open.”

The sacks of grains had to be hauled up a ladder to a mezzanine storage loft, an odd space with only four-and-a-half-foot clearance. “Getting the bags up there was a schlep, but moving them into their individual piles was dangerous, heavy lifting in a crouch. Totally insane. All kinds of OSHA violations. Sometimes Beth and I would play catch with the 25-pound bags of legumes,” Anna remembered.

Not unlike other food stores, the Co-op was a family affair. Lots of people shopped with their kids. Although, unlike mainstream food stores, Co-op members had looser standards of behavior and many of the kids saw the store as a playground. A couple of kids in particular loved to dive headfirst into the tubs of beans and play catch with the walnuts. Sometimes their legs would be sticking out of our food displays and we had to pull them out by the ankles. 

Beth recalls the members 
“The Co-op was busy from the start. We worked our asses off taking deliveries, stocking food, working the antique cash register. I saw a lot of joy as people welcomed this new, busy storefront. We signed up new members, many of whom wanted to be more involved. Members could work in the store for a discount, so we kept track of that on cards in a file. I taught working members how to break down those blocks of cheese in just the right sizes while others stocked shelves and trimmed produce.”

Selling the food was one thing, handling the money and reporting turned out to be pretty important too. “Money came in and money went out. The problem was that none of us knew very much about recordkeeping, fiscal management, or reporting. We always wanted to build a relationship with the Senior Center across the street so we put up a card on their bulletin board asking for a bookkeeper. Before long we had an applicant named Sandy Sanderson. He thought we were wacky as could be, but he was glad for the work,” Beth said. 

“Being something of a math nerd, I was very interested in learning this part of the food business. So, I spent a lot of time with Sandy and Jim. Together we developed better ways to track revenues and expenses. Soon, we had an accurate picture of where we stood financially and could let members know in a clear way,” Beth said. “We had kept the store afloat with sales but had been living in blissful ignorance on reporting and taxes. And we came pretty close to getting shut down by the feds before we figured it all out.”

Beth continued, “We put out the word to our members. We were able to show that the Co-op could make it as a business if we were able to get past this obstacle. As has so often been the case in Olympia, community members stepped forward and extended generous loans. Taxes were paid. The little storefront downtown grew up and moved to the west side of town in 1979.”

Decision making was also a work in progress
“We weren’t alone in the quest to develop what we soon called consensus decision making,” Beth recalls. “Our learning was enhanced by others seeking to create best-practice ways to facilitate broad participation of our membership. This was the part of my Co-op work that I was most proud of—being part of a nationwide conversation held by cooperators via letters, publications and conferences. Consensus decision making requires astute facilitation and a commitment by those present to participate in good faith. It requires LOTS of discussion and compromise. By honing our skills at conducting meetings by consensus, we got good at it. I have no doubt that it produced better decisions and ones that had the buy-in of those present.”

Anna left the staff in 1978 
“Every day, I knew my work had a direct value for our community. The pay was pretty low and I often ended the month owing more on my food tab than I earned. But I did learn a wealth of knowledge about community building and how to come together around a basic survival need—food. That first year felt like a lifetime and I had other things to pursue, so I moved on,” Anna said.

“It was a powerful experience to work outside the corporate agribusiness model. Local control over the supply of healthy food was a cornerstone of the community we created in our Olympia community. And learning together how to run a cooperative food business for people, not for profit, was a profound experience. These experiences informed my later work for nearly 40 years in government housing and homeless services, helping our neighbors with another primal need—shelter.” 

Beth left the staff in 1985 
“I stayed on as a Co-op staffer for eight and a half years,” Beth remembered. “All this time, I learned and honed my fiscal management and communication skills. I learned on paper ledgers and adding machines, eventually transferring my knowledge to computers. By 1985, I was getting pretty burned out and I took a six-month leave of absence to join a delegation going to El Salvador. Once I returned, I began to look at other jobs and ended up at Evergreen in Student Accounts, although I eventually shifted to Academic Advising. I spent the rest of my working life in higher education student services. The many skills I learned and honed at the Co-op served me well for the remainder of my career.”

Post Script: Olywa Days of Change has rekindled a close friendship begun nearly 50 years ago, as Hartmann and Schlecht serve as the project coordinators on our book.