Connecting consumers to the food they eat.
The Moonflower Community Cooperative is a bustling spot in downtown Moab. People stride in with tote bags or stroll out with a hot burrito or a box of groceries. Bikes are parked in the rack under the tree out front; usually someone is lounging on the benches by the door, having coffee or reading the local paper. Friends bump into each other on the sidewalk or in the aisles, and cashiers recognize regular customers.
The store began in the 1970s as a “buying club” where shoppers could find bulk goods and local products. Over the years it changed locations and evolved into a nonprofit, later morphing into its current consumer cooperative model. Moonflower is owned by its members — the people who regularly shop there and sign up to buy a stake in the store.
Established and run by a board elected by its members, one of its key goals is to provide access to healthy, locally grown food. Moonflower partners with over 100 local and regional suppliers, with more than a dozen of those providing locally grown produce, honey, meat and dairy. (Others supply processed products like baked goods, personal care items, nutritional supplements, or roasted coffee beans.) A variety of fruits and vegetables, such as carrots, melons, lettuce, peppers and tomatoes can be sourced from within the county.
The store isn’t a true farmers market in the usual sense. Shoppers aren’t buying directly from the farmers, ranchers, beekeepers and gardeners who raise the food. Instead, it’s a place where producers can reliably sell their harvests and shoppers can support their local farms and find fresh, local, organic food.
“Being connected to the local farms literally makes you more connected to the food,” said Maggie Keating, marketing and community outreach coordinator for Moonflower. Keating and other Moonflower employees build relationships with local farmers and get to know their farms and methods.
Nancy Willis, produce manager for Moonflower, has worked in procuring produce for markets for decades, and has learned a lot. For example, avocados have more potassium than bananas! But, she said, she’s learned the most about produce from visiting the farms where it’s grown and talking to the farmers who grow it.
“I find it’s much more satisfying to deal with them directly,” she said, rather than dealing with a large supplier that goes between farmers and markets.
“You have a better sense of control. You go there, you see how they’re growing, you get to know them as a person,” Willis said.
Keating agreed. “You can trust their growing practices, because you can see it.”
Moonflower gets linked up with small growers in a variety of ways. Willis might reach out to a farmer to ask if they grow a specific crop, or farmers may approach the store with a product to offer. Sometimes a chain of acquaintances leads to a new partnership.
For instance, an orchard in Palisade, Colorado used to supply Moonflower with peaches when they were in season, but stopped delivering to Moab. A friend of the Moonflower manager was in Palisade buying cherries and connected a different Palisade orchard to the store. Stoned Fruit Orchard now supplies summer peaches to Moonflower.
“We built a friendship,” Willis said. “Now he comes over and delivers them himself.”
Moonflower also sells health and beauty products, artwork and crafts from local makers. In the prepared foods deli at the back of the market, they use seasonal local ingredients whenever they can, and above the dining area, work by local artists is displayed and rotated monthly. The co-op also hosts workshops and demonstrations on food- and health-related topics: making your own kombucha, for example, or different ways to use herbal essences.
The store has around 2,000 members, a number that grows between 10 and 20 people each month on average, Keating estimated. During the high tourism season, about half of sales are to members and the other half to non-members. Not every member is a local resident, and some local shoppers are not members, but the data gives a rough idea of how many shoppers are visitors to town and how many live in the Moab area.
Moonflower’s dedication to local produce means the store doesn’t always have the wide variety of produce regularly stocked at large supermarkets.
“People today don’t realize how blessed we are, how lucky we are to be able to go to a store and buy produce,” Willis said. Advances in trade, refrigeration and transportation have made it possible to get fresh fruits and vegetables year-round that wouldn’t have been widely available years ago. Moonflower does carry products sourced from outside the region, but prioritizes still organic, healthy foods.
That commitment to healthy and natural foods, with an emphasis on local products, makes Moonflower a staple of the Moab community.
Feature Image: Shane Huggar – General Manager, Angela Belnap – Produce Dept., Nancy Willis – Produce Dept., Maggie Keating – Outreach, Hunter Signoretti – Deli Chef. All images by Bryan Haile.
