A very unofficial history of the Leon County Food Co-op
        702 South Macomb Street - 649 West Gaines Street
                                                                                    (1974-1989)

Photo by Anhaica June 1979 - Bicycles' owners unknown.  Automobiles in the photo: convertible at front door, Agnes McMurray; Volkswagen van to its right, Sandra Muhammad; Saab at right corner of building,Linda White; MG Midget right corner of photo, Richard White; Chevrolet panel truck behind Saab, Jim King; GMC van behind Chevrolet van, Douglas Weaver.  Above Doug's van you can see the sign of the Good Life General Store.



Color photo by Anhaica - Also taken in June of 1979... but unfortunately at a time of day when the front of the store was in deep shadow.

To some small extent the Leon County Food Co-op (LCFC) sprang out of a group consisting mostly of FSU students who met every two weeks at the community center at FSU's Alumni Village under the name of  Alumni Village Fruit and Vegetable Co-op... a "food buying club".  However LCFC was a new and separate entity and was never a "buying club".  As Rick Johnson, then Chair of the Board of  the Center for Participant Education at FSU, described the course of development:


 It was designed and intended from inception to operate one or more cooperatively owned natural foods grocery stores, and possibly a food wholesale warehouse.  LCFC was established on the model of Co-op Books and Records¹ before it.  Co-Op Books and Records (originally called Co-op Books, because at first it only sold books) called itself a co-op and was one in principle and fact, though in legal terms it was incorporated as Community Literature, Inc., a Florida not-for-profit corporation.  Leon County Food Co-op was not the basic organizational name of LCFC, either, that was Community Interests, Inc.  In both cases, there was in the genesis of the organizations an intent that they would be "umbrellas" for a variety of cooperatively operated business enterprises.  And both operated under a business name established through a "fictitious name" registration.  Or at least that was the theory.  Incorporated and operating from 1974, LCFC's fictitious name wasn't registered until about 1979.

One of the organizers and the first manager/general manager of LCFC was Joe Christy (shown in the photo on the right), a man who was very nearly an exercise in pure perpetual motion and multitasking... and he was beyond that, nothing less than a swashbuckling genius at building a business from nothing.  LCFC was the second business that Joe "sparkplugged" in Tallahassee, and he went on to create others in Sarasota and California.  Although there was no formal connection there was some limited startup assistance from Community Literature, which was at that time well on the way towards becoming an established co-op in Tallahassee with two stores on W. Tennessee St. and a regional record wholesale warehouse on Gaines Street... though it ultimately experienced business failure.  A number of members of the Book and Record Co-op, Miccosukee Land Co-op, and various local buying clubs were if not organizers, at least early members of LCFC.  Incorporated on 2 April 1974, LCFC began operations on 1 May 1974 in an extremely funky old building at 702 South Macomb Street in Tallahassee, about equidistant from FSU and FAMU.  The building had previously housed Graham's Cafe and as best I recall the Graham's Cafe CocaCola sign remained the identifying mark on the building for awhile after LCFC moved in.  The only startup capital came from the $5 memberships of approximately 100 members... $500 total.  There was a "plan" that called for 200 members and $1,000 in capital to begin operations, but when those actual numbers failed to materialize the organizers plunged ahead anyway.  Having not started a business before, the impossibility of what they were attempting never fazed the organizers and their confidence was soon justified by a steady stream of additional memberships... so many additional memberships in fact, that within a matter of months the corporation also included a branch location on the north side of Tallahassee (at 219 3rd Avenue), known as the Third Avenue Food Sprout, as well as an offshoot in Gainesville, Florida, which soon became separately incorporated and was known as the Hogtown Granary.  After a only a few months of operation the organizers felt that LCFC's membership was growing too fast, and sale of new memberships was frozen around the beginning of 1975.  Then they were unfrozen, but only to capitalize a "theoretical" third store called the "Down Home Store" that never became a reality, though for awhile memberships were sold in its name.  Eventually the Down Home Store's membership roster was transferred to LCFC, but between the time that memberships in LCFC were frozen... and the Down Home Store membership sales began... roughly several hundred membership numbers were "skipped" with the idea that they would be used later by LCFC.  Those numbers were never gone back to and "used", thus causing a huge jump in the early membership numbers never associated with any actual memberships.

