Park Slope Food Coop and the Holy Kale: The alternative grocer, where celebrities can be spotted stocking shelves, has fed Brooklyn since 1973
Insiders dish on New York City’s most pretentious grocery that involves a strict, seven-step application process and enrolling everyone in the household. A member can, however, find wild boar for 20% less than the competition.
By Stan Sagner AND Nicole Lyn Pesce / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
A kale shortage incites widespread panic. A 4-year-old melts down when his parents won’t buy him dried papaya spears. And members debate natural childbirth while bagging nuts.
It’s tales from the front lines of the Park Slope Food Coop, temple to locally grown, antibiotic-free, passive-aggressive grocery shopping where you’ll find equal doses of corn and scorn.
“Do we have …” is a constant drone heard over intercoms the community market installed throughout the store so shoppers and employees can get info about product availability and pricing.
“There was a day when we ran out of kale and people were ready to burn the co-op to the ground,” one member tells the Daily News. Like other members we spoke to, he asked that we withhold his name for fear of being booted out of the cult-like co-op. “The intercom went crazy with ‘Do we have kale!?’ ‘Do we have kale!?’ ‘Someone needs to get fired!’ It was doomsday.”
The chaos extends deep in to the meat aisle, too.
“There is always a generally high level of neurosis regarding running out of anything,” one member shares under the strict condition of anonymity. The thirtysomething artist has been a member since 2010 and usually works in the cheese department or bagging nuts. “There was no brisket as of Friday. That may be an anxiety-volcano in the making.”
While working with a doula from California one shift, the subject of natural childbirth came up.