It started in a basement in the seventies.
A small group of college kids gathered first in one of their homes and then in Guilford College’s Mary Hobbs Hall. Their goal? To host a club of people who would all chip in to buy wholesome, natural foods in bulk.
“You had a lot of economic turmoil going on, not dissimilar from some of the things we see today,” said Matt Davis, the store’s current general manager. “There was the Vietnam War, the gas crisis. You were coming off that time of people who grew up in the sixties with that sort of Woodstock, anti-establishment vibes. They’re coming of age in the seventies and seeing the economy and are dissatisfied with the system, wanting to make changes.”
That’s how the seeds of Deep Roots Market were planted.
This year marks five decades for Greensboro’s only co-operative grocery store. A celebration is scheduled for June, private-label anniversary wine hit shelves last week. Its price — $19.76 — commemorates the year the store was founded.
“Deep Roots’ legacy is a demonstration of two things,” said Joel Landau, a past manager, former board member, and unofficial historian of the co-op. “One, that the cooperative business model is viable. We’ve also shown that you can give equal consideration to how you treat your employees, how you treat the planet, and how you treat your vendors. The legacy is providing a mission-driven company that prioritizes community.”
Currently situated on Eugene Street in downtown Greensboro, Deep Roots is a bustling neighborhood hub. During the warmer months, vegetable plants line the sidewalk in front of the store. Inside, some customers shop for bulk items while others eat lunch from the hot bar in the dining room near the front windows.
Like other co-ops, Deep Roots operates on an owner model in which customers buy in by paying a one-time, lifetime fee to support the business.
“Everything feels authentic,” said Spoma Jovanovic, former president and current co-vice president of the board. “The people, the food, the products. There’s a sense of togetherness.”
On March 2, the Greensboro City Council unanimously passed a resolution recognizing 50 years of Deep Roots.
“Thank you for Deep Roots for being a blessing to our city,” said councilmember April Parker, who read the resolution. “Congratulations to both District 3 and our city at large.”
While the grocery store is flourishing now, that wasn’t always the case.
From its unassuming start in the dorm basement, through multiple location changes, the opening of competitor stores, a recession, and a pandemic, Deep Roots has gone from surviving to thriving in its five decades of existence. And in its fiftieth year, those who know the co-op’s story say some of its best years are still to come.
From Humble Beginnings
When the group of college students and faculty started Deep Roots on Guilford College’s campus, they did so to access healthy, natural foods at an affordable price.
At the time, buying clubs, where members would use their collective resources to purchase items at a lower price, were a popular trend nationwide.
The group would buy giant bags of oats or large blocks of cheese and then split them up amongst the members. It was hard to get healthy foods like whole wheat flour then, but the buying club made it possible.
“This part of the country was nutritionally behind most of the country,” Landau said. “This part of North Carolina, people mostly ate junk food.”
The growing demand for natural foods, plus marginalized communities advocating for economic independence, resulted in some of the first consumer co-op grocery stores in the country in the sixties and seventies.
“There were several waves of co-ops in the seventies,” said Davis, who has worked at Deep Roots since 2015 and became general manager in 2024. “At conventional grocery stores, you couldn’t get a variety of things you can get now, like kale, certain types of beans, rice. Most of these co-ops came out of a desire to source these products.”
The buying club at Guilford College quickly grew out of its space, which would also flood from time to time. Its founders opened the first Deep Roots storefront in 1976 at 1837 Spring Garden Street, where Pages Past Used and Rare Books is now. Not long after, the shop moved a few doors down to 1831 Spring Garden Street for more space. By that time, they had a one-door refrigerator that housed cold products like dairy and cheese.
As a co-op, many of the members worked at the store as well. It was a small storefront, and profit margins were tight.
“It was operating on a shoestring budget,” Jovanovic said. “People would give them equipment so they could survive.”
In 1982, the business almost went under for the first time.
Staffing was an issue with people working part-time or just volunteering. Then, that spring, The Fresh Market opened its first location in Greensboro off of Lawndale Drive.
“They had everything that Deep Roots had, except ten times more,” Landau said.
Landau was hired as the co-general manager. He and his coworker, Dianna Rawleigh, implemented changes like extending the store’s hours and streamlining sourcing.
Landau had worked at other natural food stores and cooperatives before coming to Greensboro. He served as general manager three separate times for a total of 19 years. He briefly left the city and returned in 1990, the same year Deep Roots moved to an even larger space at 3728 Spring Garden Street.
This location had double the square footage, about 2,400 square feet, which allowed staff to expand produce, packaged grocery, and wellness options.
