Dearest WOW Reader, We are fully in Turkey season! Our local frozen turkeys from Ferndale Farms in Minnesota are sold out! They were gobbled right up! Thank you! Today marks the start of a new sale cycle! Our Co+op Deals are centered on Field Day items, our everyday...

UPDATE: Turkeys are now sold out for the thanksgiving holiday! Reserve your bird! Our frozen, free range, and antibiotic free turkeys are local from Ferndale Farms in Southeast Minnesota. Whole Turkey: $1.99 per lb. Sizes range from: 10-12 lbs., 14-16 lbs., and 18-20...

It is Harvest Season and we’re celebrating! Join us this Saturday, October 26, 2024, from 10am – 2pm for our first annual Harvest Festival. The Harvest Festival is free to the public and open to all. Guests will enjoy music by acoustic trio, For the Birds, demonstrations by Dinner Belle chef, Jacquelyn Lord, and meet local vendors such as the Chicago Cane Cooperative, Collective Resource Compost Cooperative, Maple Valley Coop, Big O’ Smokehouse, and more!

Join us as we host our first annual Harvest Festival celebrating all the bounty of the harvest. We will celebrate the harvest season as well as National Co-op Month with live music, activities, hot apple cider, and giveaways! Also, check out our Fresh Deals this week! Featuring organic Honey Crisp apples, Niman Ranch Sausage & Andrew and Everett Shredded Cheeses!

The National Co+op Grocers (NCG), where we’re a member owner, have reached out to us about how to help co-ops impacted by Hurricane Helene. In partnership with the Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF), NCG has set up a matching donation campaign through CDF’s Disaster Recovery Fund to support these members and their staff. If you can, donate today and NCG will match up to $100,000 in donations made through this link through October 31.

Fall is here! Pumpkins are in store! Large pumpkins are $4.99ea & small are $2.99 per pound! Shop our fall Fresh Deals and checkout our in store demos of Dr. Bronner’s Chocolate Bars! Meet the team from A Just Harvest and help them support & feed our communities by rounding UP at the register!

Don’t miss out on our exciting limited-time Flash Sales! This is your chance to snag some fantastic deals on your favorite items. Hurry, though—quantities are limited, and once they’re gone, they’re gone! Be sure to check back frequently to catch the latest offers and make the most of these incredible savings. Happy shopping!

Your Wild Onion Market Weekly Deals! Fresh is best! This week we have deals on bananas, celery, Ski Queen Cheese, & Sharifa Jalapeño Sausage! Our featured local vendor is Zymosi Kiefer, crafted in Illinois, is made from whole milk sourced from cows that graze on rich, green pastures! Yum!

Did you get a chance to swing by our grand opening last Saturday? With a full day of events, not only did the first 50 visitors receive a goodie bag, highlights included music from duo Steve Gibons and Gabriel Datcu, Bengali music group Ochin Pakhi, magic by Rebecca Spectre, a workshop on buying in bulk, trivia games, and giveaways.

Beginning at 10 am, we will open our store and the first 50 visitors will receive a goodie bag! From 10am-4pm we have a full schedule of events. Remember our store opens at 10am that day and we will close at 8pm (instead of our usual 8am-8pm). We are also excited to announce that we accept SNAP / EBT now!

We have great music to open and close the day. We’ve got magic and activities for children. We have several vendors participating and bringing samples. And we’ve got a presentation on how to use Wild Onion to reduce your reliance on single use plastics.

Come join our Grand Opening Celebration! We invite you to stop in and shop on Saturday, July 27th from 10am-4pm to shop special deals, sample our local vendor’s products, and try your chance at giveaways!

Staff are hard at work getting the store ready in preparation for our Grand Opening on Saturday, July 27. If you saw us in our first days, we invite you to come back and check us out as we learn and grow.

We did it! Wild Onion Market is open for business. Thank you to the folks from National Co-op Grocers Association and Sugar Beet Coop who helped us get ready. About 100 people attended our ribbon cutting ceremony, including Vice-President Irv Loundy from Devon Bank, state legislator Kelly Cassidy (D-14th), and Kyle Ryan from Alder Maria Haddon’s office.

Please join us Wednesday at noon as we launch our community-powered local business! Come shop the market to keep our dollars in our community, sustain a transparent, just, and accessible food chain, and support our grocery’s fair-paying jobs. The shelves are stocked with fresh produce, all the best local offerings, affordable organic staples, gourmet cheese, and a fantastic bulk section!

