Worker cooperatives are becoming a popular form of the cooperative business model and generating more attention these days. A worker cooperative is a business where workers own most of the equity and control the voting shares of the business, while participating in profit sharing, oversight, in some cases, management, while operating by democratic cooperative principles. The OSU Center for Cooperatives team recently spoke with area worker cooperative leaders to hear about how they got their start and navigate current worker co-op operations and trends to continue propelling their businesses forward to be successful today.
Grace Corbin, Vice President of the Board of Directors and Marketing Coordinator with Casa Nueva, shared with us about the start of the Athens based restaurant. “Back in 1985 it was known as Casa K Pasa at the time and the owner split town. So the workers decided to band together and found a way to make it a co-op so they could maintain employment. Today Casa has more than 15, and less than 20 member, worker owners right now. We also have between 35 and 40 employees that is complicated, confusing and fun.”
We also spoke with Octavia Cordon, worker owner from Phat Daddy’s On Da Tracks, to get her perspectives on starting a worker cooperative. “One of the biggest things that attracted me to the cooperative model is the equalness between members. We started out, myself, my husband and my daughter, and we have differences of opinions and stuff like that, but the cooperative principles help guide us. Because we’re just three years in, and still building up the business, we learn something new everyday. When we started out it was just 5 of us, with 3 worker owners and 2 regular employees, who are on track to becoming full members. Now today, we have 22 employees total.”
Mavery Davis, CPA, Director of Lending with New Economy Works West Virginia, explained to us about what motivates him through the cooperative lens. “People want an opportunity to do something different and have meaningful work. They say whether or not they get to work during Covid, or if that’s somebody else’s decision to make. It takes trust, and co-ops move at the speed of trust!”
We also learned about Casa Nueva’s embeddedness in the community and how they make a difference in giving back. Grace told us about the nontraditional means of how the tipping process works at Casa. “Since don’t accept tips, and haven’t been since 2012, what we do with that money that is left is to donate it to a different nonprofit in our community every month. A lot of the organizations that we chose like to promote that any money left is going to them.”
Josh Brown, Live Entertainment and Booking Coordinator for Casa, explained to us about the importance of working cohesively together as a group of shared owners. “It’s (worker cooperatives) definitely got an upside with lots of brains working to solve a problem, which is very helpful. The downside though is that everything takes time, for us it’s usually matter of months before something actually gets done of any significance.”
This discussion is part of the Appalachia Cooperates Initiative, (ACI), led by the CFAES Center for Cooperatives, a learning and peer-exchange network connecting cooperative, community, business, and economic developers and advocates in Central Appalachia to resources about the cooperative business model. The goals of the ACI are to:
- Develop practitioners’ understanding of the co-op business model and development resources to better recognize and act on co-op opportunities
- Foster relationships among practitioners that will facilitate joint co-op development activities and allow practitioners to better utilize existing resources
- Raise awareness of the co-op business model as an opportunity for economic development and justice in the region
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