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Big News: Prairie Food Co-op Sets July 9 Opening Date in Lombard
- Bob Benenson
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
Third Regional Food Co-op Opening Since May 2024 Was 13 Years in Making
In big news for better food advocates in Chicago's western suburbs — and for fans of food cooperatives in general — there is now a summer opening date for Prairie Food Co-op Community Grocery in Lombard.
The community-owned store, located at 837 S. Westmore-Meyers Rd. in Lombard's Eastgate Shopping Center, will open its doors on Wednesday, July 9. After a long lull, this will be the third food co-op opening in the Chicago region in 14 months, following Food Shed Co-op in Woodstock in May 2024 and Wild Onion Market in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood last June.
The opening date announcement came in a video posted on Prairie Food Co-op's Facebook page. The short video, linked below, features members of the Prairie team thanking shareholding owners and others who have brought this project to fruition.
This news was a long time — 13 years — in coming. It is very expensive to develop an independent grocery store from scratch anywhere. The bar is even higher in Illinois because of a law, enacted more than a century ago, that limits individual co-op shareowners to a maximum investment of $10,000.
The timespan from idea to opening is similar to that of Food Shed and Wild Onion, as well as Chicago Market, which is under development in the city's Uptown neighborhood.
I'll be contacting the folks at Prairie Food Co-op to get their thoughts about the process of starting a co-op and what shoppers can expect at the Lombard store. I'm also putting July 9 on my calendar to attend their opening day.