We're feeling pretty excited this week!

Grant Application Complete
First, we completed the months-long work of preparing our grant application for the Chicago Recovery Plan grant and submitted it this week!

We've been nominated!
And when we came up for air, we found the amazing email below in our inbox from the team that hosts the annual Up and Coming conference for food cooperatives.

We've been nominated for their Best of the Best award!

Being nominated for this award is an incredible honor. There are so many terrific startup co-ops around the country and we're humbled to be recognized for the work we do. You should be very proud of your Co-op. 

Congratulations! It is our honor to notify you that your co-op, Chicago Market, has been nominated for the 2022 Up and Coming Best of the Best award.

Best of the Best – awarded for an exceptional use of an existing co-op development best practice by a startup food co-op during the development process that illuminates the way forward for peer co-ops to use best practices to reach new levels of success.

Your co-op's masterful use of the existing four-in-three startup food co-op model, as well as your savvy ability to redefine some of those steps when necessary to not only meet your startup's needs but create new ways to work through some of the challenges of the developmental stages that your peers can learn from and replicate, has made Chicago Market a clear choice for this year's Best of the Best nomination nod. The winner of the award will be announced at Up and Coming 2022 in Madison, WI on Saturday, May 21st.

Congratulations on your nomination and thank you for all you do to strengthen the startup food co-op movement!

In Cooperation,
The Up and Coming organizing team
Deb, JQ, Mychaela, and Stuart
Food Co-op Initiative and Indiana Cooperative Development Center

YOU!
And we're excited about YOU because you are an Owner who makes us one of the BEST co-ops in the entire country!

Or you're not yet an Owner but you're becoming one today, to make us even BETTER!