Keweenaw Co-op General Manager Curt Webb picks a name out of a jack-o’-lantern held by Sales and Operations Manager Denise Hansen for a prize drawing at the co-op 50th anniversary celebration Saturday.

HANCOCK — On Oct. 22, 1973, 29 households attended a meeting at Funkey’s Karma Kafe in Houghton to decide on whether to start a local food co-op.

Fifty years later, the Keweenaw Co-op celebrated 50 years of operation Saturday with four hours of food, wine, coloring and camaraderie.

Festivities in the upstairs community room included wine samples, a chili cook-off, and the opportunity to paint mini-pumpkins.

“Everybody in our community loves a party, and everybody’s been so supportive or we wouldn’t be here today,” said Denise Hansen, sales and operations manager of the co-op. “We want to thank not only our owners, which are a huge part of what we do, but the whole community, because really our goal is to serve, to help with food access and give back with other activities.”

The co-op collects donations for local community food banks. It’s also one of two stores in the Upper Peninsula that works with the Double UP Food Bucks access program. Anyone who buys produce with a BRIDGE card gets coupons matching that dollar amount, up to $20.

“Everybody needs more fresh fruits and vegetables,” Hansen said.

Membership has grown to around 2,200, said General Manager Curt Webb. It’s not just a store, but a community hub, he said.

“As people come through the doors and shop, we get to see them year after year and build those relationships, and it’s great that folks that have been part of the co-op for 50 years are still coming in,” he said.

The gathering had members of the co-op dating back to its inception as a food-buying club in 1973. William O’Donnell helped organize the group.

“You could not buy brown rice in any store in this town, much less a weird thing like buckwheat groats — much less in bulk,” he said. “So that was a lot of the reason the co-op started.”

It began in the back of Funkey’s, operating out of sites before it got big enough for a storefront– on the same block of the current site in the Jim’s Pizza location.

“From the late 1800s all the way through until the early 1960s, you would go into any town of any size — like Hancock, like Calumet, like Mass City, like Ontonagon — and there would be a co-op grocery store there,” he said.

The Keweenaw Co-op is part of the third wave of the co-op movement that arose in the ’60s and ’70s, he said. O’Donnell said the co-op’s success is partially due to the long-standing cultural memory of co-ops locally. The Copper Country was actually the birthplace of that first wave, he said. Finnish immigrants brought the concept from Europe and used it to manage their business separate from the mines and the existing grocery stores in town.

For its first 20 years, Keweenaw Co-op was bigger than any other co-op in a city of Hancock’s size, O’Donnell said.

“Anytime I went to national meetings, people were stunned at what we were doing,” he said. “And it’s just because of the area.”

At the beginning, the buying club would put out a sheet each month listing rolled oats and other foods, which people would pre-order. O’Donnell would tabulate it. He eventually upgraded to a hand calculator, at $15, a “stunning purchase” at the time, he said.

In those early days, it operated as a volunteer organization. Members had to work for a couple of hours per month, unloading boxes or mixing the 55-gallon drums of peanut butter.

Chip Ransom began working at the co-op in 1975, running it with O’Donnell for many years. O’Donnell handled the finances and some organization, while Ransom oversaw the store operations.

As the store grew, the membership had long debates. The purchase of the current site, the former Lazzeri’s Market, was one. Mark-ups were another; at the beginning, the store only had one on one product.

Another was the introduction of some processed foods. O’Donnell remembered a corn chip company from South Dakota, whose products the co-op added after the corn farmer came to the general membership meeting to ask the members to stock them.

“When it was just simple herbs and jars and cheese and bulk food in bins, that was one thing,” Ransom said. “When it started getting beyond that, there were some pretty heavy-duty meetings. It was very long, because we would try to decide everything by consensus. We were very idealistic.”

The store straddled the difference between a food-oriented co-op and a consumer-focused one, O’Donnelly said. As it moved into the current location, it joined the Grocers Association, which also provides goods to most of the shops in the region. That also meant the occasional concession to consumers, such as stocking Cheerios.

“We were picking what we considered the best in the grocery, and our customers agreed,” Ransom said. “We weren’t bringing in Frosted Flakes and every other sugar-sweetened cereal in the world.”

O’Donnell sees the current incarnation of the co-op as part of the fourth wave — efficiently-run, well-capitalized organizations with good staffs that provide a hub for the community.

“That community can be the farmers that are self-sustaining, bringing their products in, or it can be people that care about a certain thing, or care about the environment,” he said. “The more you can do that, the better it is … So I’m glad that it’s transitioning to a bigger store and will have a bigger impact.”

This will be the co-op’s last anniversary at its current site. Work is ongoing at a new, significantly larger building on Quincy Street at the former Keweenaw Buick location. Webb gave the crowd a progress report.

Supply-chain issues pushed back the opening of the store, which had been anticipated for this year. It’s now expected to happen in early 2024.

“We’re still waiting on a few unresolved materials, answers to come back to us before we know exactly what that day will be,” he said. “We’re working hard and things are coming along. It’s exciting to be starting to open up the building and getting ready to start the construction on the addition.”

Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette
Ruth Gill hands a chili sample to Stephanie Bliss of Hancock, one of the many people who cast votes during the chili contest as part of Keweenaw Co-op’s 50th anniversary celebration Saturday.

The celebration also included some members who happened upon it while doing their regular shopping. Stephanie Bliss of Hancock started coming to the co-op about 17 years ago, and became a member a year and a half later.

“I love the friendly staff, of course,” she said. “I love all the different options for healthy foods, and I like that sometimes we have new options. I just enjoy being here.”