“It made us the largest natural foods store in Greensboro at the time,” Landau said.
By that time, The Fresh Market had moved away from the natural foods model, focusing more on niche food products.
Still, a bigger location didn’t necessarily mean sound financial footing.
When Landau returned to Deep Roots in 1991, sales were booming. But financial mismanagement on the previous manager’s part had left the store in dire straits. Landau worked to balance the books and expanded its offerings again, this time adding more frozen and refrigerated offerings.
It seemed like Deep Roots was finally on an upward trajectory. But that didn’t last long.
‘This Was All a Vision’
Landau left Deep Roots for the second time in 1994. The store was doing well, and they had managed to pay off most of the debt they had incurred from the recent move.
Around 2000, the board discussed moving to an even larger space.
Around that time, Earth Fare opened its Battleground Avenue location, offering stiff competition. In 2006, Landau returned as general manager one last time. His main charge: moving to a larger location to better compete with other stores. That was a tall enough order with money as tight as it was. Then, the Great Recession hit.
“I think Deep Roots was the first location that agreed to move and be part of the downtown Greenway. None of this was here. This was all a vision.”
Matt Davis, Deep Roots manager
When Deep Roots relocated to its current location at 600 N. Eugene Street, it was a quiet corner on the outskirts of downtown. The Downtown Greenway was just being built. There were no other shops in the area.
“I think Deep Roots was the first location that agreed to move and be part of the downtown Greenway,” Davis said. “None of this was here. This was all a vision.”
Deep Roots would need to draw on its cooperative spirit to make it a reality.
“We got dozens and dozens of personal loans from owners to build the cooperative,” said Drew Dix, current board president. “$500,000 was raised by owners in big and small amounts.”
Along with bank loans, it was enough. The co-op moved into its largest space yet, adding a deli, a hot bar, a dining area, a larger wellness space, and a community room.
But for years, construction of the Greenway and a lack of foot traffic hurt Deep Roots’s bottom line. But in 2020, the pandemic changed the organization’s fortunes. As an essential business, they found their mission of being community-minded was repaid. Dozens of people signed up to volunteer, packing groceries and even delivering them to those who couldn’t leave their homes.
“When your owners aren’t a group of people in a board room looking at spreadsheets, and it’s people who are invested in the business and shop here and want to see the business do well, when the business needs help, they come in and help,” Davis said.
A True Community Grocery Store
As businesses opened up again, the co-op honed its philosophy, becoming the iteration of the store that exists today. As a part of a network of cooperative grocery stores, Deep Roots follows eight principles outlined by the National Co+op Grocers. They include prioritizing democratic member control, a concern for community, and equity. The grocery store also made a food commitment to only offer products that are organic-first, hormone-free, and without artificial colors or flavors.
It’s a large part of what sets Deep Roots apart from other grocery stores, Dix said.
“We support local farmers, local vendors, and we’re keeping all of that money in town, in our locality,” he said.
“It’s voting with your dollars,” Davis said.
Owners also have democratic control of the business.
“When you’re a member-owner of a cooperative, you have a vote in how the business runs,” Davis said.
This was exemplified when the store briefly introduced more processed, mainstream foods—what some consider “junk foods”—into Deep Roots about a decade ago. The owners pushed back, and the store formed its food commitment.
Deep Roots’ impact extends beyond its daily operations. When the current location opened, one of the main priorities was having a community room that anyone could book to use. In 2018, Deep Roots started its LIMe program, which gives low-income shoppers a discount. Shoppers can round up during check-out to help fund the program.
Last year, the co-op got funding to buy a van, in hopes of using it to bring fresh food to other parts of the city. From its beginnings, everything Deep Roots has done has been to try and serve Greensboro, Dix said.
“It’s the circular economic model,” he said. “We live here. Our vendors live here. It’s local. We source local, we sell local. We’re supporting each other that way rather than going to a large supermarket where those profits are going somewhere far away, where there’s no connection whatsoever.”
In the near future, Jovanovic said, they’re hoping to get even more financially stable. In 2025, Deep Roots has managed to pay off or have forgiven almost half the debts from owners’ loans, and expects to pay off the rest this year.
It’s hard to say for sure what Deep Roots’ next chapter will look like. But one thing is for sure.
“For all these years, our co-op filled a need and a want,” Davis said. “And when that goes away, that’s when the co-op will cease to exist. But as long as that’s there, the co-op will continue to move on and exist. I hope that’s the legacy…that we continue to serve the needs in the community.”