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Filmmaker Seeks to Reel in Success as Wild Onion General Manager
- Bob Benenson
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Matt Wechsler Joined the Staff with Experience from Village Farmstand Launch
If Matt Wechsler should ever want to produce a documentary about his tenure as general manager of the Wild Onion Market food co-op on Chicago's far North Side, he wouldn't need to find a director. He could just do it himself.
Matt is a documentarian who has headed Hourglass Films since he founded it in 2009.
He became deeply engrained in the Chicago region food community about a decade ago when he was filming for Sustainable, a documentary about small farming that featured local icons such as sustainable farming pioneer Marty Travis of Spence Farm in Fairbury, Illinois, and Greg Wade, one of his best customers, whose prominence as head baker for the One Off Hospitality Group would earn him the 2019 James Beard Award for the nation's best baker.
In a bit of foreshadowing, this experience led Matt to serve on the Board of Directors, from 2018 to 2020, for the co-op project then known as the Rogers Park Food Co-op, for the Chicago neighborhood in which it planned to open.
Matt made his first full detour into local food retailing in 2020 as he witnessed the devastating impact of the COVID crisis on small farms, especially those that relied on purchases by restaurants that had been suddenly shut down because of the raging epidemic.
This prompted Matt to launch Village Farmstand — located in his hometown of Evanston, Illinois — that provided an e-commerce platform where customers could order vegetables, fruit, meat, flour and other items aggregated from sustainable producers in the region. He led the outlet through and out of the pandemic, then sold it in 2023 to Rachael and Jesse Smedberg, who also own the Tulip Tree Gardens regenerative farm in Beecher, Illinois.
Matt returned to his film career briefly to complete his latest documentary. But the co-op, rebranded as Wild Onion Market, ran into financial difficulties within months of its June 2024 opening. This prompted the Board to invite Matt to take over the reins as general manager, a role he has held since February.
You can meet Matt in person on Tuesday (April 22) at an Earth Day showing of his 2024 documentary The Jungle, which will take place at Living Water Community Church at 6808 N. Ashland in Chicago starting at 7 p.m.
The film — which intentionally echoes the name of Upton Sinclair's groundbreaking 1906 book about brutal conditions in the then-young commercial meat industry — exposes the ills of the modern Big Meat industry and reveals how indigenous knowledge may hold the key to creating an equitable food system for both people and the planet. Matt will be in conversation with Minnesota poultry farmer Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, who is featured in the film.
The following are excerpts from my interview with Matt, which took place at Wild Onion Market on April 17, interspersed with photos of brands that provided samples during the happy hour that followed.
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Q: Did you have experience in food retail before Village Farmstand?
A: No, but I did have experience in entrepreneurship through by dad's small business... I started working for him when I was 14, and I would help my mom enter all the transactions into QuickBooks... It was a video production business, which is how I got my feet wet in filmmaking... I started working there after college... Then I ran my own small business for Hourglass Films. And then the pandemic put a halt to filmmaking, and that was a great time to take my passion elsewhere. I always thought in the back of my mind about doing a grocery store. So that was the start of Village Farmstand.
Q: How did your role as Wild Onion Market general manager transpire?
A: I was a Board member before it was Wild Onion, when it was Rogers Park Food Co-op. I joined the board because I was very passionate about changing the grocery system, changing the food system. I was part of the Board team that helped transition the name from Rogers Park Food Co-op to Wild Onion Market. I designed the logo that still exists today...
No business is going to do very well in its first year. If it's doing tremendously poorly, financially, it becomes an issue, and what you thought was going to be a year's worth of padding ends up only being a couple months worth of padding... What it seemed they needed was someone who was going to take a small business approach to it and manage it. This is not something that the community can shoulder financially with more capital campaigns and more money raised, but the ship needs to be righted very quickly...
Q: Was there a gap in the product selection?
A: They were specifically looking for a better produce section. I'd say the majority of the complaints about the store were about poor produce selection... So someone who was going to bring attention to the importance of produce, and also someone who was going to take the values of the store, the ideas of a sustainable local food system, a resilient local food system, and work with suppliers and vendors to bring that to fruition, that was of high importance...
I know some of our local farms are implementing nutrient density testing as part of the information they're going to deliver to consumers, and so we could pass on through our social media, our newsletters and various things to help convince people to make that that jump.
Q: What is your elevator pitch to potential Wild Onion customers?
A: The main elevator pitch is this is a community-owned store. [Like other co-ops, Wild Onion is largely financed by individuals who own shares in the market and have a say in how the market operates.] We will work to meet the needs of the community. If you say you want to see a product in the store, we will bring the product in the store. So we're listening to those who are our shoppers and reacting to it, we are constantly modifying what we do to meet the customers, because we value the input of our community. When we do make a profit, and we do intend to make a profit at some point in time, that profit will be divided amongst our owners.
