“When we are fully participating in our local food system, then we’ll have food access. We’ll have food sovereignty. We’ll get healthy and nutritious food because our food won’t have to travel for days or weeks,” Hardison said.<\/p>\n
The organization has nearly doubled its membership over the past several years, growing to approximately 195 member-owners as of May. Hardison credits that growth to consistent community outreach and increasing volunteer involvement.<\/p>\n
“We have about four events a month now,” she said. “More members get more members. They’re talking to people, inviting friends and helping us show up in more places throughout the community.”<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the co-op also secured $50,000 in pre-development funding from the city of St. Petersburg after the City Council approved a resolution supporting the project. The funding will help support outreach, business planning and other early-stage development work as the organization continues working toward opening a permanent grocery store.<\/p>\n
The co-op has also established its first administrative office along 22nd Street South, giving members a dedicated space for meetings and community programming after years of relying on borrowed meeting spaces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“When we are fully participating in our local food system, then we’ll have food access. We’ll have food…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-362843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}