From Crowdfunding to Community Ownership – Johanna Kühner / SuperCoop

Communicorn - Episode 05

What if your weekly grocery shop could support your neighborhood, local producers and a fairer economy? In this episode, we’re joined by Johanna Kühner, co-founder of SuperCoop — Berlin's first democratically organized supermarket.

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Listen to the fifth episode of Communicorn: "From Crowdfunding to community ownership – Johanna Kühner / SuperCoop".

SuperCoop is much more than just a place to shop, though. It's a thriving experiment in community-supported entrepreneurship. With around 1,800 members actively shaping everything from product selection to governance, SuperCoop is a powerful example of what can happen when people come together to reimagine economic participation.

Johanna talks about the early days, from raising money and setting up the cooperative to establishing a fully functioning market where everyone takes responsibility and all decisions are made transparently. We also discuss how knowledge flows through networks, how collaboration can foster resilience, and how this model could inspire others to follow. Rather than standing alone, SuperCoop aims to become part of a broader ecosystem of cooperative initiatives that advocate inclusion, fairness and long-term sustainability.

We discuss the concept of letting go of hierarchy, designing systems differently and creating spaces where people can both produce and consume. Johanna shares her insights from SuperCoop and her experience of working in politics at Geno.Digital, offering a vision for a more democratic business future (find out more about GenoDigital in Episode 04 of our podcast.

The podcast is part of the Leuphana Social Innovation Community. We want to connect social innovations, social entrepreneurs in an innovation community setting, where we learn from each other, make knowledge and innovative ideas tangible and visible.

Episode 05

0:00 – Introduction of Johanna Kühner / SuperCoop
4:31 – Vision and Impact of SuperCoop
8:08 – Understanding Community
11:39 – Ownership and Decision-Making
15:39 – Understanding Scaling
24:16 – Game: Enterprise, Impact or Community? 

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