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Business

Wedge Community Co-ops

Also known as: The Wedge, Wedge Co-op, Wedge Lyndale, Linden Hills Co-op

A Minneapolis community-owned grocery and organic-distribution operation — Wedge Lyndale (founded 1974, Whittier neighborhood), Linden Hills Co-op (founded 1976, on Sunnyside Ave since 2010), and Co-op Partners Warehouse in St. Paul (USDA-certified organic distributor stocking 200–250 organic produce items daily, serving regional retailers across the Upper Midwest). The two retail co-ops consolidated into a unified entity in 2017. Mission: 'building community by developing a strong local food system.'

What they do

A unified entity (consolidated 2017) operating three sites:

  • Wedge Lyndale — founded 1974 in Whittier, [[minneapolis|Minneapolis]]; the original
  • Wedge Linden Hills — founded 1976; moved to Sunnyside Ave in 2010
  • Co-op Partners Warehouse — USDA-[[organic-agriculture|certified organic]] distributor in St. Paul, stocking 200–250 organic produce items daily, serving regional retailers across the Upper Midwest

[[mission-district-sf|The mission]]: “Building community by developing a strong local food system.” The retail stores anchor the consumer-facing community-coop model; Co-op Partners is the wholesale-and-distribution backbone that serves the broader regional food-coop network.

Why it’s listed

Three structural facts:

  1. 52 years of continuous [[minneapolis|Twin Cities]] food-coop operation. Founded 1974 — emerging from the [[minneapolis|Twin Cities]] “Co-op Wars” era that produced one of the densest U.S. food-cooperative networks. Continuous operation through the consolidation, the COVID-era retail compression, and ongoing supermarket-category competition.

  2. The wholesale-distribution layer is the key infrastructure. Most U.S. food coops survive only when a regional wholesale distributor exists. Co-op Partners Warehouse is that distributor for the Upper Midwest — one of the principal reasons coops in MN, WI, IA, and the Dakotas have continuity.

  3. The 2017 consolidation as institutional response to scale-pressure. Most consolidations of small cooperative grocers end the cooperative form. The Wedge / Linden Hills consolidation kept the cooperative ownership structure intact while gaining operational scale — a structural model worth recognizing.

Bioregional fit

Anchors the [[minneapolis]] / Twin Cities food-cooperative slot in the [[great-lakes]] bioregion. Pairs with [[whole-foods-co-op-duluth]] up at Lake Superior for the Minnesota food-coop coverage.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

  • Shares approach with: [[park-slope-food-coop]]
  • Member of: [[business]]
  • Contained by: [[minneapolis]] · [[great-lakes]]

Sources

A listing in the 0mn1.one [[directory]]. Filed under [[great-lakes]] in [[directory|the directory]].

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Practical

shares approach with

1 inbound link · 4 outbound