A RI trail-blazer in offering organic and locally grown foods, the co-op finds a positive message in its failure, as natural foods are now widely available in grocery stores and even Ocean State Job Lot.

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — The South County Food Co-op in Wakefield has closed after nearly 47 years, and board members see it less as a failure than a mission accomplished.

Johnette Rodriguez, a co-op member since 1974 along with her husband, Bill, said that in the 1980s, "we wanted everyone to learn about organic and natural foods, and they did."

Now, they're both in their 70s, and even Ocean State Job Lot has organic products, she said Tuesday.

"We ran our course," said Vida-Wynne Griffin, 75, secretary of the co-op board, which closed the store at 344 Main St. on Aug. 15, according to its Facebook page.

"I think we broke some trails," Griffin reflected Tuesday. "All of the supermarkets are offering this food. They weren't back then."

Whole Foods and Trader Joe's weren't around, and Belmont Market and Dave's Marketplace were transitioning from fruit stands. Farmers markets had not yet proliferated.

As the board looked for a survival strategy last year, Bill Rodriguez called other co-ops around the country to see what they were doing. Most had closed. He said he thinks it's because "functions had been satisfied elsewhere."

Although nonmembers were welcome to shop at the co-op in later years, and paid staff did some of the work, the store relied on dues and volunteers.

"The membership just aged out," Griffin said. "Younger people just weren't interested," partly because two-career families have less time for volunteering, and partly because people could get the same products more conveniently.

Art Stein, who turns 80 this week, helped spread the movement from which co-ops sprang. As a young professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island who had just spent a year at the University of California, Berkeley, Stein taught the ideas of intentional community, of sharing, bartering and volunteering.

In 1968, he said, the idea of a local co-op germinated in a conversation on a front porch in Kingston. It started with friends "going up to Boston to get a 50-pound bag of brown rice."

Now every grocery store carries the whole-grain staple, but in 1970 a small group of families took turns getting it and other bulk grains, nuts, beans and herbs from a Boston distributor. They also shared produce from their gardens.

In 1971, the group opened its first store in the basement of URI's Roosevelt Hall.

People bought memberships, paid dues and worked at the Alternative Food Co-op, its name until 2014.

After six years off campus but still in West Kingston, the co-op established itself in 2000 as a store on Wakefield's Main Street. In 2015 it moved across the street, sharing a building with El Fuego Mexican Grill and adding prepared foods and a small dining area.

"We almost made it," Griffin said, "but it wasn't enough."

She praised the "bloom" in farmers markets, which support farmers, artisans and open space and don't require trucking goods across the country.

"I think we served a very, very valuable purpose for a very long time."

— dnaylor@providencejournal.com

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