The Park Slope Food Coop Now Has An App

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Park Slope food-lovers and members of the neighborhood's popular coop now have an app they can use to get alerted about new food arrivals, track their work shifts and read the "Linewaiters' Gazette."

Jonah Burke, a 37-year-old programmer and coop member, built the app himself so he could learn a new programming language. He started working solo, then brought it to the coop to see what they thought.

"I pretty much just did it," he told Patch. "I did it for the most part on my own. And when it was quite far along, I wrote to them and said, 'Hey I have something you might find interesting.' And they were enthusiastic."

Burke said the two-week-old app has been downloaded about 100 times, a drop in the bucket compared to the coop's 17,000 members, who work shifts every four weeks so the market can provide cheap food.

The app helps members both with their shopping and to plan their work shifts.

It sends a notification every morning telling people what's new at the market. From there, you can see where the food came from and how much it costs.

Every scrap of produce in the store is loaded into a database, which you can search and filter by food, farm and other parameters such was whether it's organic, "which is interesting if you like food, if you want to eat what’s seasonal," Burke said.

Members also input their regular work shift, and the app reminds them of it on the home screen and sends notifications when the shift is coming up.

"That’s helpful, because a lot of people at the coop, including me, miss their shift or lose track of it," Burke said. "This just helps you stay on top of that."

The app also has a searchable archive of the "Linewaiters' Gazette," the coop's dry, in-house newspaper so you can read on the go, or look back to find old articles.

The app is free and only available on iOS right now. Click here to download it.

Images courtesy Jonah Burke