Pratt Center worked with RiseBoro Community Partnership’s Central Brooklyn Food Democracy Project to conduct research on the institutional procurement landscape in the food sector, with the goal of supporting the growth of Black-owned worker cooperatives in Central Brooklyn. Pratt Center conducted policy and sector research, interviews with cooperatives and potential institutional buyers, and developed a framework and recommendations for the cooperatives’ institutional procurement practices. The report aims to inform both RiseBoro’s service design and technical assistance as well as the cooperatives’ growth and outreach strategies. 

Background

Across NYC’s movements for racial and economic justice, including the food justice movement, worker-owned cooperatives are emerging as tools to advance economic democracy and sustainability in BIPOC and low-income communities. Since 2020, RiseBoro Community Partnership’s Central Brooklyn Food Democracy Project (CBFDP) has incubated and supported worker-owned cooperatives along the food supply advance a culture of healthy food, resilience, and cooperative self-determination among long-term residents at risk of residential and commercial displacement in Central Brooklyn. 

To grow and sustain these cooperatives, RiseBoro seeks to create an integrated strategy to secure built-in markets with institutional buyers and anchor institutions for cooperatives individually and as a network. Pratt Center for Community Development (Pratt Center) engaged in research to assess the landscape of institutional procurement of food goods and services in New York City and opportunities for RiseBoro and the CBFDP network of cooperatives.

The goals for this research were to: 

• Assess the landscape of institutional procurement of food goods and services in New York City, with a focus on Central Brooklyn.
• Create a framework and tools for RiseBoro and co-ops to assess institutional buyer opportunities.
• Identify opportunities and recommendations to inform RiseBoro’s services and strategy for helping co-ops grow through an institutional buyer network.

The research conducted by Pratt Center, in close collaboration with RiseBoro and the worker-owned cooperatives in its ecosystem, provides an overview of the types of institutions procuring food products and services in New York City, criteria affecting their decision-making and different weight of those considerations in their vendor selection, and opportunities and recommendations for advancing a network procurement strategy for Black-owned worker-owned cooperatives in Central Brooklyn.