Wedge Community Co-op, Inc. is a cooperative grocery store founded in 1974 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by a group of neighbors. (it started when local neighbors) The group of neighbors wanted fresh and natural produce. During that year, they coordinated and was able to provide themselves with whole and natural foods. The foods are purchased in quantities in order to save money. The store opened in the basement of an apartment building on Franklin Avenue and from there on has evolved successfully over the years. Currently, Wedge Community Co-op is known to the community as “The Wedge” with over 16,000 members and over 30 million dollars in annual sales. The Wedge supplies a variety of quality local and regional produce. The produce is locally …show more content…
According to the United State department of Agriculture, global food retail sales are about $4 trillion annually. This industry has many large players and has grown in the recent years benefiting from a strengthening economy. One thing for certain is as income increases, total food spending also increase, although the increase in food spending is smaller than the increase in income (Frazao, Andrews, Smallwood, & Prell, 2007). People are spending more on food but the challenge is capitalizing on the consumer shopping behavior. Fast food and eating out has increased over the years. People are now eating out more rather than cooking and packing their own food. Food-away-from-home spending by households and businesses accounted for 48.7 percent of all food spending, up from 47.1 percent in 2000 and 43.0 percent in 1990 (Elitzak, 2015). Which is a total of over a 5% increase in the last 20 years. Another impact to the grocery industry is the revolution of technology which have led to online shopping. Ecommerce have enable customers to not have to leave their home to shop. Morganosky and Cude (2000) found that online grocery shoppers rank convenience and time saved as the primary reasons for shopping online (Hansen, 2008). Online shopping has increased over the years and will continue to rise as technology are getting better. Grocery eCommerce revenues today often represent 1%2% of total sales and clearly prove the demand for online sales; but the opportunity is much higher (Grocer,