Why the Last Mile Needs Multistakeholder Ownership

In the relatively new field of platform cooperativism, the consolidation of last-mile transportation and delivery activities under a platform owned by gig workers has been one of the most compelling ideas since the movement’s early days.

There have been several laudable efforts to launch alternatives to the large VC-backed platform incumbents, namely Uber, DoorDash and their ilk, with varying degrees of success. Notable examples include The Drivers Cooperative in New York City, the related Drivers Cooperative in Colorado, Faircab in the United Kingdom, the CoopCycle network in Europe, Bharat Taxi in India, and Tamsang-Tamsong in Thailand. While they share the unifying trait of being nominally driver- or courier-owned, their operating and ownership structures often vary widely, ranging from state-backed and administered models to fully decentralized, federated networks of smaller actors.
In Montreal, alongside a group of fellow cooperators, we launched the Radish Cooperative, a platform co-op in food delivery, in 2020. As with other last-mile delivery platforms, Radish has the distinction of being courier-owned.

And Radish has shown traction. It now has around 30 employee-members, 160 merchant-members, and revenue of about $1 million a year.

Beyond simple worker ownership, however, we made several structural decisions that diverged from the norm: namely the inclusion of merchants and consumers as equal owners in the venture, the designation of all workers as employees rather than independent contractors, and the creation of a venture-style share class to allow direct participation from investors.
These design choices around ownership in the last mile reflected the socioeconomic and political realities of the environment in which we were operating, and we revised them over time as conditions changed. While the jury is still out on whether they were the “right” choices, I believe that we’ve gathered sufficient insight to argue for their adoption in other cooperative last-mile endeavors.
Co-Owning the Last Mile
Cooperatives are typically founded by a core group of users or producers, what in business terms is often called a “class,” who believe they can gain economic leverage by acting collectively.
A group of taxi drivers may organize to pool resources such as dispatch and insurance, while a group of farmers may co-invest in equipment and branding to improve their access to customers.
In settings shaped by strong marketplace dynamics, meaning platforms that must balance the interests of multiple groups such as workers, customers, and businesses, it becomes less clear which group should be treated as the primary stakeholder group. Should a food delivery platform cooperative be owned and operated by restaurant owners seeking better access to the market while minimizing the cost of doing business?Or by drivers and couriers seeking to protect their earnings and working conditions? Or by consumers who simply want fairer pricing? This is a central question that Radish, like dozens of other local delivery platforms, has had to confront.
It is tempting to elevate the priorities of one stakeholder group, meaning one group such as restaurants, drivers, or customers, over the others. In practice, however, each is indispensable. Incumbent platforms understand this well, which is why they routinely shift the costs of sustaining the platform from one group to another as market conditions change.
During Covid-19, for example, many governments introduced caps on delivery fees to prevent platforms from extracting excessive charges from restaurants, many of which were already in severe financial distress. These caps did little to reduce platform profits, which in many cases continued to rise. Instead, platforms adapted by paying couriers less and charging customers more. When higher service fees reduced demand, they shifted the burden again by pushing restaurants to pay for “promotions” to appear more prominently in search results.
Radish, itself a product of the peak-pandemic context, benefited from a very different set of initial conditions than many other delivery cooperatives. Public discourse at the time focused not only on the plight of overworked couriers, but also on financially distressed restaurants and consumers confined to their homes. As a result, the discussion around Radish’s constitution brought multiple parties to the table on equal footing.
Consequently, Radish was established as a multistakeholder cooperative in which consumers, couriers, and restaurants, later joined by other kinds of merchants, were recognized in the bylaws as equally important stakeholder groups. Each class holds equal representation on the board, with the same number of director seats, such that no decision can be passed unilaterally without the support of the others.
A common question raised about this governance model is how any form of consensus can be achieved across such divergent interests. After all, it is natural for each stakeholder group to advance its own priorities. In practice, however, having all stakeholders at the table tends to facilitate consensus rather than impede it. It allows each group to voice its priorities and constraints early on, making it easier to reach compromises that are workable in the short term and more sustainable over time.
Employing the Couriers
One of the most controversial decisions Radish made at its founding was to hire all couriers as employees instead of treating them as independent contractors, even if they would have had membership rights in the cooperative. Even within cooperative circles, the choice was met with quiet skepticism. While few questioned the ethical appeal or the benefits for workers, many doubted that a delivery business based on employment rather than gig work could survive economically in an age shaped by platforms like Uber. There were serious concerns about the model’s long-term sustainability.
Ironically, the decision to hire couriers as employees rather than use contractors was driven not by ethics but by economic considerations.While it is often assumed that independent contractors are more cost-effective than employees, the reality is more nuanced. Contractors make it easier to scale quickly. Launching in a new city can be done by onboarding large numbers of workers with minimal overhead, rather than building out formal HR structures.
Over time, however, these early efficiencies tend to reverse. With limited training and oversight, performance stagnates, and errors increase. Retention is minimal. Independent contractors have little incentive to remain loyal to a single platform, and the most capable ones naturally end up leaving to find gainful employment.
Perhaps more critically, contractors are not well suited for high-value or sensitive deliveries. Entrusting independent contractors with a shipment of high-value goods, such as multiple MacBooks, introduces significant risk. There is no obligation to complete all assigned stops, and limited recourse if a route is abandoned. As a result, independent contractors are typically restricted to lower-value trips, which constrains revenue potential.
For these reasons, it is not surprising that many of the world’s largest transportation and logistics companies, such as UPS, FedEx, and Walmart, continue to rely heavily on employed drivers. Over time, employment models tend to deliver greater reliability, stronger retention, and ultimately, more efficient operations. It is not unusual to find couriers at these companies who have stayed for decades, which speaks to the long-term stability of the model.
Funding: Owning Cooperative Equity
Financing a platform cooperative is hard. Capital is required to fund initial development and eventual growth, yet unlike conventional startups, there are no well-worn paths to raising it. Venture capital and angel investment are structurally misaligned with cooperative ownership, as the introduction of outside equity can compromise the principle of member control.
From the outset, the capital question was central to Radish. The founding members understood that the initiative could not get off the ground without external financing. At the same time, they faced a second, equally important challenge: how to create meaningful incentives for early contributors. In traditional startups, founders and early employees are compensated for below-market salaries and elevated risk through stock options. Cooperatives offer no direct equivalent. At best, early members can expect to break even, despite assuming disproportionate risk.
After extensive research into existing cooperative models, as well as Canadian cooperative and securities law, Radish pioneered a new approach to cooperative financing. The cooperative introduced a class of investment shares that could be issued to venture capital firms and other sophisticated investors. These shares confer economic rights but no governance rights. In other words, investors participate in the financial upside of the cooperative without influencing its direction or decision-making.
To complement this structure, Radish also created the CAFE, or Cooperative Agreement for Future Equity, modeled on the SAFE used in the startup world. It allows early investors to put in money without setting the cooperative’s value right away; their investment converts into shares later. This provides flexibility in the earliest phases while preserving the cooperative’s governance structure.
This model draws partial inspiration from large-scale dairy cooperatives such as Fonterra, which provides public market exposure to its economic performance through the Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund, while maintaining farmer control over governance. The separation of economic rights from control rights offers a compelling template for cooperative capital formation.
A natural concern with this approach is whether investors would accept a structure that offers no control. In practice, control is not always a prerequisite for investment. Many of the most successful companies in the world have issued non-voting shares or otherwise concentrated governance while still attracting significant capital. What investors require is not control per se, but credible access to returns.
That said, investor protections remain essential. While investment shareholders do not participate in day-to-day governance, they are granted limited protective rights. For example, the cooperative cannot unilaterally revalue shares, materially alter their economic characteristics, or wind down operations without the consent of investment shareholders. These provisions ensure that capital is not subordinated to governance in a way that would undermine trust.
This structure establishes a new pathway for cooperative financing. It preserves the integrity of member ownership while enabling access to external capital and aligning incentives for early contributors. If this model works at scale, it could eventually allow cooperatives to list economic shares on public markets, giving investors access to returns while preserving member control, effectively creating a cooperative IPO without turning the cooperative into a conventional corporation.