After a decade-plus-long journey, Wild Onion Market will open its doors io the public at noon on Wednesday, June 12! Please join us for a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate this milestone event!

Join us at noon, Wednesday, June 12th for our ceremonial ribbon cutting to open the store. We are expecting local officials as well as members and supporters.

It’s All Coming Together for Our June 12 Opening! Equipment and supplies continue to come in. Teresa and Chris are happy to receive and place shelving, bulk scoops, U-boats and other items we need to operate the store.

To ensure the success of our coop, we need to continue to spread the word, both to welcome new owners and to let the community know that anyone and everyone is welcome to shop at Wild Onion Market. Therefore, we are planning to publicize the coop at the Evanston Farmer’s Market on Saturdays, Glenwood Sunday Market, beginning June 2nd, and at Metra and CTA Red Line stations in Rogers Park.

A fully stocked, fully staffed Wild Onion Market goes live on June 12! From that date on the co-op will serve the public seven days a week from 8 am to 8 pm. It will be an exciting time to check out the brand new co-op and make it your go-to place for groceries of all types.

After ten years of effort, we made it! Wild Onion Market expects to open as a full-service grocery co-op the second week of June! Our new General Manager, Teresa Meza, began her work on April 1.

Our 2024 Board Elections have wrapped up! Thank you to all who participated in our cooperative democracy and voted for our new Directors. The new Directors will begin their terms April 1. Please join me in welcoming and congratulating our new Directors! Helen...

Follow along as we get closer and closer to Opening Day. A multistage pre-opening marketing plan is in the works. Postcards will be sent out to over 30,000 households in early February. Also, watch for the Open House that will be coming up later in February to show off our new store to owners and the public!

Wondering what could be a thoughtful and personalized gift for your loved one this holiday season? Local food is always something to celebrate! Gift someone a Wild Onion Market Ownership this year! Read our fall newsletter and learn about our latest events and progress on our market!

Momentum is growing! Construction is well underway, Devon Bank has approved our loan, we’re in the final push to raise the last funds needed, and to get to 2000 Owners by December. Join Us!

With 70 new Owners in the last month, we’re well on our way to the 2000 Owners needed to open OUR store! Spread the word to your friends and neighbors. Join our welcoming community. 

We are thrilled that Wild Onion Market has been awarded a highly competitive ETOD (Equitable Transit Oriented Development) grant from the City of Chicago. The ETOD initiative is intended to revitalize communities in underserved Chicago transit corridors. It is an honor to be included alongside so many worthy community projects.

In Memory of Debbie Hillman: Debbie Hillman was Owner #604 of Wild Onion Market.  She was a longtime contributor to this newsletter, sharing meaningful information about events, organizations, policy and research in her monthly Food Politics Corner column. We will remember Debbie fondly and are grateful for her involvement and passion.

Thank you to all Owners that participated in our cooperative democracy and voted for our new Directors. The voting period ended on March 15, the new Directors will begin their terms on April 1. The Board will self-select Officers at its first April Board meeting. Please join us in sincerely thanking Michelle Parker-Katz, My Nguyen, Cam Davis & David Mark for their Board service. All four will be rolling off at the end of March.

Are you an Owner? Consider running for a Board of Director position. Why? Because it’s exciting, satisfying, and at times challenging – but always about learning and growing as we represent Owners’ ideas and work around this focus as we state in the Board application

There is great progress being made! We are set to begin the first phase of construction in the next couple of weeks. The construction team will be digging trenches in the concrete floor to install plumbing, frame walls, and complete the first phase of plumbing and electric. This is all the work that happens before the walls are closed in. This first phase is scheduled to take 5-6 weeks, and the build-out from start to finish is scheduled to take about 16 weeks!

My name is Kristin Alexander and, along with Kim Stover, I have been volunteering countless hours over the past 15 months managing everything related to our site selection and store build out. As a social worker and physical therapist respectively, we have learned more than we ever imagined about grocery store equipment, design and construction! We are so close! Please help us bridge this gap by making a tax-deductible donation. Any amount you can give will help get the store open as soon as possible.

After a months-long search for the ideal candidate, Wild Onion Market has brought on John Calhoun, who will officially begin tomorrow, November 1. There will be many opportunities to get to know John over the coming weeks, and an introduction from John is below. Mark your calendars: meet and greet at the store, 7007 N. Clark, this Saturday, Nov 5th 10 AM-noon.

