From Then to Now

When Wandering Cooks said goodbye in May 2022, many of us felt the loss in our soul. It wasn't just a business —it was our family. We believed we were growing something better, together.

We all got on with things in the quiet that followed Cooks closure. New work, new loves, new lives… but we didn’t forget the magic, or want it less.

For me, Ange, founder of Cooks, I wanted the magic back, but without the ‘boss’ and all the singular stress and responsibility that title piles onto one lonely human’s shoulders. I started wondering, what if we could resurrect the magic… the producers wandering in every day and gathering around food, the rejection of the heartless, the corporatised, the industrialised. What if we could resurrect all this but reformed into something owned by everyone?

For two years now, we’ve experimented with an increasing collective abundance. We’ve a list of 1000+ products. Every week we pack boxes and members scurry in after busy days to collect them. Then once a month on a Saturday, we gather together to shop. We share snacks, hold babies and help each other to the car with mountains of food. We’re discovering that the work itself—the ordering, weighing, debating and baby minding—weaves us together. The "inconvenience" of participation rather than the soulless ease of a supermarket turns out to be the source of our collective abundance.

We're called Cooks' Co-op, for now. It’s a nod to our origins, with a new commitment to ‘us’. If you've been looking for a different way to feed yourself and your loved ones—one that connects rather than isolates, that builds rather than extracts—you just may have found your people.

We currently have nearly 40 households in our Co-op, and we make room for a few more every month.

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Interested in becoming a member? Email us at [email protected].