The Last Mile Belongs to Those Who Shape It

One of the defining strengths, and perhaps most beautiful aspects, of the platform cooperative model is that its governance is not static. The question of who owns the last mile is not answered once and for all. It is revisited over time by members as they exercise their democratic rights and amend the living documents of the cooperative, its bylaws. As long as the membership evolves, so too does the cooperative’s charter. This adaptability lies at the very heart of the model.

For Radish, a meaningful test of this principle will come with its planned expansion to New York later this year. Although Quebec shares important similarities with its home market, its distinct cultural and regulatory conditions reopen fundamental questions of ownership and governance. At a minimum, the addition of several new members, each with their own priorities and constraints, will require careful integration into an existing structure.

One manner in which the cooperative seeks to navigate these complexities is through the formation of local governing boards. These smaller bodies represent the interests of a specific geographic area and interface with the primary board through elected delegates.
This model is reminiscent of federated cooperative structures, such as those found in large credit unions, with the key distinction that these local boards would not constitute separate legal entities. Rather, they would have the authority to make decisions on certain local matters themselves, including pricing, marketing strategies, and how patronage dividends generated in their region are reinvested.

Looking further ahead, the question of ownership becomes even more consequential in the context of technological change. The future of work in the last mile will be shaped in large part by automation, particularly the increasing adoption of autonomous vehicles. Who will own the robots?

As these technologies proliferate, it remains unclear how ownership of the last mile will be redefined. The platform cooperative model offers one possible path forward by ensuring that the people most affected by these changes help shape them and retain a meaningful stake in the systems that replace or reshape their work.

In the end, the question of who owns the last mile admits no final verdict. It is one that must be answered ceaselessly by those who inhabit it, contest it, and give it meaning.

Cooperators have a range of tools at their disposal to do so, spanning governance, operations, and capital. Over time, new forms of ownership will continue to emerge, offering communities ever more forceful alternatives to the rule of incumbent last-mile transportation and delivery platforms.