The Ends of Possibilities

Earthfoods Café was founded 41 years ago on April 12th, 1976 by a group of undergraduate students hoping to fill the campus’s need for more vegetarian and vegan options at affordable prices. According the Earthfoods handbook, “Our Mission is to provide high quality vegetarian food at an inexpensive price to the UMASS community. Co-managers of Earthfoods will take part in running an ecologically, economically and socially conscious business based on the principles of cooperative management.” The cafe is cooperatively run by 20+ student co-managers whose duties include cooking, cleaning, cashiering, serving and various committee work. They run the business through committees which stem from steering and its six spokes: outreach, buying, organizing, maintenance, start-up and financial. Each spoke is required to send a representative to steering meetings. Spokes are also broken down into their own separate committees which all work in harmony to collectively run the business each day. Although not every co-manager is required to be on a committee, they must run for at least one when they begin working at the café. Once a week, steering meets to organize the schedule for once-a-week All-staff meetings. All-staffs require the attendance of every co-manager.

Since the business is modelled after cooperative structures, there is no one “boss” in charge; they have to work constantly to be accountable to themselves, one another and their customers. Because a lot of their support and patronage comes from the student body itself, communication has to occur not only within the cooperative but to their patrons as well. This looks like asking for frequent feedback, menu adjustments and even-hosting done by the coop, trying their best to pull in various community members. Earthfoods’ hope is that their non-hierarchical business structure will push to inspire other businesses and present possibilities to students, so they know that they don’t have to pursue dominant, oppressive models. They can work comprehensively by building community within their very own workspaces and lay the groundwork for ethical business ventures.

The café is open Monday through Friday from 11 am to 3 pm. They reside in the basement of the Student Union in the Hatch, a move which was made starting this Fall, 2017. Their goal for this move was to reach a greater number and variety of customers and to take advantage of the open space’s natural light. They plan to host more events with the community and reach new groups of people, hopefully broadening the knowledge of non-hierarchical structure and solidarity economy!