On My Plate: Once in a Blue MOON Bash
To Oxford’s year-round residents: please come out in force this summer to support all of our community’s locally owned and locally managed businesses.
Attention, Oxford’s year-round residents: Miami students have departed for the summer. The streets and shops of Oxford belong to you again. This week’s column is devoted to encouraging you to make an extra effort to shop local this summer.
The census estimates the current population of the City of Oxford to be 21,753. The census does not identify the precise number of Miami University students living in Oxford, but an estimate based on the census distribution by age suggests that approximately 13,000 university students live in Oxford, while the remainder live elsewhere and commute into Oxford to attend classes. If the estimated number of Miami students living in Oxford is subtracted from Oxford’s total population, the result suggests that fewer than 9,000 nonstudents live in Oxford.
The impact of a relatively small number of year-round residents compared to the number of university students is well-known in Oxford to be extremely challenging for local retailers and service providers. Many Oxford businesses cope with the absence of university students by reducing opening hours and employees during the summer, but that degree of flexibility isn’t possible for many of our local businesses.
Before MOON Co-op Grocery opened 15 years ago, out-of-town marketing experts reported that university students rarely shop at cooperatively owned grocery stores. In fact, during the 2010s, Miami University students accounted for an estimated 10% to 15% of sales at MOON.
Then came the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Miami students went home to their families or were confined to residence halls. As an essential business, MOON Co-op remained open during the lockdown, and Oxford’s year-round residents found the store to be a “safe space” to shop during that dark time.
Once the Miami University students returned to Oxford, they discovered MOON Co-op. As one student told me recently, the large supermarkets sell healthy food and unhealthy food, whereas MOON can be trusted to sell only healthy food. Sales to Miami students have tripled since 2021. On the other hand, sales to year-round residents have not increased since the end of the COVID-19 lockdown. In 2019 – the year before the emergency – the co-op’s 1,050 owners accounted for around one-half of total sales, whereas that share has declined to around one-fourth now.
MOON Co-op has decided to cope with the summer slump by holding a number of modest in-store events. The community is invited to stop in the store Sunday, May 31 for “Once in a Blue MOON Bash.” The event recognizes Sunday, May 31 as a blue moon (May’s second full moon), the first blue moon in three years and the first on a Sunday in 27 years. The name “MOON” was selected as an acronym for Miami Oxford Organic Network, but the tie-in with Earth’s only natural satellite is irresistible.
Jennie Wright, one of the co-op’s local bakers, is baking blue pastries, including blueberry hand pies, blueberry lemon scones and blue iced sugar cookies. When she started baking for MOON Co-op two years ago, Jennie wrote on social media: “Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of my grandma creating the most wonderful pies, often baked with fresh produce from my grandpa’s garden and the local orchards... I resolved as a young girl to teach myself to bake.”
This column ends by repeating the plea at the start. To Oxford’s year-round residents: please come out in force this summer to support all of our community’s locally owned and locally managed businesses.
James Rubenstein is president of the Board of Directors for the Oxford Free Press and professor emeritus of geography at Miami University.