It is hard to think back to what LCFC was like in 1974 and 1975.  Patricia Handschy had this to say about the first order she made for the store:


The store opened in a tiny partitioned corner-part of the old frame stucco building at the corner of Madison and Macomb.  When there had been a thriving Black neighborhood around it in earlier years, each partitioned area had been a separate Black-owned small business.  As best I can recall, Shorty's Barber Shop was the last of those still operating, and I think it was still in business when the co-op moved in, but not for long after.  "Checkout" was done at a wooden counter which for some reason seemed to move back and forth across the "catty-cornered" main door, so that sometimes it was on the Madison Street side and sometimes on the Macomb Street side.  There was no air conditioning, and in the summer it was hot in the store.  There was no heat except a small portable electric heater that the "cashier" could leave on the floor to warm her/his feet, or raise to the counter-top to warm her/his hands.  For more than six months the "cashier" used a receipt book with carbon paper, and hand-wrote each individual item sold and its price, then calculated the total with a hand-cranked "adding machine".... or "however".  As best I recall, how the cashier arrived at a total may have sort of depended on who was doing it, and often the "cashier" was a two hour per week volunteer.  At one point, there was a cash register sitting on the counter, but it was an ancient mechanical thing... and all it did was make little metal "flags" with numbers pop up.  It didn't "print out" anything,, I don't recall it actually being used, and it wasn't around very long.  As best I can recall now, a "real" cash register eventually came in around the end of 1975 or early 1976.  And among the most important amenities of a food store are its refrigeration units.  LCFC fairly early acquired a couple of household refrigerators and maybe a small open produce case.  A second, longer open produce cooler came sometime in 1975 and it was too long to fit in the one rented room, so a hole was knocked through the wall large enough to get it in along the Madison Street wall... and the westernmost 18 inches or so of it not only stuck through a wall into inaccessible space... that end was also kind-of in the air, because the floor dropped about a foot in the adjoining room.

Through 1975 and 1976 LCFC was able to, by paying a bit more rent each time, knock down several partitions and expand into probably 4 or 5 times its initial floorspace.  I helped with that sort of thing at least once working with Joe Christy, and we were astonished to uncover the remains of a stairwell through the ceiling, all blackened by fire.  Apparently, unbeknownst to any of us, at least part of the building had at one time been two-story and the second floor had been destroyed by fire.  But instead of rebuilding the second floor, a new roof was put over the first floor.  By the Summer of 1976 we had occupied all of the part of the building that fronted Macomb Street, and also were using the room that the produce cooler poked through the wall into, as a storeroom and/or office... but we were at the maximum limit of how far LCFC could expand within that location.  It is difficult to describe how incredibly dynamic everything about LCFC was in those days, in a static piece of writing.  Almost everything about the place, and its operations and personnel, changed almost daily.  What was on one end of the store one day, could be on the other end the next day!  People arrived from nowhere to do things, and sometimes vanished just as instantly.  We gained a newspaper and an editor, but that was brief.  Then we had another newsletter and a different editor.  And somewhere in there the financial records started to actually go to a somewhat real accountant... who, if nothing else could blow cigarette smoke out and re-inhale it at the same time...  Joe's "paid manager" dynamism was constantly at odds with the volunteer board of directors' rather more restrained concerns and attempts to restrain Joe, but besides going through several other managers and/or staffers in the first two years we built up a core management staff that was about to "break the mold" when Joe left... and they became a collective management team.  Until many years later, with the shifts associated with the third change in location and change in name to New Leaf Market, the co-op had no general manager.  It had, however, John Woodworth, Patricia Handschy, and just before the next phase got well under way, Dynee Marmish... a trio of managers who were about to lead LCFC to accomplish the nearly impossible a second time.

In 1976 the long-existing Richards IGA grocery store at 649 W. Gaines Street (at the SE corner of Gaines Street and Gay Street) closed its doors and after extensive negotiations that Summer, the Leon County Food Co-op boldly made a great leap into a store that probably had 50 times the space of the initial cubbyhole location on Macomb Street.  As Dynee Marmish Thomas noted:


Built about 1950 to house an Allis Chalmers farm equipment dealership, frankly I'm not sure when it first became a grocery store but it had been one for a long, long  time by 1976.  The small west wing that the Late Night Library later used as an entranceway was originally a two-stall oil changing/lubrication facility with two pits under the floor level in which mechanics could stand to access and work on the underside of farm equipment.  Around 1979-1981 LCFC sub-let that area to a separately incorporated dry goods co-op, the Good Life General Store.  Until Good Life folded the tops of the walls of the old oil changing pits which had been filled and cemented over, stood up about 2 inches above the rest of the floor level (PERFECT for smashing toes and/or tripping over), but then LCFC made the area into a child care center and poured a slab over the those wall tops that leveled the floor in that area, an improvement made walking around that room considerably less of an "adventure".






Photo by Anhaica: The Good Life General Store & Jim King, August 1979... at the same location as later occupied by the Late Night Library.  Viewed from the north.


