Renaissance Community Cooperative

The community was once served by a Winn Dixie grocery store but in December of 1998, the grocery store closed. For this community, this was the beginning of a trend that was taking place across the country, big box stores closing in moderate to low income communities to build super-sized stores in middle and upper middle income neighborhoods. In th... e summer of 2012 a small group of concerned citizens visited a recently opened cooperative foods store in Burlington and decided that a community-owned, democratically run, cooperative grocery store was a way to eliminate the food desert in their neighborhood. The Renaissance Community Cooperative was created to meet the need for a full-service grocery store in a low to moderate-income community in northeast Greensboro. The RCC will be a 10,000 square foot "conventional" grocery store selling a full range of healthy and affordable food. As a community-owned cooperative business the RCC's owners elect a Board of Directors to oversee the operations of the store. More than 550 people, the majority of whom live in Northeast Greensboro, have become owners of the RCC with the purchase of a $100 ownership share.Read More