Help Reboot Kokua Market Co-op!
Donation protected
UPDATE (Feb 22 2019): Aloha! Our Shares campaign is at 990 / 1000 shares as of the evening of Thursday 2/21, with today being the last day. We are looking good to meet our goal! Thanks all for your support and please donate any amount through here to support our daily operations needs in this time of transition! Visit kokuamarket.com for more info and follow us on Instagram @kokuamarkethawaii – mahalo!
Our survival depends upon your support!
Note: This page is for donations to support daily operations. In order to support our re-boot, please go to our share puchases page (www.joinkokua.org) . Also check out the Kokua Market home page to learn more about Kokua.
Choose Cooperatives Over Corporations!
How Kokua Started
In 1971, when Kokua Market was founded, health-conscious people came together to access healthy foods that were largely unavailable at grocery stores. This spirit of community gave rise to the movement of Natural Foods Cooperatives around the world. These cooperatives emphasize healthy living, better food choices and sustainable business practices. Kokua Market is, and has been, at the forefront of this movement in Hawaiʻi.
Who is Kokua Market Co-op?
The goal of our cooperative is to provide a beneficial and creative, community space centered around sharing and eating healthy, sustainable food. Much like the kitchen in our home, our co-op fashions itself as a community hub for friends, family, and passersby alike, to find sustenance, talk story, and connect with each other.
People and Planet Before Profits
Unlike other businesses, Kokua always puts people and the planet before profits. This cooperative philosophy is at the core of what we do. Any surplus is always invested in the store, local farms, and helping incubate small local food businesses. We want to keep it that way!
Corporate Competition
It took many decades for mainstream companies to begin to adopt the environmentally-conscious and health-focused lifestyles that we have been practicing since our founding. While the move toward healthy eating habits has grown, the culture around ethical and localized business practices have not become as popular. Large chain supermarkets sell health foods without incorporating the whole planet’s health, they don’t understand the true value of benefiting the community as a whole.
When the Going Gets Tough...
Kokua faces a crisis like it has never faced before. A major mainland developer ($80 Billion Greystar Real Estate Partners) developed a condominium project they promote as student housing adjacent to Kokua. During construction they closed access to our parking lot for nearly 3 months, made numerous building code violations, and are now routing all of their stormwater drainage into our parking lot, reintroducing a flooding problem we had resolved. Because they provided only one parking stall for every 10 beds, and absolutely no stalls for the 7 franchise retail locations on street level, our parking lot is now being over-run. Our entry road is often blocked for Uber drop offs as well as for deliveries for their building. Since the construction efforts began affecting us, we have seen our customer counts drop about 20% and our revenue fall approximately $1,000 per day. Many people thought we were closed because of the construction, and the marketing efforts necessary to bring them back are significant. The costs to mitigate flooding to manage our parking are enormous.
The Tough Get Going
While we have not been able to control outside circumstances, we are doing what we have always believed in and providing the corporate alternative to you. We have renewed our efforts to beautify and modernize the store and are launching more events in order to reassert our place as a community hub for fun as well as food. We are creating more opportunities for students to get involved in the co-op in order to educate and energize the next generation of health conscious cooperators. We know that in order to survive, we have to stay ahead of the game. We now call on the community to come together and show their support for the local option. We will focus on improving ourselves to make the cooperative better than ever!
We Need Your Help
We believe that people should have a choice about where they shop and have a say in what they shop for. We want to see a community where cooperatives can survive and thrive. We believe that as a cooperative we are the best alternative to the reckless corporate greed that threatens the health of the planet and the people who live on it. We believe that the power is with the people, and we are calling on you to help prove that this is true!
Our Goal is to continue supporting our community, local farmers and small businesses. The power of cooperation must prevail!
Our survival depends upon your support!
Note: This page is for donations to support daily operations. In order to support our re-boot, please go to our share puchases page (www.joinkokua.org) . Also check out the Kokua Market home page to learn more about Kokua.
Choose Cooperatives Over Corporations!
How Kokua Started
In 1971, when Kokua Market was founded, health-conscious people came together to access healthy foods that were largely unavailable at grocery stores. This spirit of community gave rise to the movement of Natural Foods Cooperatives around the world. These cooperatives emphasize healthy living, better food choices and sustainable business practices. Kokua Market is, and has been, at the forefront of this movement in Hawaiʻi.
Who is Kokua Market Co-op?
The goal of our cooperative is to provide a beneficial and creative, community space centered around sharing and eating healthy, sustainable food. Much like the kitchen in our home, our co-op fashions itself as a community hub for friends, family, and passersby alike, to find sustenance, talk story, and connect with each other.
People and Planet Before Profits
Unlike other businesses, Kokua always puts people and the planet before profits. This cooperative philosophy is at the core of what we do. Any surplus is always invested in the store, local farms, and helping incubate small local food businesses. We want to keep it that way!
Corporate Competition
It took many decades for mainstream companies to begin to adopt the environmentally-conscious and health-focused lifestyles that we have been practicing since our founding. While the move toward healthy eating habits has grown, the culture around ethical and localized business practices have not become as popular. Large chain supermarkets sell health foods without incorporating the whole planet’s health, they don’t understand the true value of benefiting the community as a whole.
When the Going Gets Tough...
Kokua faces a crisis like it has never faced before. A major mainland developer ($80 Billion Greystar Real Estate Partners) developed a condominium project they promote as student housing adjacent to Kokua. During construction they closed access to our parking lot for nearly 3 months, made numerous building code violations, and are now routing all of their stormwater drainage into our parking lot, reintroducing a flooding problem we had resolved. Because they provided only one parking stall for every 10 beds, and absolutely no stalls for the 7 franchise retail locations on street level, our parking lot is now being over-run. Our entry road is often blocked for Uber drop offs as well as for deliveries for their building. Since the construction efforts began affecting us, we have seen our customer counts drop about 20% and our revenue fall approximately $1,000 per day. Many people thought we were closed because of the construction, and the marketing efforts necessary to bring them back are significant. The costs to mitigate flooding to manage our parking are enormous.
The Tough Get Going
While we have not been able to control outside circumstances, we are doing what we have always believed in and providing the corporate alternative to you. We have renewed our efforts to beautify and modernize the store and are launching more events in order to reassert our place as a community hub for fun as well as food. We are creating more opportunities for students to get involved in the co-op in order to educate and energize the next generation of health conscious cooperators. We know that in order to survive, we have to stay ahead of the game. We now call on the community to come together and show their support for the local option. We will focus on improving ourselves to make the cooperative better than ever!
We Need Your Help
We believe that people should have a choice about where they shop and have a say in what they shop for. We want to see a community where cooperatives can survive and thrive. We believe that as a cooperative we are the best alternative to the reckless corporate greed that threatens the health of the planet and the people who live on it. We believe that the power is with the people, and we are calling on you to help prove that this is true!
Our Goal is to continue supporting our community, local farmers and small businesses. The power of cooperation must prevail!
Organizer
Kokua Market
Organizer
Honolulu, HI
