It’s open. We did it!

After 46 years of cooperating and nearly three years of negotiating, planning and constructing, our co-op has opened our second full service grocery store at 501 Minnesota Ave. in Kansas City, Kansas.

On the morning of Thursday, July 30 around 9:00 a.m., we quietly opened the doors and a small group of our new neighbors came in to see the store for the first time. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. As cooperative grocers, there's no greater reward than hearing gratitude from the community we are serving.

Our vision to create a welcoming, multi-cultural urban market that offers a hybrid variety of affordable, conventional, local and organic products has happened. But, we do still have a few kinks to work out. Most importantly - and at the top of our list - is to get approved by the state to accept EBT and WIC. We are committed to making sure that everyone is welcome and able to shop at the co-op.

We want to send a sincere thank you to our dedicated founders, devoted owners and shoppers, hard working staff in Lawrence and KCK, local producers and distributors, community partners and the Unified Government of Wyandotte/KCK for making this store possible.

This expansion of the co-op creates greater impact in the communities we serve and supports our Ends, which state:

The Merc Co+op will be a thriving consumer-owned cooperative in our region that is on the forefront of:
Providing access to healthy, local and organic food and products;
Transforming and nourishing the health of our community;
Creating a robust, sustainable local food economy; and
Building a community based on hospitality, generosity and care for the environment

For more information, contact Valerie Taylor-Richardson at 785-843-8544 or marketing@themerc.coop.

Read more about this expansion project on our KCK Expansion page.