July 8, 2021

This year’s block party at Sioux Falls Food Co+op also serves as the grand opening for the expanded health food grocery store.

“It’s kind of the end-of-the-expansion celebration even though we’ve got a few odds and ends to take care of,” general manager Patrick Sayler said of Saturday’s event, which runs from 4 to 8 p.m.

The co-op, which is owned by members but also open to public, has doubled its space by taking over the entire building near 18th Street and Minnesota Avenue that has been its home since 2015.

An expanded deli and the addition of indoor seating are among the biggest changes of the almost $2.5 million project.

“The deli itself is about 10 times the size of what it was before, so we’ve greatly increased our prepared food offerings,” Sayler said.

The new deli area opened in early April with an expanded hot bar for lunch that grew to dinner and just recently added breakfast. It also serves Co+op Kitchen Bowls, which are made to order, and it just launched a sandwich menu, with toasted and cold offerings.

“There are about six different sandwiches with lots of vegan options and vegetarian options, as well as some good old hearty meat options.”

Grab-and-go food offerings also have expanded.

Inside, there are 30 seats in the dining area and about the same amount on the patio, which is on the west side of the building. Additional improvements such as a pergola and flower planters will be added to that space next season, Sayler said.

Some seats remain along the sidewalk but likely will move once the patio is completed, he said.

With the new seating area, the co-op can offer a reserved section blocked off with dividers for small community meetings of up to a dozen or so people. The co-op plans to set up a reservation system on its website and likely will charge $10 for a few hours, with a discount for members.

Another major change was the relocation of the cash registers and a switch from what Sayler calls the Old Navy-style checkout area to a traditional grocery store one with counters to unload items from carts.

Several sections of the grocery store, which is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, have expanded.

“The meat department went from a really modest, little 4-foot section all the way up to a 12-foot case of fresh meat, as well as another 10 feet of frozen meat, so that was a great big expansion of product,” Sayler said. “The frozen department is well over twice the size of what it was before. There was a lot of demand for larger family-size stuff there and just more variety in things. Instead of three or four types of pizza, we have 10 or 15, things like that. So frozen increased quite a bit, refrigerated and dairy increased a lot, slight increase in grocery and a good increase in produce as well.”

The co-op makes an effort to find local products to stock its shelves, he said.

“At last count, (we had) like 72 different local vendors, and on average we hover around 17 percent local products in the store, versus some of the larger stores around town are close to 1 percent or a half of a percent local products, so a lot bigger percentage of what you’re going to find here is local.”

The area for bulk grocery items remains about the same, but all bins have been switched over to gravity-style ones, which “pretty much eliminates the possibility of cross-contamination because everything’s in a closed environment,” he said. Bulk items, which include flours, grains, legumes and more, remain popular because “it’s not necessarily pricing or quality or anything like that. It really has a lot to do these days with zero waste.”

The store also has grown in staff size, from 20 employees before the expansion to almost 35, with the majority in full-time positions. The co-op attracts employees in a tight labor market by offering a full benefits package, including a gym membership with GreatLIFE Golf & Fitness, and more than a minimum wage.

“Part of our mission as a co-op is to pay a living wage, so we’re getting really close to $15-an-hour base wage,” Sayler said. “We’re hoping to complete that project in the next 12 months to get where all of our full-time employees we’ll be starting at $15.”

The expanded store is getting great feedback from member/owners and customers, Sayler said.

“We’ve had a steady increase in ownership, but we’re actually seeing a big increase in new shoppers. With a co-op, oftentimes it just takes a little bit of time from when people come and give us a chance to when they want to sign up to become a member/owner. They’ve got to get a feel for the store and understand what we’re all about, that we’re a community organization, that all the profits from the store end up going right back into the community or into the co-op itself.

“Folks usually come to check us out for prepared foods, they kind of stick around to see what the grocery options are and then they sort of fall in love with the co-op from there and that’s when we usually see that people kind of get a little bit more into the co-op and that’s when they come in they sign up.”

The co-op is approaching 1,200 member/owners, and “we’d love to sign up a new member every day. If we could get 300 to 350 new members every year, that would be the ultimate goal for us.”

Details about ownership are on the co-op’s website.

“People are definitely loving the new kitchen. The sales have been growing like crazy in the kitchen,” Sayler said. “Everybody’s just excited. I think it’s that mixture of kind of seeing some light at the end of the tunnel with COVID pandemic, and then also having this beautiful new space, this beautiful new community space for people to gather at and be kind of a central hub in Sioux Falls for people to come to and rely on. I think it’s something that we did our best to provide before but we’re just so much more well equipped for it now with the new facilities here.”

Grand opening/block party

Saturday’s celebration runs from 4 to 8 p.m. and will include live music, a few craft vendors, a food truck, coffee and mead samples, a beer and komucha tent, and games and prizes for kids. The first 50 members at the event – new ones can sign up that day — will receive prize bags loaded with merchandise from the co-op and other local partners.