Can Weaver’s Way Save the Bethlehem Co-Op?

Nov. 28, 2025

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

Can Weaver’s Way save the Bethlehem Co-Op Boondoggle?

That Philadelphia-area co-operative operates eight stores, according to its website. Weaver’s Way has experience in things the Bethlehem Boondoggle doesn’t: opening and operating stores.

Should it try to save the Bethlehem Co-Op? Were millions of dollars spent on the idea of a local Bethlehem Co-Op so it could form at least a temporary link with an out-of-area organization?

The Boondoggle hasn’t opened despite $3.1 million in taxpayers’ dollars and spending millions on a rented 250 E. Broad St. location. Right now, the 2025 proposed opening isn’t looking good, even with more than $4 million or so spent on this benighted venture.

The Boondoggle has gone beyond ridiculous. It’s now an outrage.

I walked by a few days ago and the only food I could see inside this flailing outfit was a tube of Pringles “newfangled potato chips.” Nobody was working, nobody was there at all. The usual.

Maybe Weaver’s Way can rescue the Boondoggle. Maybe it’s past rescuing, and let’s note, it has never really existed beyond a group of educated, relatively affluent people who played Bethlehem City Council, Lisa Boscola, and former U.S. Rep. Susan Wild. The interest group’s impassioned presentations netted it millions of tax dollars, our dollars. For what?

From the Boondoggle’s newsletter last week:

“Tyler Kulp, the GM at East End Food Co-Op in Pittsburgh (and a BCM member-owner), and leaders at Weaver’s Way have both been assisting us in interviewing and evaluating candidates for General Manager.

Plus, Weaver’s Way has extended an invaluable offer to help financially underwrite our General Manager temporarily, while we work to open our doors.“

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The Bethlehem Boondoggle talks this way often, as if they are an actual organization, not a social club that rolled local government for millions and then burned the money. It now has less than $20,000 to pay its bills, but it talks big.

After spending more than $4 million, it needs Weaver’s Way’s help to pay a general manager.

Just one more outrage from the Bethlehem Boondoggle.

Plus the Boondoggle had a general manager for about a year already even though it wasn’t open. That person has moved on.

Some people with links to the Boondoggle have sought an affiliation with Weaver’s Way earlier, noting the Boondoggle’s inability to open.

There’s a catch, though. Local officials (foolishly) pushed for $3.1 million or so in grants to provide funding to the “No-Op” Co-Op, one that would be a local operation.

If some kind of agreement with Weaver’s Way proceeds, does a link-up of sorts with the Philadelphia-area operation match the intent of those grants?

I’m getting a step ahead of myself, but with the Boondoggle, anything goes. The organization bloviates about principles, but it still hasn’t set an opening date, close to four years after the first time it was supposed to open.

The Bethlehem Co-Op is good at getting money, good at spending money, and good at pretending to do something. It preaches about the seven, or maybe eight, or maybe nine, principles of Co-Ops, without ever opening, and it claims to have holiday traditions.

How can a place that doesn’t exist yet have traditions?

Maybe Weaver’s Way can get things going, but I suggest the leadership of that Co-Op take a hard look at the Boondoggle’s numbers before assuming any risk.

In October, the Boondoggle announced some big donations, and at one point their latest fund-raising campaign totaled about $623,000.

Was that announcement supposed to encourage people to join, donate, and make loans to the Co-Op? Was it supposed to reassure the politicians who cheered on this nonsense?

Because in November, the Boondoggle said $225,000 in donations were pulled and the fundraising total was just $418,000, down more than $200,000 in a month.

So I don’t trust their numbers, nobody trusts their announcements of opening dates, and most of all, I don’t trust them to operate as a going concern if and when the Boondoggle ever opens.

How is this crew going to manage a store they say will employ 30 to 40 people?

Meanwhile, I’m renewing my requests for local, state and federal officials to look into the use of the grants. That money was supposed to be used to open a locally controlled grocery store, not create a circle of friends who are active on social media and rejoice in holiday traditions.