Greene Hill Joins National Co+Op Grocers

General Manager Phoebe Clement sits at a laptop computer reading an acceptance email wlecoming Greene Hill Food Co-op into the NCG.

Greene Hill Food Co-op recently hit a major milestone: after several years and two separate attempts at applying for membership with National Co+op Grocers (NCG) —a business services cooperative representing 169 food co-ops nationwide—we’ve finally been accepted. 

For a small grocery co-op like Greene Hill, membership in NCG offers a serious advantage in the form of leveraging power, explained Greene Hill general manager Phoebe Clement. In contrast to big chain grocery stores, which might order hundreds of cases of a certain product at a time, a neighborhood co-op is always going to be ordering on a much smaller scale. This can make it harder to negotiate with distributors like UNFI and Krasdale (both of which supply the bulk of products sold at Greene Hill.)

“The more you order, the more significant you are to these distributors,” said Clement. NCG, with its large network of grocery co-ops across the country, helps by pooling together the orders of all of its participating co-ops to help match the ordering scale of national grocery brands. NCG representatives are also able to bargain on behalf of member co-ops, creating quicker access to deals and promotions. 

For Greene Hill member-owners, these benefits will translate to lower prices, as well as occasional NCG-exclusive promotions and deals. Those changes, said Clement, will be visible on shelves immediately. In terms of some of the more subtle changes, customers will start to see improved operations overall, as well as more sustainable business practices. 

NCG also offers access to their “co-op university,” a collection of online resources on topics ranging from marketing strategy to financial planning, said Clement. Greene Hill has also been placed into a small regional cohort of twelve or so NCG co-ops in the Northeast, including Good Tern Co-op in Rockland, Maine and East Aurora Co-op Market in East Aurora, New York. Cohort members are able to share knowledge or advice with one another via email threads and other types of communication, said Clement.  

Aside from all of these advantages, Greene Hill’s acceptance into NCG is evidence of how much we’ve grown in the years since our first application in 2024.

“Because of how much stronger we are as a membership base, we’ve been able to accomplish so much more,” said Clement. “We have a stronger finance committee, we have stronger committees all throughout because of our labor power, and I think that was a huge part of why we were able to cross the finish line and get accepted.”