Randy Lee
Chief Financial Officer, PCC Community Markets (retired)
Randy Lee is among four outstanding cooperative leaders who will receive the cooperative community’s most prestigious honor on October 9, 2025, when they are inducted into the Cooperative Hall of Fame at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
Attend the induction dinner and ceremony as a sponsor
Randy spent nearly 50 years transforming natural food and co-op groceries in the U.S. starting with Puget Consumer Co-op, now known as PCC Community Markets, in 1970.
Randy saw the co-op as a vehicle for community organizing and an economic institution. This made him excited to help grow the co-op that has become the nation’s largest consumer-owned grocer. Within a year, he became the store manager. As the co-op grew, so did Randy’s responsibilities. He began to transform PCC into a store that prioritizes the healthfulness and nutrition of its products.
Randy attended the University of Washington but left after his junior year to work for the U.S. National Student Association in Washington, DC where he managed a grant to create Student Course and Teacher Evaluations for 10 campuses across the country. Later he returned to the University of Washington to complete a degree in economics, a major that required accounting classes that he resented taking but later turned out to be among the most useful and indispensable courses necessary for his role at PCC. But life had other plans and brought him back to DC with his degree unfinished.
Fast forward 14 years later, Randy found himself at PCC Community Markets with an opportunity to enroll in UW’s Executive MBA program for full-time employees with complete support from their employer, which PCC’s board and management provided. Enrollment required him to go back to finish his undergraduate degree. He completed the MBA program two years later. PCC’s investment in his professional development paved a path for a 47-year career with the co-op.
When Randy began his career at PCC Community Markets, the co-op had one storefront, 650 members, and generated $66,000 in revenue. Buoyed by his leadership, PCC Community Markets has grown into the nation’s largest consumer-owned grocer with 15 stores, more than 100,000 members, a staff of 2,000 and $450 million in annual revenue. The co-op opened its 16th store—its first-ever small format market—in downtown Seattle on July 15.
As CFO of PCC for nearly 40 years, Randy helped craft a blueprint for success that was examined and emulated by co-ops nationally and globally, from Moscow, Idaho to Tokyo, Japan. In addition, PCC has provided 1.5 million meals to communities in need and served more than 7,000 students through its Cooking Classes program—both initiatives spearheaded with Randy’s support.
Active in the outdoors at a young age, Randy has been a trout fisherman since before kindergarten. He took up golf in junior high school, as it got him outdoors and in green spaces long before he lived near the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.
His early years at PCC generated his support of healthy and natural foods through the co-op grocery model to help preserve farmland in Washington. His unwavering effort helped to create 250 gardening plots across Seattle and was instrumental in founding the PCC Farmland Trust (now Washington Farmland Trust), where he served as a Board Director for 19 years. The Trust has conserved 29 farms in Washington totaling 3,063 acres.
To understand Randy’s accomplishments is to understand that he believed cooperatives were a vehicle for community organizing, which spread from PCC Community Markets to a national movement for grocery co-ops.
Randy was part of the original “six pack”—an ad hoc group of food co-op representatives that founded the National Cooperative Grocers Association, now known as National Co+op Grocers. He served on the NCG board for nearly two decades and actively supported a considerable reorganization in 2004 that transformed NCG’s operating model from nine regional cooperative groups to a national cooperative. One of his major accomplishments as an NCG board member was his strong support for staff to secure their first purchasing contract with United Natural Foods—a game changer for grocery co-ops nationwide.
Randy’s desire to grow grocery co-ops was not limited to PCC Community Markets. Throughout his career, he found opportunities to advance the sector and expand its influence and reach. Early in his career, when a group of PCC members chose to branch off and create their own neighborhood co-op, Randy offered financial support and access to PCC’s membership list. He did the same for two other co-ops.
His involvement in founding the National Cooperative Grocers Association was rooted in the purpose of unifying food co-ops in order to optimize operational and marketing resources, strengthen purchasing power, and ultimately offer more value to food co-op shoppers everywhere.
In 2017 and 2018, Randy was recognized for his dedicated leadership and exemplary service with a Cooperative Service Award from the Consumer Cooperative Management Association (CCMA) and an Executive Excellence Award from Seattle Business Magazine.
After nearly five decades of service to the cooperative movement, Randy’s slogan as a retiree is “What’s not to love about 7-day weekends?” He spends his time hiking, backpacking, golfing, fly fishing, reading and hanging out at home. His favorite outdoor experience has been a two-week rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, although the fly fishing weeks in Canada are pretty close contenders.
A consistent advocate for new initiatives and ways of working together, Randy Lee has been central to the growth of the food co-op sector. Under his tenure as CFO at PCC Community Markets, he helped establish processes and systems that set the foundation for the co-op’s growth and prosperity.
For his personification of cooperation and teaching it through his work, Randy Lee will be honored with induction into the Cooperative Hall of Fame. Join us in Washington, DC on October 9 as we celebrate Randy and his contributions to the cooperative community.