About R.E. Golden Produce
Company founder Robert (Bobby) Golden began working in the cooperative food industry when he arrived in Madison, Wisconsin. Bobby founded (conception, incorporation, promoter and laborer) ICC (Intra-Community Co-op, later known as North Farms Co-op) and also helped manage Mifflin Street Co-op. Some of the many significant experiences for Bobby at the Mifflin St. Coop:
–The crew grew organically during the first eighteen months into a collective operating management. I did not join as an organizer of the Mifflin St. Coop. We all had fun.
-Working to establish Mifflin confirmed my notion that moving food was a vehicle to promote a cooperative spirit.
-Almost all of those folks left Mifflin after the street turbulence protesting the Cambodian invasion during the spring of 1970. I conceived the formation of the Common Market after the AMRC bombing and facilitated its formation. I worked to reconcile the new folks operating Mifflin and the ambition of those making the Common Market function.
-As a result of those efforts, the ICC was formed in December of 1971.`I worked to establish the ICC as a state service coop distributing food to meet the needs of a growing coop network until May 1978.
-I reasoned the spirit of cooperative was stuck in a rut and thought the method for me to plow out of the rut was to take my enthusiasm to the mainstream market. In a couple of months I started operating as Golden Morning, moving food as a sole proprietor with the hope of influencing the coop movement to recognize the rut. By October of 1989 I accepted the vision of working to address this coop rut was not functional. I incorporated the RE Golden Produce Co. as a more accurate voice of moving food cooperatively, a livelihood to support my family and a vehicle for enjoying and valuing my work.
Since the inception of the company in October 1978, R.E. Golden Produce has been striving to bring Madison and the southern Wisconsin area the best goods that enhance the local food industry.
Starting in 1985 and continuing through today, we have been located on Gilson Street in the building once occupied by ICC. Our inventory has steadily increased over time and is now considerably larger. We have also strengthened our transportation capabilities from one truck to several, with delivery taking place six days a week.
Throughout the years, we at R.E. Golden Produce have been proud to be known as a family business that gives personal attention to each and every account, regardless of size.
Bobby Golden on the dock, circa 1976
