A member-owned source for organic food, health, and beauty care prod­ucts. The bulk aisle is expan­sive, the meat top-notch, and the best pro­duce in the city. This month, prime-quality organic thanks­giv­ing turkeys! They may have the appear­ance of pricey, but (see below), actu­ally one of the cheaper organ­ics resources in the country.

We know a few folks at Nob Hill can get bitchy, but that’s mostly to do with how busy it gets over there; don’t let 1% of the staff sour your expe­ri­ence. That said, we are par­tial to the sweet­hearts at Rio Grande.

Let’s level: our ances­tors ate “organic” food, and bathed (when they could) with “nat­ural” health items, and it’s out­ra­geous that we should have to spend through the roof to do the same. (In fact, we all sub­si­dize so-called “nor­mal” pro­duce through taxes. So you may as well get your money’s worth.)

But that’s far from the Co-op’s doing, and as a non-profit, they spend con­sid­er­able resources try­ing to help us save money. From the weekly mem­ber sales to their mem­ber­ship in National Co-op Gro­cers Asso­ci­a­tion sales to volunteer-for-a-discount pro­grams to count­less other coupons and sales around the stores, there’s plenty of ways to make good eats afford­able. And to those who remain uncon­vinced: go on and com­pare prices between organic pro­duce at Smith’s and the like with La Mon­tañita; then com­pare the cost of mem­ber­ship with other co-op mar­kets around the coun­try. In fact, we got it made.

And that’s to say noth­ing of the Co-op’s exten­sive and deep-reaching com­mu­nity involve­ment, nor their Food Shed project – nor their Coop­er­a­tive Dis­tri­b­u­tion Cen­ter, set up to help small-scale farm­ers get a foot in the indus­try door. They’re even start­ing a fund (called the FUND) to be avail­able to small food pro­duc­ers look­ing to grow or improve their effi­ciency. And tons more. Seriously.