STAFF at York's first organic supermarket are hoping to rise from the ashes and create a new store elsewhere in the city.
Managers from Out Of This World want to start over again by creating a workers' cooperative - with a working title of Phoenix.
Former Out Of This World manager Ben Shaw revealed their plans only days after The Press revealed that the supermarket, in George Hudson Street, had shut down, little more than a year after opening in the former Presto supermarket building.
The consumer co-operative owning it, Creative Consumer Cooperative Ltd, is set to be wound up, with an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders scheduled to take place next month in Leeds to discuss a resolution to appoint joint liquidators.
Mr Shaw said several factors lay behind the demise of the store and of the cooperative.
He said rents were high for the York store and the location was not popular for food shoppers, with many unaware there was parking available under the premises.
He said the business had started out with brisk trade, but it was understaffed, and some customers had been deterred by the delays they experienced paying for goods.
The supermarket had also not been advertised well enough.
At the same time, there were wider difficulties for the cooperative group, which also had stores at three other locations in the region.
He revealed the national Cooperative Group had almost rescued Creative Consumer Cooperative, but decided not to at the last minute. "I'm quite pleased really, as this means we now have a chance to go it alone and set up this workers' cooperative," he said.
He said such a cooperative would be jointly owned and managed by all the staff, with everyone being paid the same amount and carrying an equal level of responsibilities.
He said the York management team - two managers and two assistant managers - had learned from their mistakes at Out Of This World.
They now wanted to set up a new store at a different location in York - "somewhere between the inner ring road and the outer ring road" - where there was easy customer parking and a local customer base. "We are looking at starting again."
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