A recent story reports that the new food co-op on Route 14 in Woodstock is in financial trouble.
Now comes Jeanne Ives with news of a $1.5 million subsidy from Federal taxpayers by McHenry County’s former Congressman Sean Casten to a DuPage County food co-op.
Prairie Food CO-OP Receives over $1.5 Million from Taxpayers
This is another type of fraud – legal, but full of lies that really terrible politicians tell to unassuming voters who don’t have the wherewithal to look into the details.
Over the holidays, you may have missed the Facebook post by IL-06 Congressman Sean Casten about his visit to the Prairie Food CO-OP, where he granted $750,000 of federal funds. The Prairie Food CO-OP is located in Lombard at 837 S. Westmore-Meyers Road.
So many lies in the post – the CO-OP is majority locally sourced product and it is taxpayer supported.
Prairie Food CO-OP (PFC) is the brainchild of Jerry Nash and Leslee Keri, who, according to this WGN article, have been working for about a dozen years to open their community grocery store.
“Food co-ops are basically full service grocery stores, but they focus on selling as much locally, sustainably produced food as possible,” Nash said.
“So everyone can shop there, but owners get perks. They get benefits when they shop. They can also participate in capital contributions, participate in the board…and have a say in the store, have a say in what we’re selling,” Keri said.
“Illinois has some of the most fertile soil in the world, yet we source a lot of our food that we can easily grow here from thousands of miles away,” Nash said. “We feel that we can get a lot of our food locally, and that way it’s better for our environment, it’s better for our community, it’s better for our farmers, it’s better for everybody.”
PFC opened its doors in July 2025. The Patch reported at the time of the opening that,
“The co-op opened its doors July 9 in the village’s Eastgate Shopping Center, after raising more than $4 million from local investors and grants. The funding included an $807,000 grant from the state’s Rebuild Illinois (RBI) Downtowns and Main Streets Capital initiative. In early 2023, Prairie Food Co-Op was awarded a $750,000 federal grant with the support of Rep. Sean Casten.
So, let’s be clear here – of the $4.4 million they needed to raise to open up the grocery store, over $1.5 million (35%) came from taxpayers. This store is a for-profit store. It is a competitor to every other store that offers the same product. I don’t think Jewel, Mariano’s, Target, Walmart, or any other grocery seller had the taxpayers fund 35% of their development costs. This is a socialist model, and they are lying about locally sourced food.
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Ives reports on comparison shopping with Jewel here.
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Woodstock’s co-op is having financial problems the article says.
It needs $65,000 in sales a week to break even. During the last half of 2025 they averaged $47,000.
A supporter of Food Share offered to buy an ad on McHenry County Blog for the enterprise, but the co-op board nixed the idea.