A huge thank you to our Spring Capital Campaign team who raised over $500,000 to open our co-operative grocery store. We are getting ready to launch the Fall Campaign Event on Sunday, October 16th and many of our callers will be returning and will be joined by new callers. Our closers did an amazing job of getting documents completed and funds to Wild Onion Market.

Our store can’t open without you! Almost 150 Owners showed up and invested in our Capital Campaign this Spring to raise $527,000, a great start!  Now is the time for you other 1,200 Owners to invest or donate to raise $600,000 more. Learn more about what we still have to accomplish…

A most heartfelt thank you to Debbie Hillman for her Food Politics Corner contributions to the Wild Onion Market newsletter for well over a year. It’s been an important and interesting resource, highlighting significant news, events, and organizations working towards food justice – we hope to keep this section going. Debbie, your efforts have been very much appreciated!

Building a food cooperative means standing up to corporate bullies who want to control what we feed ourselves and our families. And while this is our “lane”, we want to offer support and visibility to all those personally, deeply, materially, and emotionally affected by the news on Friday June 24th, 2022. We believe here that all people have a right to decide what is right for themselves and their families and we will continue that belief and fight in every way we can. 

A huge THANK YOU to our team of Owner/volunteers: Nancy, Betty, Paula, Maureen, Greg, Ariel, Matt, Sandy, Roxanne, Jodh, Lin, Rachel, Ann, Barry, Adam, who together have raised over $500,000 to build our grocery store.

Wild Onion Market just won Best of the Best Start-up Food Co-op in the country! Out of almost 100 emerging food co-ops in the United States, we have been recognized at the Up & Coming Food Co-op Conference for our exceptional community organizing and project development.

It it out of respect and care for the Earth and humankind that Wild Onion Market is being built. Wild Onion Market and Evanston Development Cooperative base their business models on a cooperative structure that puts people and planet first before and without being beholden to shareholders or corporate interest. Both businesses are completely community-owned and managed.

Check out the design of Wild Onion Market’s new 7007 N. Clark Street location! We will serve up community, local/sustainable produce, a coffee bar with seating and three bulk sections! We need 400 more Owners by the time we open the store, which we hope will be this year!  Join us and become a member today!

Have you heard the news?  After 8 years of hard work, we have signed a lease for 7007 N. Clark Street!  Our architect and store designers are busy working on the store layout and design, and we hope to get all necessary documents to the city for permitting in the next couple of months.

We found it! We are signing a lease this month for the Wild Onion Market retail location. There will be a big announcement for our Owners later in January, and for the public and press shortly thereafter.

In case you haven’t heard, Wild Onion Market is fast approaching our goal of 1,000 Founding Owner households. Founding Owners are local visionaries who see the possibility of a community owned grocery store…

Over 70 people gathered under the lights to talk, meet, and make new connections. We come together in person and in great spirits to build our market and support our communities.

We are so Excited! We have an architect, store designers and an equipment procurement specialist all ready to start working! Now we just need to sign a lease…

There are currently 860 Wild Onion Market Owners. The first 1000 will be forever known as the Founding Owners, visionaries who are building a community-owned grocery store as part of a robust local and sustainable food system. 

Wild Onion Market is our market. We’ll keep dollars local, support local farmers and producers, and help build a sustainable food production and packaging system. Join here! Spread the word! Share and comment @WildOnionMarket on Facebook and Instagram Help Reach the...

Wild Onion Market is our market. We’ll keep dollars local, support local farmers and producers, and help build a sustainable food production and packaging system. Join here! Spread the word! Share and comment @WildOnionMarket on Facebook and Instagram Section...

Wild Onion Market is our market. We’ll keep dollars local, support local farmers and producers, and help build a sustainable food production and packaging system. Join here! Spread the word! Share and comment @WildOnionMarket on Facebook and Instagram

Wild Onion Market is our market. We’ll keep dollars local, support local farmers and producers, and help build a sustainable food production and packaging system. Join here! Like & Follow Wild Onion Market on Facebook,...

Owner Number Update: Our co-op is growing, nearing 700 Owners! We hit two records with the highest ever new Owner numbers in January and February. Help us smash through 700 Owners in March! Join by purchasing a one-time only Owner share ($250 per household/business)....