Empowering the People

Lyttelton’s Harbour Co-op, which features in the March issue of Monocle, is a company wholly owned by its customers. “While New Zealand has a strong history of co-operatives, a consumer-owned food-retail model was new. ‘It was uncharted territory,’ the venture’s director Brian Rick (pictured) says. Each Lyttelton household was offered a transacting share for $365, which gave them the right to shop and reap discounts but no financial return [at the store formerly known as Lyttel Piko]. Today the shop is alive with families popping in for supplies. ‘The vision is to empower this community to feed itself,’ Rick says.”