AURORA | A three-mile circle drawn around the northwest portion of Aurora, including the Montview, Stapleton and Colfax neighborhoods, reveals a wealth of personalities, people and diversity. What it doesn’t include is many options for local produce, organic and natural foods.
That’s where Thomas Spahr sees opportunity and hopefully a future for himself and more than 600 other neighbors to provide locally grown, organic food.
The Stapleton resident, who moved to the neighborhood more than one year ago, is chairman of the board of directors for Northeast Community Co-op, an association that aims to provide local, organic food to people in those neighborhoods.
“There are no natural grocers in the area,” said Spahr. “A number of neighbors are frustrated with the lack of choices. We have decent traditional markets — King Soopers and now there’s a Wal-Mart market — there isn’t anything like a Sprouts or a Whole Foods or Vitamin Cottage in the area.”
Spahr said the co-op started about 5 years ago when neighbors recruited each other to bring in a natural grocer to the area. But, Spahr said, when the association approached convention natural grocers, those franchises balked.
“We had figured with the average income of the Stapleton residents that someone would want to come in,” Spahr said. “What we began to learn is that it takes a significant and large population to support those kinds of stores.”
For instance, Spahr said, a typical natural grocer might look for nearly 200,000 potential shoppers within a 3-mile radius who have a slightly higher-than-average household income before committing to a store.
“We looked at a 3-mile radius starting at Montview Boulevard and Central Park West and found that we had the people, but 66 percent of those people were below the average household income level,” Spahr said.
That might not support a typical natural market, but those people deserve the same access to local and organic food just the same, he said.
“The idea for the co-op sprouted because we wanted to do something that has a different scale than you typically see,” Spahr said. That means a smaller storefront, profit sharing for the members and flexibility in choosing where their food comes from.
Other cities have similar co-ops. In Minneapolis, for example, three co-ops provide food for hundreds of members. California has dozens of co-ops with storefronts. In Denver, Spahr said, there are two other similar co-ops, although none have a storefront.
The Northeast Community Co-op has more than 600 members, Spahr said. Most of the members are concentrated in the neighborhoods that comprise northwest Aurora and northeast Denver, although there are a few that reach farther in the metro area. Membership in the co-op consists of a $200 one-time fee. Members can vote in elections.
When their store opens, something Spahr said he’d like to do by the end of this year or early next year, the public will be allowed to shop, but members may get special perks.
“There may be discounts available to members, in the neighborhood of 5 percent, we’re not sure yet,” he said.
One of the perks of being a current member, however, was a beer-brewing class hosted by Mu Brewery’s owner and founder Nathan Flatland.
Flatland hosted the classes in January to teach traditional, German beermaking methods.
“We wanted to focus on ingredients to make a traditional, natural beer based on the German purity law,” Flatland said.
That German beer purity law, also called Reinheitsgebot, only allows for certain types of grain, yeast and Noble hops. The beer produced at the classes, a Golden Ale, is aptly named “Noble Beginnings” and will be tapped Feb. 12 at Mu Brewery in Aurora to raise money for the co-op to help buy a storefront.
“I think we’re in a void here for natural foods,” Flatland said at his brewery on East Colfax Avenue. “I’m excited about what they’re trying to do.”
Spahr said the beer is part of the co-op’s fundraising schedule that will pick up in the coming months to help the organization secure a brick-and-mortar store. He said the group is working to receive accreditation from applicable trade organizations and selecting a site for their store.
For more information about the Northeast Community Co-op, go to northeastco-op.org