The Park Slope Food Coop Is Getting Serious About Opening a Second Location

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — The world-famous Park Slope Food Coop, currently housed in two adjacent and adorable red-brick buildings at along Union Street, is getting serious about the prospect of opening a second location.

Just how serious? The schedule for the co-op's upcoming November general meeting includes the election of up to nine members "to serve on the Second Location Study Committee."

Co-op membership broke the 17,000 mark back in spring of this year, according to its official newspaper, the Linewaiters' Gazette.

"We are going to exceed our capacity," General Coordinator Ann Herpel warned at the April general meeting.

Herpel and co-op member Jonathan Farber reportedly proposed at that meeting that a committee be formed to study a possible expansion, including experts in the areas of commercial real estate, finance, and project management. “This is a multi-year project, so we’d like to get started,” Herpel said.

“We looked at buildings, and we looked at neighborhoods,” Farber said at the meeting, according to the Gazette. “The co-op is successful in a very competitive food market."

“What’s broken?" someone reportedly asked at the meeting. To which Farber responded: “Nothing’s broken. We do something really, really well. So why not expand on that?”

The creation of the Second Location Study Committee was approved in July. The committee will have as many as nine members, who "will work a minimum of 2.75 hours per month and have a regularly scheduled monthly meeting," according to the most recent edition of the Linewaiters' Gazette.

Committee members will be elected at the co-op's next general meeting, which starts at 7 p.m. on Nov. 29 at the St. Francis Xavier School (763 President St.).

“It’s a good thing for people to be in co-ops, and this would make it available to thousands of more people,” co-op coordinator Joe Holtz said of a possible expansion in an interview with the Brooklyn Paper in June. However, he declined to officially endorse the proposal.

Holtz also warned that unwise growth can render businesses insolvent.

“Look at the history of the businesses that go out of business because they expand,” he said.

Pictured at top: The Park Slope Food Coop. Image via Google Maps