NEW LONDON

— For the past 15 years, New London has been without a grocery store. Residents have had to drive to neighboring communities, sometimes as far as 30 minutes away, just to get fresh groceries.

“Keeping people in New London and the surrounding community is really important. To do that we need to get access to a grocery store,” said Erik Hatlestad,

New London Food Cooperative

president. “Residents needing to drive to Spicer, Willmar or further away is certainly a barrier to accessible food, especially for senior citizens.”

After five years of planning, the New London food co-op is set to open this fall, with construction finishing up through the end of summer.

In order to provide the community with more direct access to essential foods, Hatlestad and other community members decided it was time to build a new place for people to shop locally for groceries.

“Erik Hatlestad kind of kicked off the venture of creating the food co-op because New London doesn’t have a grocery store. A grocery store at small scales like this is hard,” said Sarah Swedburg, co-op secretary.

When the group set out to create a new grocery store, they wanted it to be a part of the community. To do this, they decided to make it community-owned and run as a cooperative.

“The ownership and operation being reliant on one person or family can be unsustainable. By involving everyone, and involving people in owning and governing the store, it gives a chance for it to succeed. It gives people the chance to have a voice in the food system, economy and community,” Hatlestad said.

The co-op was first brought up in 2018. At a February meeting, the board decided to check the community’s interest with an open meeting. More than 100 people attended the meeting to express their support, concerns and to ask questions.

Now, the co-op has more than 180 members.

Since then, plans have progressed. The pandemic slowed the process, according to Hatlestad, but could not stop it. Another issue that the co-op faced was finding a location.

“We have been through a lot of iterations of the project. There have been a number of potential building sites, but we have had to rework how we plan to finance the store. It has been quite a process,” Hatlestad said.

When a traditional business seeks financing, the banks are able to have a specific person to provide finances to and collect from if the business fails. Co-ops do not have a singular owner, so start-up finances can be harder to come by.

“Banks want a singular person so that in the event that this falls through, ‘Where am I going to recollect my money?’ We don’t own a building — we are renting — so that gives less collateral for a bank to have,” Swedburg said. “We are really fortunate to have worked with some really key partners to get it all in place. That was our biggest hurdle to jump through.”

Construction has been led by co-op members.

“Things like plumbing and electrical we have had to hire out, but we have had a great group of volunteers,” Swedburg said. “The construction team has been helping with a lot of framing and drywall. A few of our board members are carpenters by day so it has been really nice to have their leadership and expertise.”

When the co-op opens, the plan is to focus on local foods. While they cannot sell cottage foods — foods that are homemade — the idea is to stay local. The store’s policy will be to buy from producers within a 100-mile radius for most of its stock.

“We are lucky to have a lot of really great farmers who are practicing sustainable agriculture in the area already and many more in the future,” Hatlestad said. “We can’t grow everything in the area; we will have several other suppliers we will be working with as well.”

The co-op board hopes that by giving New London residents direct access to fresh, local and sustainable food, they can help to not only keep people in town, but to welcome new people to New London.

For more information and updates, visit

newlondonfood.coop

.

Levi Jones is the West Central Tribune’s business reporter. After growing up in the Twin Cities, Jones attended Hamline University for journalism and media communications. After graduating in 2020, Jones has worked as a reporter covering anything from sports to politics.