Members Championing Change: City Market

Burlington based cooperative City Market/Onion River Co-Op is built on a strong dedication to a healthy thriving community, environment & local food economy, with a vision where consumers have access to healthful choices, residents enjoy a high quality of life, local food systems thrive and where co-op owners have a sense of pride in their ownership.

Their mission is supported by programs such as Rally For Change which in five years has raised 1 million dollars for local non-profits (with 475,000 going directly to Feeding Chittenden) and the Co-op Seedling Grant Program. Over the years, grant funding has been used to support the creation of farm to school programming including the trail extension and kitchen construction at the Intervale Center, a job training program at Salvation Farms, and many other worthy projects that support low-income consumers & the fight against childhood hunger in Burlington. The co-op displayed groundbreaking innovation when in November of 2017, the first transcritical CO2 refrigeration system in Vermont was installed at their South End location, reducing their refrigeration gas emissions to 4%, where the industry standard is 40%.

“We’re proud to be a Champion Member of VBSR and support their work to advance triple bottom line business practices in Vermont. As a cooperative and community-owned business, we’re committed to supporting the local economy and strengthening the local food system and VBSR offers a great way for us to connect with other like-minded businesses to advance these goals.” – Mae Quilty, Assistant Director of Community Engagement, City Market, Onion River Co-op