Erie Food Co-op (Erie, Pa.) recently hosted a local education and preparation for inclusivity event with self-development program OpenedEyes and NCG Racial Equity and Food Justice Manager Gabby Davis. Several staff members from nearby East Aurora Co-op Market joined, as well. The conversation was focused on biases around food. The presentation Davis gave was titled “Dissecting the Definition of Healthy.”
“The presentation offers alternative options to what healthy means in stark contrast to what we (natural and organic industry) have hoped it to mean and what we meant it to mean when it is stated — verbally, written and implied,” said Davis. “It is full of excerpts from conversations I’ve had since I’ve been in this role and verbatim responses from a question I posted on social media regarding different ideas of ‘healthy.’”
Erie Food Co-op Human Resources Manager Chris Wrobel, who worked on scheduling the conversation with staff, explained some of the co-op’s history leading up to the event.
“Historically, Erie Food Co-op has only had one store. We opened a second location last March in the downtown area, which could be described as an area impacted by food apartheid,” Wrobel said. “The big challenge we encountered was that what we did at the first location wasn’t working at the second location. That had a lot to do with differences in community. We had extensive conversations before we opened that second location to evaluate the needs of the community of our new store and how that may differ from those of our existing store.”
That realization led co-op leadership to begin a conversation around the products they carried and what “healthy” food is. Staff worked with the board of directors on revising product standards, which led to the co-op bringing in more conventional items. According to Wrobel, this led to some push back, both from members and from staff.
“Every community has different ideas of what ‘healthy’ is,” said Wrobel. “Our challenge was how to understand those different ideas to serve our shoppers.”
To better understand those differing ideas around food, the co-op started working with OpenedEyes on issues of equity, belonging, inclusivity and accessibility (EBIA), as well as employee development.
“We wanted to have a discussion on what ‘healthy’ means to different people and the stereotypes surrounding that term. We wanted to step away from stigmas,” Wrobel said. “We reached out to OpenedEyes and they loved the idea to help foster open dialogue and show differences. We can think differently on what healthy food is. We can provide options (for example, conventional and organic), but the choice is up to the community. It’s not us deciding for them.”
When Wrobel joined the co-op last year, he brought with him a background in EBIA work. Erie’s General Manager LeAnna Nieratko assigned him the task of reaching out to Gabby Davis (whom Nieratko had met at an NCG conference) and asking her to assist with the co-op’s work. As the co-op was thinking about the stigmas around food, they wanted to be able to involve Gabby in a fundamental way so she could come to the Erie and work with staff in person.
“I think that often times we (in the natural and organic industry) tell people that they should eat certain foods or buy foods from certain places because it is healthy, when healthy is subjective,” Davis said. “We create and embed exclusion with this narrative and must move away from it if we truly want to prove that everyone is welcome.”
Wrobel said the work with Davis and OpenedEyes has been extremely beneficial, for staff and shoppers. He related a story a staff member had recently told him about a conversation they had had with a customer. The shopper told the employee that they now felt comfortable shopping at the co-op.
“The trainings have set the stage for employees to have a dialogue with customers and meet them where they are at,” Wrobel said. “That has been crucial — really listening to customers on how we can help them on their terms.”
Watch a video by OpenedEyes about the co-op conversation here.
