Meet an innoFaither: Cristin Cooper
Meet Cristin Cooper, founder of Coop’s Soups, a social enterprise that builds community through soup. Cristin makes the best soups we’ve ever tasted, but soup is more ministry than business for her. Committed to deepening relationships where she lives in Brookeville, MD, Cristin uses soup to encourage people to come together, to support neighbors experiencing food insecurity, and to uplift her community.
What faith(s), if any, do you practice? How does your tradition and/or spiritual practice inspire or influence you as an innovator?
I practice the Christian faith tradition. As an innovator, I draw a lot of inspiration from the life of Jesus and how he loved and cared for his neighbors — feeding them, healing them, abiding with them, and working for their flourishing. When discerning a new solution or even just how to pivot a direction or two, I look for how it can reflect Jesus’s love for God and compassion for his neighbors.
In this spirit, when starting Coop’s Soups, I prioritized meaningful connections with my neighbors as an important part of my business and ministry. We sold jars of soup at the farmers market to meet people in person. We locally sourced our produce to support nearby farmers and to connect customers to seasonal eating. We encouraged customers to share their jars of soup, extending dignity, compassion and love to those with whom they break bread — and, in the process, grow in deeper intimacy with God’s love.
What are you currently working on?
Growing a garden! We cook Coop’s Soups in a local church’s kitchen. This past fall, the church gave us their neglected garden plot as well as permission to expand the garden into their back field. Starting this spring, a team of volunteers (many of whom we met at the farmers market!) will come together to garden and grow vegetables to be made into soup.
Coop’s Soups currently hosts a monthly gathering where volunteers (also many of whom we met at the farmers market) come together to make, eat, and donate soup to our neighbors dealing with food insecurity. Our vision is that we have one team of volunteers making soup, one team of volunteers making homemade bread (this team just started this past October), and one team of volunteers harvesting vegetables in the garden. We would then come together to share a meal of soup, bread, and vegetables before packaging the food up to be shared at our local food pantry.
As we say at Coop’s Soups, if the food is good enough for our neighbors dealing with food insecurity then the food is good enough for us. We will never share food we ourselves wouldn’t eat. We all eat.
What can we find you doing when you’re not working?
I literally laughed out loud when I read this question because I’m a mom of a 3-year-old and 1-year-old. You can find me playing with them at the library, playground, and at our local nature centers. In the wee hours of the morning, you can find me prioritizing moving my body outside, and you can find me at all hours of the day in my home kitchen, cooking and cleaning up (a blend of my love for cooking and also because we are a family that has to eat!).
What is piquing your curiosity these days?
I’m really excited about the work Priya Parker is doing on Substack. Priya is the author of the book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters. She is active on Substack with her publication Group Life, where she teaches people how to design meaningful gatherings, navigate group dynamics, and build community, sharing tools from her work as a facilitator. She offers free bi-weekly newsletters with reflections, hosts paid live teaching sessions (Substack Lives) for deeper practice, and covers topics like creating belonging, handling conflict, and hosting effective meetings. Such good content, and such creative modes of sharing it!
What is something you’d like help on?
How to scale a business and stay true to mission and impact. I’m always discerning if Coop’s Soups should stay an LLC or become a 501c3.
What is something you can offer others in the innoFaith network?
I am a rockstar at spending time getting to know a community/context and its needs. I really shine in identifying who in the community I should interview to understand the space and what's happening on the ground. This process helps validate my thoughts and ideas as well as gain supporters as I go.
I am also gifted in identifying and executing Minimum Viable Products (MVPs). I’m particularly ruthless at saving time and resources and iterating based on real-world user data.
Through conversations with you about your project ideas, I can help you with these things too!
Meet an innoFaither is our series to introduce the inspiring optimists in the innoFaith world and what they’re working on and thinking about. We hope it helps you find and engage with each other across the network to advance faith-rooted social innovation and interfaith collaboration for social impact. Or just meet some cool people. Find the full series at innofaith.org/meet-an-innofaither.