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The number one question that South Philly Food Co-Op representatives and member-owners get is ‘When will it be here?’ The co-op, which strives to be a member-owned and operated community grocery store, can currently claim nearly 620 investors. The member-owner distinction is one that emphasizes the notion that, when buying into the co-op someone is more invested in the process and not just a customer.
The planning process began in 2010. Four years and hundreds of members later, there are committees that address growing needs: IT, leadership, operations, programs and events, legal, bookkeeping and real estate. In fact Jen Honovic Herczeg, the co-chair of the marketing and communications committee and resident of the 600 block of Kimball Street says the real estate team is actively hunting for the eventual brick-and-mortar home for the co-op.
“The biggest thing we say is we’re actively looking for locations and we have for a while, actually,” Herczeg said. “Our biggest struggle is finding a space that has the right-sized square footage, is close to transportation, makes sense for our membership and is in a price that we can afford.”
The co-op’s needs are unique, too.
“Plenty of spaces look good on paper but when you start factoring in spaces for large fridge boxes” fitting into the spaces South Philadelphians are familiar with, angular and tight, matched with a booming South Philly real estate market, and “it’s taking a little longer than we’d thought initially,” the Bella Vistan admitted.
Co-op eaders are hopeful that, with more and more member-owners and successful programming to attract community interest, 2015 is the year. In its fourth year now, the co-op’s annual South Philly Garden tour is one of their biggest fundraising efforts. On Saturday, (with a Sunday rain date) 23 gardens, from South Second to 10th and Fitzwater to Moore streets, curious green thumbs will take a self-guided tour through their neighbors’ green spaces.
“We have all of these amazing hidden spaces and gardens in South Philly,” Herczeg said.
The goal of the tour is to “do something fun and social, meet your neighbors and explore these hidden gems,” and “getting to know and love your community,” she said.
Community, in fact, is a key word.
“It really does bring out that sense of community and if you had to boil down the co-op to one word, I think community would be it,” Herczeg said.
Having just cleaned up from her 1600 block of South Orkney Street’s Labor Day block party, Heather Shultz is ready to show curious neighbors her beautiful garden lot adjacent to her home. It was purchased in ’09 in a sheriff’s sale and converted from an empty lot into an urban oasis.
“Some of the neighbors who don’t live here anymore had adopted the lot and had a grill and they’d put a fence up. Otherwise, it was like a mud pit,” Shultz, a block captain and area resident for almost a decade (before buying on Orkney, she rented in Dickinson Square West), said.
She had seen a home near South Fourth and Wharton streets with an aquamarine door in the middle of an unassuming fence.
“Oooh, that’s what I want — a funky regular door in a fence and paint it in a fun color,” Schultz said.
She and partner Jeff Newberger did just that, coating their garden fence’s door in a crisp lime green. She has the green thumb and Newberger’s the builder, refashioning the remains of a friend’s South Philly rehab into benches and building raised pea gravel beds and erecting their garden’s Orkney Street trellis entrance.
“It’s been a steady filler of weekends for the past couple of summers,” she said. “It would be nice to hang out and not work in it.”
In Alex Roszko and Maria Raha’s kitchen in Queen Village, there are two full bowls of tomatoes, cucumbers and a half-dozen varieties of peppers.
“Most of what you see is from the garden. Going out and walking just a few feet, rinse it off and pop it in your mouth, it’s very fulfilling,” Roszko said. “I did this. I grew it. It tastes so good — it always tastes better when you grow it yourself.”
Roszko’s always been scientifically-minded with a background in Information Technology and engineering and likes to work with his hands, but when they were living in an apartment at South Ninth and Darien streets, he and his wife started trying to make things grow.
“I started planting stuff there in the back alley. We started using our South Philly slab and tried to give it a shot,” he said, harvesting cayennes and pepperoncinis.
He’s excited to show off his years of work for the tour and to convince his neighbors that small spaces needn’t stifle Mother Nature. It’s amazing “what can be done in a small space. If nothing else, I’d like to be able to help people realize that anybody can grow,” Roszko, who explained how even growing some herbs can reduce your carbon footprint, said.
It would “reduce our overall footprint across the world and reduce energy expended to go to the store” and awkward patio spaces can be a wealth of healthy eating and habits.
“If you can’t go horizontal, you’ve got to go vertical,” he said, pointing to the off-and-on the grid grow buckets that he found through Facebook gardening pages and built to nourish plants that need constant but not overwatering. The system has yielded him and his wife 15 pounds of tomatoes this year, impressive for their tight outdoor space on the 700 block of S. Third Street.
Shultz hopes a co-op will be “something between Essene and Whole Foods,” and Herczeg notes the organization’s looked at West Philly’s Mariposa and Mt. Airy’s Weaver’s Way for inspiration. Member-owners can buy in with a $200 investment per household (which also comes with eight hours of co-op staffing per family) and membership comes with perks, namely discounts to the nearly 30 different area businesses that have signed on as partners in the co-op’s Shop South Philly program. The organization aims to pull in another 400 members before a co-op grocery store becomes a reality.
Herczeg says “it’s just a matter of time before the right space becomes available. I would definitely encourage anyone that knows someone or has a space in mind to reach out.”
Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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