I have a question that I haven’t seen addressed in any Coop communications, that I was hoping you could cover in an upcoming edition. Has the Coop considered online/email ordering with curbside pickup and payment? Continue Reading →
We have heard these suggestions from many members, and in response, I’m taking this opportunity to share what the General Coordinators have learned after significant research and talking to other coops about their experiences. Continue Reading →
Joe Hennessy, a longtime Coop member and beloved squad leader, died April 9 of complications related to the coronavirus. He was 82. Joe came to the United States from Ireland in 1957. After serving in the Army (with Elvis Presley!) he settled in Queens where he managed a taxi fleet and served in a variety of civic capacities, most notably, Chairman of Queens Community Board 6 and President of the Board of Directors of the Forest Hills MHA Housing Development Fund Corporation. Joe was particularly sensitive to the plight of immigrants, the taxi industry being one of the areas where many newcomers first seek employment. “He would always have their back,” Frank Gulluscio, District Manager of CB 6 said. Continue Reading →
After pandemic precautions put in place this spring at the Coop, sales fell through the floor, with transactions dropping 79 percent and overall dollars spent down 37 percent for the week ending April 26. A typical week would have shown 17,000 transactions and perhaps $1.1 million total purchases—but only 3,436 took place, albeit at about triple the dollar-value per transaction.
I’ve been deeply impressed, and eternally grateful, for the hard work, dedication, and creative thinking that have gone into the Coop’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. We all owe the Coop leadership an enormous debt of gratitude.
Home cooking is having a moment. Although many Gazette readers and PSFC members are of course already prolific home chefs, going by posts on the internet, a lot people are taking this time to really spread their culinary wings. We are all baking those sourdough loaves, fermenting that kimchi, and making pasta from scratch. (Well, maybe not all.) People are also being creative with items that have been sitting in their pantry unused.
Almost everybody, whether they’re feeling bored and restless, overworked and overwhelmed, or all of the above, is now spending more time at home. With the cinemas closed for the foreseeable future, it’s a good time to catch up on movies you’ve been planning to watch or revisit old favorites.
DEAR FELLOW MEMBERS, Welcome to the second digital Gazette. Going digital has long been of interest to the Editorial Team, and the changes wrought by Covid-19 led to a quick creation and launch. We saw an urgency to maintain the community ties that the Gazette endeavors to achieve, and erred on the side of expediency rather […]
Just got home from shopping the 3rd time since the COVID crisis took our Coop and changed it—hopefully not irrevocably. I wanted to express my deep thanks to the entire staff of the Coop. Today my heart really went out to you and what all of you are doing so that we members can continue some aspect of […]
Has the Coop considered taking shopping orders to be able to expedite more transactions? It could work essentially like the other e-commerce based companies doing this. Perhaps, with some exceptions: No produce (where people tend to be most picky about their food choices). All other products okay. Must give the Coop three days (or more) […]
GREETINGS, Thank you so much for the thoughtfulness that went into planning a time for seniors to shop. I hope that many were able to get the message about Thursday 4/9/20, I didn’t see it until the same day. After spending three hours on line and one-and-one-half hours inside I had no intentions of coming back this Thursday. […]
TO THE COOP, Nancy and I fled Park Slope to Vermont since I am less than a year from 80 years old. Our sons insisted that we leave. And we are so fortunate to have support in Brooklyn, our tenant who has kept track of our mail-texting us photos of what is important and sending […]
Join us for the NYC premiere of a new, 30-minute, documentary, The Best of Both Worlds: The Promise of Cohousing, to be shared via Zoom to Park Slope Food Coop members on Saturday morning, May 30, at 11 a.m. Representatives from two cohousing communities forming in Massachusetts and Connecticut will be on hand to answer your questions.
Rosewater Restaurant | Photo from John Tucker’s collection
By John Tucker
Obviously, as sad as it was for me to close RW after 19+ years in business, the timing has turned out to be fortuitous, to put it mildly. I miss my staff, and the warm buzz of our little kitchen, and especially the produce. RW was ever and always fixated on seasonality, and with spring coming I’m feeling very wistful about not seeing the ramp guy we worked with for many years, who would show up in early spring for about a month or a little more with ramps and fiddlehead ferns he’d hand harvested near the Delaware river where NY meets PA. The corn meal in the polenta dish was grown by a Hudson Valley farmer I worked with for 25 years, first at Savoy in SoHo, then at RW, and I miss that relationship, too. Now I’ll have to celebrate the seasons with shopping trips to the coop and the greenmarket, which is fine, but it feels a little lonesome not to celebrate the seasons with my customers. I look forward to getting together with friends again, and celebrating what the earth gives us on the plate and in the wine glass. That day can’t come too soon.