CoopMercat-PortaAPorta now has a presence in three neighbourhoods of Barcelona: Camp del Grassot, Hostafrancs and Sant Andreu. On 14th June, the Catalan minister for business and employment, Felip Puig, cut the ribbon to open the third establishment in the city. The first opened just eight months ago in the Camp de Grassot neighbourhood of the Gràcia district. The minister was accompanied at the opening by the city councillor for Sant Andreu district, Raimon Blasi, the president federation of workers’ cooperatives, Perfecto Alonso, and representatives for the neighbourhood, political parties and the district councillor.

The establishment’s slogan, “Love the earth, build the neighbourhood,” sums up the spirit of CoopMercat-Porta a Porta, which aims to expand gradually around the different neighbourhoods of Barcelona. On the one hand it meets the needs of many Catalan producers to get their quality produce into the metropolitan area. In fact, 80% of the cooperatives taking part in the project had no regular distributors in the city of Barcelona. On the other hand we help to improve neighbourhoods, both by building up the range of local services and by cutting pollution, as TEB opts for a local distribution model that can be operated by people with intellectual disability, as well as through a network of establishments spread all around the city.

“Here at TEB we have 45 years’ experience of making the most of people’s abilities, especially in the field of industry and services, but we had never made the leap into retail. We’ve discovered that the group has enormous potential in this area and they make excellent sales staff because they inspire confidence,” explains Mil.li Rodríguez, manager of the cooperative TEB Solucions.

CoopMercat has managed to bring together more than 80 producers with over 900 individual quality, everyday items. The fact that most of the producers are cooperatives makes this initiative the largest concentration of cooperative produce in Europe in a city retail outlet. “In Catalonia we have a wealth of products made by cooperative here, especially olive oil, wine and rice, which up to now were hard to find on the market, and even harder to find side by side on the shelves,” explains Albert Forcades, manager of CoopMercat.

 

CoopMercat-PortaAPorta (cooperative products& delivery services for any shops in the neighbourhood) from TEB Cooperative Group on Vimeo.