Another "spinoff" from LCFC, was Canopy Federal Credit Union (credit unions are financial co-ops).  Organized about 1980, its field of membership was the memberships of LCFC, Good Life General Store Co-op, Co-op Books and Records, and the Miccosukee Land Co-op.  It operated for a few hours most days in the same little enclosure at the front of the store that was sort of a member hangout and children's "recreation" area... which made for some interesting activities underfoot during financial transactions.  Unfortunately idealism and sound lending practices did not mesh quite right, and Canopy FCU was merged into Sunshine State Credit Union (now Sunshine Savings Bank).  Canopy was not forced into that merger and could have continued in business, but its ability to pay dividends was impacted to such an extent and for such a long foreseeable time into the future that it's board of directors decided that the merger was in the best best interest of Canopy's members.

LCFC rented the West Gaines Street location initially from L.W. Seabrook, and later from Paul H. Morgan, Jr. who bought the property in roughly March of 1980.  LCFC bought the site from Paul . Morgan, Jr., about a year later, and remained in operation at that location till 1989, at which time the name was changed to New Leaf Market and it moved to the present location which was originally Sears Roebuck's store, in the Apalachee Parkway shopping center. In all of the years from the very beginning until that name change, managers (or as they came to be more generally known at about the same time as the move to Gaines Street, "coordinators") in large part handled the central tasks such as ordering from and dealing with vendors, tallying inventories, and recording income and expense... and together with the board of directors the coordinators planned the future of the ever-growing business.  But almost all of the routine operations were conducted by volunteers: "workers" who worked either two hours per month, or "assistant coordinators" who worked at least two hours per week.  Those workers and assistant coordinators unpacked and shelved the goods, sliced and repackaged the cheese, filled the bulk containers, cleaned the store, took out the trash, ran the cash registers (once we got cash registers), performed the monthly physical inventories, put out newsletters, handled new memberships, kept the membership roll, ran an "information desk", gave new member orientations, and operated a system of scheduling, tracking, and crediting of volunteers' work hours.  In many ways, in spite of the large size of the operation and the many, many people who passed through it for relatively short work shifts, the rank and file volunteer "staff" almost ran itself... partly because many of the assistant coordinators specialized and regularly worked in a particular "department" and could by and large guide any workers through tasks in that department with no supervision by the only paid staff... the "coordinators" collective.  Depending on who was there and what was happening, often neither the "workers" nor the "assistant coordinators" needed to ask the "coordinators"/managers anything... and the managers had minimal need to "supervise" them.  The most common interchange with the paid managers usually had to do with coping with changes, which were, admittedly... in constant flow.



Photo taken by Anhaica 16 July 2009.  This date coincides with a couple of days into  preliminary work by the City of Tallahassee to reduce Gaines Street from four lanes to two.Note the dayglow flagging along the edges of Gaines and Gay Streets, the pile of fill dirt, and the earthmoving equipment parked beside what was once the side entrance to the Good Life General Store and LCFC's west side loading dock.  All of LCFC's parking lot pavement is still in place but the building itself has been totally demolished... I don't recall and did not record exactly when demolition occurred, though I witnessed work in progress.  The Tallahassee Democrat published an article about the city's decision to demolish the structure on 24 November 2007 but the building was still intact on 3 March 2008 when I witnessed TPD and TFD using the west parking lot as a rendezvous for an emergency response exercise including many police and fire vehicles at about 3 a.m..  The lot is currently being used as a staging area for work the work on Gaines Street as witnessed by the earthmoving equipment, pile of fill dirt, and large red trash bin for demolition material owned by Crowder Construction.  The dirt and trash bin are perched in what was once the LCFC warehouse.  The green area in front of them is the approximate outline of the retail area.  The now-vacant lot on the west side of Gay Street is being used to store pipe and to park heavy trucks.  The only thing still standing on the lot at 649 W. Gaines Street is actually a living thing... the formerly large (now enormous) mulberry tree that used to stand behind the "west wing".  It seems that I recall certain coordinators using its vicinity as a place to escape for a moment's respite, and later when Good Life was gone and the west wing was the LCFC's child care center, the children sometimes played under its shading branches.

Work in Progress 9 April 2007...
Co-ops in Tallahassee Poster Circa 1976 added 15 July 2009

NOTES:

1.  Records... you know, those vinyl sound/music recording disks invented by Thomas Edison which existed before Compact Optical Storage Disks aka CDs...

Use of logos formerly employed by Community Interests, Inc. and/or other entities made here is for purely historical purposes and no connection to New Leaf Market as it operates today is stated or implied.

Text & all photos © Anhaica  2007-2009.

Most recently updated 21 July 2009.