50 Years of Broccoli (and Mockery): A Co-op Co-Founder Calls It Quits
The New York Times
In 1973, Joe Holtz helped start the Park Slope Food Co-op, a Brooklyn institution that is equally loved and ridiculed. Will it survive his retirement?
For a 74-year-old, Joe Holtz can cover a lot of ground very quickly. The ground he was covering the other day was the three adjoining carriage houses in Brooklyn that were subsumed by the Park Slope Food Co-op as it grew and became the largest, busiest and most argument-inducing single-store food cooperative in the United States. Every square foot, in the breakneck tour he gave, reminded him of an episode in the store’s history.
That history is inseparable from Mr. Holtz’s. He helped to found the co-op. He was its first paid employee. He kept working there, as general manager, eventually adding the roles of treasurer and general coordinator, and showing little sign of slowing down until Oct. 2, when he sent an email to all 16,000 members announcing his retirement.
“I feel that responsible planning includes retiring while I can still walk, talk, think and be available to the Co-op,” he wrote.
His last day is set for next June, by which point he will have been on the job for 50 years.
People at the co-op knew that he would eventually reach the end of his run. The in-house newsletter, The Linewaiters’ Gazette, ran an article two years ago with the headline “What Happens After Joe Holtz Retires?” Still, those who have worked closely with him find a post-Holtz co-op hard to picture. As the article put it, he “carries in his mind the whole of the co-op, with all of its convoluted functions and dysfunctions.”
Oh, the convolutions! Oh, the dysfunctionality! But also: the creamy ripe cheeses! The esoteric, seductively fresh fruits and vegetables! The strangely underpriced organic milk! Since its early days as a kind of distribution center for cheap lentils, the co-op has grown into one of the city’s premier fancy-foods stores, with net sales of almost $55 million in its most recent financial statement.
