Maryland Food Collective

The Maryland Food Co-op has one of the most amazingly radical volunteer programs of any food co-op in the country. Here is why!

You earn $7/hour in food credit. You can use this to buy anything in the store or anything we can special order for you. Yes, you can buy your own twenty-pound box of yogurt pretzels because you're addicted.

We take volunteers on a first-come, first-serve basis. We don't ask you to sign up for shifts or even commit to a certain number of hours per month. This means that you can walk right in and volunteer anytime. This also means that we might not always have work for you to do and will have to ask you to come back another day, but that is a pretty rare occurrence!

Volunteering at The Co-op doesn't mean we give you meaningless tasks that all us paid workers don't like to do. It's quite the opposite. We show you how to do everything that we know how to do and we give you the tools to make The Co-op run its everyday operations. We especially like it when you bring your own twist and special touch to things, like drawing a smiley face next to the price of a sandwich or showing off some great dance moves while serving hot special. As much as we love to experience your approach to the kitchen, we also take pride in educating our volunteers in Safe Food Handling and Health Code for Professional Kitchens. We follow these rules and regulations very closely and we expect that you'll jump on board with us. Who knows, maybe you'll start surface cleaning your kitchen counters to health code perfection!

Just because you're a volunteer doesn't mean you don't have a voice in what you want to see in The Co-op. The Co-op is a really important place for lots of people: the customers who rely on it for their daily lunch, the volunteers who rely on it for subsidizing their grocery bill and the paid workers who rely on it for their employment. Either way, feeding yourself is no small issue and we get that. This is why you'll often see us asking volunteers their opinion about a certain meal or checking in with their preferences for what they want to do in the kitchen. Speak up! If you want to do dishes, let us know. If you prefer to work with customers or you really love mopping, we'll hook you up! Additionally, we hold our collective business meetings every Monday night at 6:30pm, which are open to the public. If you come, not only will we give you food credit, but you'll get to see how things work behind the scenes and again, you'll get an opportunity to share your thoughts. If you come to at least two meetings per month, you qualify as a voting member of The Co-op, which means you can vote on anything that isn't a major policy related to hiring/firing of employees or finances. Maybe you support crab hats as a required uniform...we won't know until you vote for it.

If you make yourself a regular volunteer, then beware, you've just adopted a new crazy family. No, but for real, The Co-op takes care of each other, no matter what level of involvement you have. We're all super cool and fun and nice and interesting people and why wouldn't we want to invite more of that? Making space for conversations and relationships at work while mopping or doing dishes or chopping peppers is what makes The Co-op a really special place and we hope you can come participate in that with us! We do like to have parties and special Co-op outings on occasion and you can be sure to get an invite if you're a regular volunteer.

1. Stop by between the hours of 7am-10am M-F, 10am-5pm Sat or 12pm-4pm Sun for your first shift. This will give us a chance to get you acquainted with the kitchen. BE SURE TO BRING A HAT, CLOSE-TOED SHOES AND A SHIRT THAT COVERS YOUR ARMPITS.
2. Attend a volunteer orientation. Held every two weeks. Check in with a paid worker for exact day and time.
3. Get to know some of the paid workers.

1. If you like it then keep coming back! You'll find that volunteering gets easier and more fun the more you do it. You start building autonomy in the kitchen and that's a great feeling.
2. Learn things you don't know how to do. Ask a paid worker to teach you something new every time you come on to volunteering
3. Attend a meeting to learn more about The Co-op as a business.

Consider becoming a SUPER VOLUNTEER! Super Volunteers hold special privileges and responsibilities in The Co-op.

• Earn $8.50/hr in food credit
• Never can be turned away from volunteering
• Can cover open hours on paid worker schedule for monetary pay at $9/hour
• Can take on an order in the store: ie. Responsible for ordering yogurt or chips

• Schedule 5 hours of volunteer time per week
• Execute a performance review
• Become proficient at all paid worker tasks in kitchen (a few exceptions)
• Train other volunteers
• Attend at least one Monday meeting per month