Our Mission

The Volunteer State Cooperative (VOLCO) is a non-profit educational cooperative located in Dickson, Tennessee. VOLCO was established in 1998 to ensure all children have access to proper nutrition and other essentials in all member districts. By joining nutrition directors together across multiple districts we can help reduce district costs by increasing purchasing power through group discounts. This allows all member schools to promote and provide better nutrition to its’ students and allows smaller school districts to have more buying power.

School nutrition has evolved over the years and VOLCO has adapted to the changes working hard to lessen the burden and assist with the responsibilities at the district level. VOLCO currently has 39 school district members in Middle and West Tennessee, with 212 schools that serves nearly 100,000 students. We strive to serve delicious and healthy meal to all students.

Our cooperative served nearly 14 MILLION meals and snacks during the 2022/23 school year. Our combined commodity entitlement was over 3.2 million for the 2022/23 school year. If you have been wanting to process commodities or expand your current processing, our cooperative would be the perfect place to do so, especially if you are a small district. We work together to meet delivery requirements and build trucks so smaller districts may process, receive a variety of products, and order only what they can use.

Our district members strive to provide a better learning experience for our students and help with the direction and leadership of promoting high quality nutrition throughout the school systems and school community.