One scraper turned 60 co-op catalogs into 22,000 searchable products
A maker who wanted to shop from worker-owned cooperatives found no single place listing what they sell, so they scraped roughly 60 co-op storefronts into one searchable index of 22,000+ products. Nothing routes through the site; every click goes straight to the co-op.
The catalog spans coffee, chocolate, clothing, books, and home goods, plus 110+ worker-owned coffee shops, restaurants, and bars listed by city; the whole thing is a static site with no accounts, tracking, or ads.
A co-op founder showed up to compare notes, while another reader flagged REI in the list as a consumer co-op, not worker-owned, questioning the vetting behind the data.
22,000 co-op products in one search box
The maker built workerowned.info after wanting to buy from worker-owned cooperatives and finding no single place to see what they sell. They scraped the product catalogs of roughly 60 worker-owned co-op stores into one index of 22,000+ products across coffee, chocolate, clothing, books, and home goods. You search a term, find an item, and click through to buy directly from the co-op's own store; nothing is sold through the directory. A separate section lists 110+ worker-owned coffee shops, restaurants, and bars by city, mostly in the US. It runs as a static Next.js site with JSON-backed search and, the maker says, no accounts, tracking, or ads. Deciding which businesses are genuinely worker-owned is done by hand.
A co-op founder, a member, and a skeptic walk in
The project drew out people running the model it points to.
"I founded one about 5 years ago and have been kinda shooting from the hip" — the founder of the 508.dev worker co-op
A member of one listed business described what buying in actually buys.
"anyone can buy in for $200, but dividends don't start to pay out until some indefinite point where the voting owners decide the business can sustain it." — a reader who bought an ownership card at a listed Minneapolis brewery
The sharpest note questioned an entry in the list itself, and with it the whole premise of vetting.
"Curious that you include REI. It's a retail coop model, not a worker-owned coop." — a reader who points to how REI wound down its Adventures program
The tension is over the boundary: a directory is only as trustworthy as its definition of "worker-owned," yet pointing people toward co-ops may earn its keep even when a consumer co-op slips through.
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