Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Coop’s Paging System
July 7, 2026
By Susannah Jacob
Every member has a story about the Park Slope Food Coop’s intercom. “One time an elder came on the loudspeaker referencing a New York Times story about bioluminescent mushrooms and asked if we had any. Apparently, we did at one point,” said member Ari Fishman. Another time, Fishman remembers, a small child came on screaming “WHERE IS THE COCONUT FLOUR!” No one responded. Then they did again, and again, and again, Finally the parent got involved [and stopped the child].” Kate Redburn, a member since 2011, whose favorite shift is cheese, had “a multi-year run where every single time I shopped, someone asked for basil on the loudspeaker.”
The Coop’s public paging system provokes strong reactions: dread, relish, parody, commotion, devotion. Today, its primary purpose is to help members find whatever they are looking for—to ask if there are still fresh fava beans in stock, or if anybody has lost a single maroon leather glove.
Originally, the paging system had a different purpose—it was introduced in early 1990s, as the only way for staff members to communicate throughout the Coop. Jason Weiner, a Membership Coordinator since 2009, maintains the paging system today. “Before the receiving staff had radios, the only way to communicate was paging,” Weiner said. In its first incarnation, the paging was nonstop. “There was so much cacophony,” Weiner said. “People used it for everything, the move to radios [in 2004] helped with the level of noise.”
When Weiner joined the staff, he inherited the loudspeaker oversight charge from Debbie Parker, a longtime coordinator. Weiner soon learned of the system’s tendencies and challenges. The Coop is made of three buildings cobbled together, all divided into three horizontal spaces: basement, shop floor and the office upstairs. Wiring the system across three buildings “involved a huge amount of member labor,” Weiner said. The right volume and frequency for one part of the store was too high elsewhere. “People with hearing impairments had different needs, the system couldn’t be too high or too low, it would cause sensory overload. Dealing with all those nuances was a huge undertaking.”
A pro team of members including a Broadway sound engineer have historically helped calibrate and maintain the system. They upgraded to a new microphone system that measures overall sound levels and calibrates the speaker volume accordingly. When someone makes an announcement, the overhead music fades. “It’s all built into a sensitive system that’s both audible and not overly loud,” said Weiner. Sometimes regular Coop members decide to take engineering issues into their own hands. “People love to tinker with things,” said Weiner. “If someone gets annoyed with a speaker they will disconnect a speaker, which they shouldn’t be doing.” Weiner is right now working to assemble a new team of member experts to upgrade the system, which is now twenty years old. He hopes to expand the reach of the music to more remote corners of the Coop so that workers can hear it.
During the pandemic, when shoppers started forgetting their wallets, the speakers served a new purpose. Coop staffers started paging the shopping floor to ask if any members would cover the bill in exchange for a Venmo transfer. A new policy requires that the member needing a debit card page the shopping floor. It made more sense for staffers to keep out of it, said Weiner. “Members who didn’t receive compensation from the other member would try to pin it on the Coop.”
Member requests often go unheard on the busy shopping floor, yet Weiner can hear them clearly on the second floor, and regularly gets on the horn. “For staff it is really a tool—if I am managing a group of workers, I use it to send support and thank them—positive messages are important,” Weiner said.
From many members’ perspectives, the paging system is a source of entertainment—and dread. “My own relationship is that I am pretty much too scared to use it. I’d sooner go to a different store if I can’t find what I’m looking for—or else I will look around forever. My own voice on the speaker is pretty freaky, and if I do it wrong, it’s a public mistake,” said member Alexis Nowicki.
Speaking audibly is a common problem. Member Maddy Bruster only learned to use the paging system successfully with practice. “The coordinator will stand there with me and say ‘push, wait, pick-up, talk.’ And then I have to stand there and wait until I hear my voice ringing out.”
She says the intercom is “the spirit of the Coop.” Yet she will “search the store item by item rather than page out.”
In 2019, Nowicki started a Twitter account, @coop_intercom, where she documents the best pages she overheard at the Coop. “I was working a stocking shift and if I heard interesting conversations on the intercom I would write them down and put them on this Twitter account, which amassed twelve followers.” Nowicki uses it less, but misses those days. “I used to have fun with it. I think the intercom has gotten less funny.”
Still, Nowicki relishes the free entertainment. Someone will ask for oat milk, for example, and someone else will get on and respond with a recipe for homemade oat milk. “The Coop’s loudspeaker is a safe space. You can say whatever you want, you just may get made fun of.”
Susannah Jacob is a native Texan and PhD student of US history. She takes pride in her proficient operation of the slotted, plastic bag-taper machine in the Coop’s bulk department.