Cloverdale Co-op Grocery Store

When I was a kid one of my favorite things was to accompany my mother on her Friday afternoon grocery shopping at the Co-op in Cloverdale. It was on the south side of Highway 10, at approximately at 176th Street. It was a neat two story building. Groceries were on the first floor and upstairs was the hardware department that also sold clothing. The Co-op owned most of the land for a block east down Highway 10 and had various warehouse buildings, some occupied, some empty. The Co-op had a feed mill, a separate building on the east side of the grocery store, separated by a driveway and parking lot. When I turned thirteen and got my first horse that feed mill came in handy and my father would take me there to buy oats for Duchess. There was a lumber yard out back, on the south side of the buildings.

But back to the groceries. My mother made a shopping list and she used that to pull items off the shelf. She would rarely deviate from the list and buy other items. I always got a popsicle on the shopping trips. This was back in the days when the grocery stores sold them as singles instead of in the multi packages that are available today. I usually ate the popsicle while I accompanied her up and down the aisles and when we got to the cashier we put the empty wrapper on the belt and the cashier would add it up with the groceries. No big deal. All part of small town living.

I still remember our Co-op membership number – 3428.

My father remembers that the Co-op used to have a meat processing plant there and they made a good profit buying wholesale and selling retail. I don’t remember this section of the Co-op at all. Maybe my vegetarian mind has blocked it out….

The Co-op grocery store closed around 1975. I don’t recall why. For some reason I thought this was a union store and the employees went on strike and it never was resolved. However my father says the Co-op closed due to bad management, unable to make a profit.

A year or so after the grocery closed the building burnt down. A spectacular fire of this two story warehouse. I wasn’t in town at the time but one of my friends who lived nearby went to check out the fire and she said all of Cloverdale and half of Langley turned out to watch the building burn.

In late 1980 the Co-op grocery store tried again in Cloverdale, anchor store of a new mall that was built on Highway 10 on some of the same land where the Co-op warehouses originally stood. I was in there a few times and not many people were shopping there. After several years absence most of the residents of Cloverdale had found other grocery stores in Langley and weren’t switching back. The cashiers at the new Co-op were all a lazy, stuck up, silly bunch. I swear they were all under the influence of some controlled substance. This bunch sure couldn’t help the new Co-op grocery store gain and retain customers. I came in during a power outage to buy something. There were two or three cashiers working (and I use that word loosely) and each had one or two customers in their lane. But the cashiers were all standing around with their thumbs up their asses. Their cash registers were electric and they had no back up plan for power outages. This was back in the day before electronic scanners. All grocery products were stamped with a price and the cashier would enter the amount for each product. So I headed over to the Safeway at the Cloverdale Mall to make my purchase. The cashiers there were very busy and their registers were working. Even though these were also electronic cash registers they had a manual over ride for when the power was out. The Safeway cashiers were able to punch in the price and pull a lever after each price was entered, and then moved on to the next item.

The new Co-op grocery store closed down within a year of opening. With lousy cashiers, no customers, and possibly the same bad management that caused the original store to close, they never stood a chance.

Fresh Produce

A few years ago I read a rather testy letter to the editor of the paper in response to a letter another man had written. To the effect he purchased his fresh fruits and vegetables from a produce store instead of from a grocery store. The letter writer angrily stated she was "glad" he could afford the fresh produce from the shop. But people like her on budgets had to go to the chain grocery stores for lower prices and often less than fresh produce.

I usually shop at produce stores and its my experience that their produce is lower priced than grocery stores and fresher. On occasion the chain grocery stores have a sale on something and underprice the independent produce stores but for the most part I see much lower prices.

There are several produce stores near where I live. Several of them are on farms and sell strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries while they are in season. Some of them have tables set up in the driveway while others are in closed areas, such as a remodeled shed or garage. Some of them sell other produce as well. Many of these smaller operations are open during the summer while the corn or berries are ripening. Other produce stores are larger and are open year round bringing in their wares from wholesalers in the winter months. In the summer time there are at least ten fresh produce stores within a ten minute drive of my house.

A 10 pound bag of potatoes for .99 cents is a pretty good deal and not one that I'd see in a grocery store. I love grapes and can usually get them for half the price they're selling for in the grocery stores. I sometimes go over to the flea market held in the local fairgrounds and wholesalers have all kinds of produce for good prices. I bought three bunches of asparagus for $5 and I bought a big bag of mixed nuts for $5.

Instead of heading to the grocery store the next time you need tomatoes or apples, look around for a local fresh produce store. You might be quite pleasantly surprised by the prices and the quality.