The BisMan Community Food Co-op is now insolvent.

The mission of the BisMan Community Food Co-op was to make local, organic food available to our community. That is what co-ops do, we fill a need in our communities. Since we opened our doors, nearly 4,000 members signed on to support the co-op’s mission. Our financial models and experience to-date continued to show the cooperative could not get to a sustainable level of sales as quickly as we needed it to be able to pay our lenders.

Please support the local businesses in our community. See the “Producers” tab at the top of this website for a list of those who sold at the co-op. We thank these local producers, growers, and makers for their goods and talents.

Q&A

Why close the co-op now?

The timing for this decision is due to a number of factors. For our vendors who grow the food we sell, they are starting to plan their year and we needed to make sure they had the information they needed for planning. We attempted to renegotiate the lease on our building, but were unsuccessful. With the winter storms closing our doors several days in December, on top of sales that were already lagging far below what is sustainable, we saw we could simply not keep our doors open another month. Then finally, our staff let us know they felt they were unable to continue working in such difficult circumstances. We are grateful for everything they have done for the cooperative, and we hope you as well will express gratitude in your interactions with them. We are fully in support of our staff and will serve as positive references as they continue to search for new employment.

What has been tried to keep the co-op open?

While many initiatives have been tried over our co-op’s more than six years in business, these are the latest, most significant items.

In 2020, we reduced prices in our store to try to better compete with the national stores. While this greatly impacted our margins, we knew this was the right thing to do for our co-op and our community.

In 2021, our board worked with Columinate, a consultant specializing in food cooperatives, to develop a plan for sustainability. Their team was clear with us that unless all pieces of the plan were accomplished, we would likely be facing closure within a year. Our staff at the store voiced their desire to do everything they could to save the store, and worked very hard reorganizing product to capture more sales, reallocating staff time to reduce payroll, and rebranding in an attempt to better market the one thing we had that no one else did — everyday access to fresh, local food.

In 2022, we submitted an application to join National Co+op Grocers, a business services cooperative for retail food co-ops. If our application had been accepted, we would have had the ability to purchase product at a lower price and been able to better compete with the national chains in our community, along with many other benefits. However, there were several parameters for sustainability that we would have needed to meet to be considered, and our cooperative was declined.

Is there anything cooperative members and shoppers can do now?

Please continue to support the local vendors you grew to love while shopping at our food co-op. You can still find all the vendors on our website under the “Producers” tab.

Are memberships refundable?

No. Memberships are non-transferable.

Are gift cards refundable?

No. That is clearly stated on our gift cards.

Where can we find the local vendors we would purchase at the store?

You can still find all the vendors on our website under the “Producers” tab. The website will remain live for an undetermined period of time.