Tom's Market owner Jeff Gray, left, stands by his father Tom in 2022, when the younger Gray took the reins of the store. (News archive photo by Reilly Dixon)
Tom’s Market explores co-op model
- Published: November 18, 2025
Some big changes may be ahead for Tom’s Market — if the community wishes.
So said owner Jeff Gray, who told the News earlier this week that he and several other area stakeholders are working together to explore the possibility of implementing a new business model for the longstanding downtown grocery store: turning it into a cooperatively operated market, or a co-op.
Nothing is official yet; for the time being, Tom’s Market, located at 242 Xenia Ave., is still privately and family owned — but Gray and others have begun a 45-day discovery process to determine the feasibility of and local interest in the co-op model.
Gray said that Tom’s shoppers and area residents should, in the coming weeks, expect surveys and town halls for their chance to weigh in on the possibility.
“If we go this route and the community supports this idea, then that means people can have ownership of their downtown grocery store,” Gray explained.
Cooperatively owned grocery stores can operate in a number of ways. By buying ownership shares, members can engage in decision-making, vote on operational matters, share in profits and receive discounts on products. In some cases, members volunteer their time stocking shelves, working registers and keeping the store’s day-to-day operations running. Co-op stores are typically open to all, regardless of membership.
All these are just possibilities, Gray said.
“We haven’t determined anything — we don’t know what a share would be, what the benefits could look like,” he said. “That’s what this discovery period is about.”
Helping Gray along in this initial process is the Yellow Springs Community Foundation, whose Executive Director, Jeannamarie Cox, has joined Gray in a recently formed “co-op task force” comprised of other area organizations, including the Hall Hunger Initiative, the Grocers Association, a burgeoning group of local residents and Co-op Dayton — an area nonprofit incubator for cooperative businesses in the region.
The main goal of this task force, Cox explained, is to solicit input from the community, and if there’s local buy-in to the idea, move it from the discovery phase to the due diligence phase.
“Essentially, we’re asking: ‘What would work best here in Yellow Springs?’” Cox said.
For potential inspiration, Gray and Cox pointed over the state line to Bloomingfoods Co-op in Bloomington, Indiana, as well as Lost River Co-op & Cafe in Paoli, Indiana. Both of those co-ops boast more than 500 member-owners each, and both appear, according to their websites, to favor stocking locally produced and sustainable products, as well as paying equitable dividends to their members.
No matter what happens to Tom’s Market, Gray said his current roster of 30 employees will be kept abreast of any anticipated changes.
“So, don’t worry, no one’s job is in jeopardy,” Gray said.
While he and Cox will remain responsive to the will of the village — pursuing a co-op model if the community wishes, and backing off the idea if not — Gray said a different business model could present an opportunity for villagers to have a direct hand in keeping a grocery store in downtown Yellow Springs, and in particular, keeping it viable for the locals who depend on it.
“We’re obviously hoping to avoid there ever being a food desert here,” Gray said. “People who don’t work in town, but who live here, tend to do their shopping outside of town, maybe rarely coming downtown. But there’s this other section of the community who rely heavily on Tom’s Market — but that segment alone can’t keep this store going.”
He continued: “So there has to be buy-in from the whole community. This could be a way to keep your dollars local.”
Cox noted that the discovery process could be a chance for villagers to articulate what having a locally owned grocery store means to them.
“There are some key businesses that help drive the downtown economy,” Cox said. “And the grocery store is one of them. Having a healthy grocery store is important to the overall health of our downtown.”
The News will continue to provide updates as the discovery process unfolds, and will publish the dates and times of community feedback meetings, as well as ways to fill out forthcoming surveys.
One Response to “Tom’s Market explores co-op model”
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The co-op “non profit” model will no doubt be received with an initial burst of enthusiasm by the denizens of Yellow Springs…then someone will do the math. Bloomington is a much larger and wealthier community than YS. The Bloomingfoods co-op has over 8,000 ‘members’ (owners). The number of current YS residents able and willing to pony up the capital to get something like this going in YS (and it keep it going) is fleetingly small, IMHO. Given the tenor on pages like Yellow Springs Open Discussion, the co-op meetings will devolve into cut throat debates about whether or not to carry Unilever products. Then the whole thing will collapse like the original Owenites Utopian community that founded Yellow Springs. I think the best solution would be for the citizenry to make an effort to patronize and support Tom’s in its current form…before its gone.