The Store
We are newly located at the Healing Center, 2372 St. Claude, New Orleans, corner of St. Roch in the old Universal Furniture.
We currently run Sunday Grocery from noon till 6 pm, this is a member bulk food distribution, membership is open to the public. We try to have staple items, local produce and vegetarian/vegan items, as well we have an ongoing wish list that we order from.
The flagship store will open toward the end of 2010: Once the Healing Center has completed renovations this year, the NOFC will be able to occupy its long awaited permanent space. There is an exciting discussion going on in the AT about the specifics. Suggestions for a warehouse type atmosphere seem that they would satisfy potential funders in the face of economic uncertainty, would satisfy member/owners by being uniquely New Orleanian and the public by reducing the sense of being bought and sold within the food industry. The AT @ NOFC welcomes your energy and ideas throughout the store planning process, email us with your ideas to actionteam (at) nolafoodcoop (dot) org or info@nolafoodcoop.org
The New Orleans Healing Center
HC preliminary design drawing 1
HC preliminary design drawing 2
The New Orleans Food Cooperative flagship store
preliminary elevation from Rampart and St. Roch
preliminary elevation of Spain and Rampart entry corridor
NOFC preliminary design drawing 1
NOFC preliminary design drawing 2b
The NOFC has hired store designer P.J. Hoffman, he visited us and here is the audio from that meeting.
The NOFC has a home. Over the last few years the New Orleans Food Co-op has worked diligently to open a co-operative grocery store in New Orleans. With a strong membership base of 500+ people, diverse local community investment, and support from co-operative enterprises across the nation.
We are looking to our membership and our community to help with our first storefront.
I am so happy to have discovered your website! I’m not in New Orleans now, but may be moving back in the fall or winter and would be thrilled to be a part of the store then. Keep up the good work, and know that you have support from afar!
please look into taking paypal for memberships - they do charge a minimal fee but it will make it easier for people to join. and maybe they don’t charge fees for nonprofits???
Thanks, Jessica, for your long-distance support. We will be asking folks from afar to help with some information gathering in the near future.
Ze: we are working on getting an on-line sign-up system in place. We actually have a paypal account already but we just need to get an on-line version of our mail in form up and running so folks can get all of the information in on-line.
Cheers,
AmyGeorge
FYI COOPers:
Groundspring.org is the “Paypal” service for non-profit 501c3. if you can collect $30/mo at the beginning it should pay for itself in a couple months. Long term, the costs are lower than paypal.
I’m wondering what the service that works with Facebook is, and what they charge.
this group i worked with before has a Groundspring account:
http://www.commongroundathens.org
https://www.commongroundathens.org/index.php/donate
oh well. looks like they switched to the CivicRM software.
Well, well, well, my friends!! Fantastic work!! This for sure makes all those auctions worth the effort! I’m am super thrilled (obviously, by my excessive use of exclamation points) for you all and for the city of New Orleans.
Congratulations, Blessings and Good Luck! Kathy Parry (in Asheville, NC)
Have you thought about the old video store on the corner of Broad and Esplanade? There’s parking — though not a ton — and it has a lot of square footage. It’s been sitting there since Katrina, so I’m not sure what kind of rehab would be involved.
Anyway, just a thought … keep up the good work!
Tulane Avenue would be a great location to support something like this - there are several large-scale apartment buildings going up, and I believe some have retail space on the ground level…also, HRI properties may be developing something with space available - corner of Esplanade and St. Claude, for example. Blaine Kern may also have available space with plenty of parking at the old Mardi Gras World site.
I’d like to see more stores open up in low-income neighborhoods.