American classic - the diner

The entire country seems to be having a deer in headlights moment: stunned with fear. With our social fabric rent to shreds, if there ever was a time for a new model, this is it. Cooperative community diners pose an elegant solution that may solve myriad problems on many levels. The diners of my youth and the movies are places where the customers and the employees know each other with easy familiarity. That would replace the uneasy mistrust that is so prevalent now.

Cooperatives are businesses that are owned, managed and governed by its members.  Earlier this year, the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives completed the first phase of research on the economic impact of cooperatives that revealed stunning statistics:

Nearly 30,000 U.S. cooperatives operate at 73,000 places of business throughout the U.S. These cooperatives own >$3T in assets, and generate >$500B in revenue and >$25B in wages. Extrapolating from the sample to the entire population, the study estimates that cooperatives account for nearly $654B in revenue, >2M jobs, $75B in wages and benefits paid, and a total of $133.5B in value-added income.

Americans hold 350M memberships in cooperatives which generate nearly $79B in total impact from patronage refunds and dividends. Nearly 340M of these memberships are in consumer cooperatives.

Our culture is so unbalanced, it is surprising that we don’t tip over. Cooperatives have tremendous potential, is an ideal model for this historic moment, and is finally getting the respect it deserves.  For one thing, it requires a dedicated group of people putting forth a concerted effort toward a big and worthy goal. That’s good exercise, right? It would also distribute the tasks so that, hopefully, no one gets burned out. It would fill genuine, unmet needs while creating jobs.

These are just some of the skills required to create and launch a cooperative diner: marketing mavens, grant and marketing writers, web and graphic designers,PR pros, computer experts, accountants, managers, real estate pros, lawyers, building trades men and women, architects and space designers. The skills required to keep a healthy diner running are: food service workers, marketing people, HR professionals, managers, bookkeepers, accountants, food purveyors, and more.

A community diner would be the place to go for a nourishing meal at an affordable price. Designed to benefit the community, it could have a quiet area for children to do homework after school and be tutored by teenagers, seniors or anyone in between. When parents come to pick their children up up after work, they could sit down to an affordable meal and go home with dinner, dishes and homework out of the way. With many people contributing to a child’s education, report card day could be a special celebration.

How do we pay for this you say? As the saying goes, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. We are paying a very high price for our deteriorating social fabric. The root causes of dysfunction – stretched families, poor nutrition, children with too little parental and community involvement spend too much time alone and too much time unsupervised. And then we end up with gang affiliation, teen pregnancy, obesity, abysmal school performance, which deteriorates further into violence . The effect is a circular spiral downward.

If we start with the simple concept of neighborhood diners that serve simple, nourishing food (even if it’s primarily beans and rice), at a price that is as affordable as possible, we can nourish our community both with food and with friendliness – neighbors caring for and about each other.

So pay me now or pay me later. We are paying the price one way or another. The money exists. Figuring out how to get the resources to fund projects such as these can help tremendously. Since every neighborhood in the country could benefit from a diner, the impact could be significant. Brainstorming ideas has several cooperative food service concepts that could nourish us in many ways and on many levels.

For more info: New Community Vision is committed to the notion that cooperative community diners, friendly, safe and affordable places to to meet, eat and mingle with your neighbors, have the potential to anchor a neighborhood and provide the the social lubricant of camaraderie. They could also create jobs and provide nourishing food.  Please contact us to cook up some diner action in your neighborhood. Comments are welcome.

Tags: children, communities, cooperatives, diners, organic food, social connection