Month: September 2016

Department and store managers at Seward Co-op Friendship Store

Building a More Diverse Co-op Grocery Store

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At a few minutes before 8 a.m. on a weekday morning in Minneapolis, there’s a small crowd of people waiting for the front door of the Seward Community Co-op Friendship Store to slide open for the day. They stand under a sign that says, “Everyone Welcome,” and it seems true when Jerry Williams, a department manager, arrives to unlock the door. “Let me at ‘em!” he says and greets the waiting shoppers like old neighbors, even clasping hands with a few of them before they go inside. Things haven’t always been so harmonious between the community and the cooperative grocery store. For 44 years, the Seward Co-op has been an anchor in the Seward neighborhood, where it operates a grocery store and, more recently, a restaurant. In 2013, the co-op announced it was going to spend $11.5 million to open a second grocery store about four miles southwest of Seward in the Bryant neighborhood. At the time, the people who ran the co-op assumed the community would welcome the new store. There wasn’t a conventional grocery store …

pastry case at savory bake house

Sandra Sherva & Max Okray of Savory Bake House

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We visited Savory Bake House on a recent Tuesday morning. The sign on the door said closed, the ovens were cold, and the only sound in the place was the low hum of the air conditioner. We found proprietors Max Okray and Sandra Sherva sitting at the counter, the latter contentedly flipping through a magazine. With the weathered air of a veteran, Sherva told us how she had worked in a great many kitchens — Savories European Bistro, The Wedge, Birchwood Cafe, Crema Cafe (now called Sonny’s), Barbette, and Merlin’s Rest among them. Some of these jobs were rewarding, some were punishing, but she learned a lot along the way. And eight months into Savory, she seemed still to be settling into the idea of it, surprised and grateful to have found not only a kitchen of her own. “In some respects this was dumb luck,” she says. “This was just really, really lucky.” Read more [Appeared in Heavy Table. Photo credit: Brenda Johnson]