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With other members including a cider-producer, butcher, coffee-roaster and two breweries, they now have a website where people can order from all the firms. Customers then collect everything in one go from a weekly drive-through market.<\/p>\n
As mentioned, Wye Valley was set up as a cooperative. But what exactly is that? Put simply, it is a business that is owned by its members and democratically run. <\/p>\n
It could be, as in the case of Wye Valley, a group of small firms that come together. Or it may be a collective of self-employed workers who run a single business, or even a larger retailer – such as the Co-Op supermarket chain – whose members include millions of its customers who have signed up. <\/p>\n
The common factor is that there aren’t any external shareholders, and profits are either reinvested, or shared among the members.<\/p>\n
It all sounds a bit old-fashioned, and the co-operative movement was indeed founded in the 19th Century. But there are today more than 7,000 co-operatives in the UK, and a whopping three million around the world.<\/p>\n
Many, both within the UK and elsewhere, say that being a co-operative has made them more resilient to the pandemic than if they had been stand-alone, standard businesses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n