Owners Tom and Jenny Bertrand are set to soon retire but so far have had no luck selling it.

So instead of seeing it shut the doors, there are moves to gauge interest in forming a community co-op to keep it operational - much like the Wangoom community did to save its about 17 years ago.

Richard Ziegeler, a Warrnambool City councillor and long-time Dennington resident, said pandemic lockdowns had hampered efforts to call a public meeting about the idea.

Mr Ziegeler said the store had been part of the fabric of the Dennington community for years and he was keen to see it stay that way. "People could argue that it's become a suburb, but there is a sense of community," he said.

"It's a very viable business. It makes money. It's a milk bar that works because it's got the community and it runs the post office and it has a newsagency.

"Tom's been able to maintain the business, even in the face of a big supermarket next door.

"It's an illustration of the importance to the community that it has survived and it's still there and still viable."

Mr Ziegeler hopes to schedule a Zoom meeting with people interested in forming a co-op which would work the same as the Wangoom General Store. It is something he is doing outside his role as a city councillor.

"The (Wangoom) local community bought the shop as a co-operative," he said.

"That's still operating and still operating very, very well. The community is able to use it as a community hub and collect their paper and use the post office and all that sort of stuff.

"That's very important for Dennington, particularly those to the north and west of Dennington who use the general store as the hub, a place to pick up a coffee before work, a place for their mail, their newspaper, all that sort of stuff.

"With a co-op, the plan is you can buy a share to be a member. The price of the shares is yet to be determined.

"We have to get enough members to generate enough to get a deposit so as a co-op we can get a bank loan for the business. If you buy a lot more shares you get a voting right."

Mr Ziegeler said Mr Bertrand had been the "king of Dennington" for a long time. "He knows most of the families here," he said.

Mr Bertrand said that in the 17 years he had been operating the store, his customers had become his friends.

"I know most people by their first name. I know how they like their coffee," he said.

"It's a growing community. There's a lot of new community here but there's a lot of new community here too that are very, very loyal."

But after almost a decade fighting melanoma cancer, he said he was ready to take some "Tom and Jen time".

"I've been to Peter Mac for the last 10 years with melanoma cancer," he said. "To start off I was nearly living there, then it was out to three months, six months and now it's out to 12-month scans. While they keep sifting out the bad stuff, you stay good."

Mr Bertrand said he had one more visit before he had been 10 years in the clear. That's just one of the reasons why he is ready to retire, while they still have time to go and do things including spending more time with his grandchildren both here and interstate.

The pandemic and border closures mean he has only seen his grandchild in New South Wales once. "It's like milking cows, you're here every day. It's just time for some Tom and Jen time," he said. "It's still for sale. It's been very hard to sell." He said he had tried to sell it off and on since he was diagnosed with cancer.

But rather than just closing and leaving the community without a post office, the idea of the community pulling together to do something to keep it was hatched.

"There are still quite a few that pick up their mail from here every day that don't have postal deliveries," he said. "It's still a very viable post office and business."

Mr Bertrand is nostalgic about the store - a place he used to visit as a kid to buy lollies.

"I'm born and bred in Dennington. I've lived here all my life other when I was away doing my apprenticeship and people that were coming to the shop well before we took over and they'll keep coming after we leave if it remains," he said.

"It used to be the Shamrock, when I was a kid it was Daltons and now it's Tom's shop. We serve children of kids who used to come here as kids themselves."

The shop itself has been operating in Dennington for "well over a century", Mr Bertrand said. "Back in the day the post office was across the road when there used to be seven shops in Dennington along Drummond Street, which was the highway," he said.

"It was here before Nestles was here." Nestles first began production on site in 1911 and for almost a century was the heart of the community.

The Wangoom community dug deep in 2004 to keep its 140-year-old store operating. The Wangoom Co-operative was formed and bought the building and attached house.

Wangoom Co-operative chairman Jack Melican said when the community saw stores close in Garvoc, Purnim and Mailors Flat and realised its own store was struggling, it decided to act.

"At the time, people were just accepting that country shops were closing," Mr Melican said. But 16 years later, it is still going strong. "It's been a great success really," he said.

After a series of meetings, about 32 residents opted to by a $2500 or $5000 share in the co-op, raising $140,000 which helped them secure a loan to buy the property.

"They are shareholders in the freehold, if the place was to go down they would get their investment back and any surplus money would be reinvested back into the community," Mr Melican said.

He said there were different models and ways of starting a co-op, and it was a good way for a community to keep what they had.

Mr Ziegeler said Dennington would try and follow the Wangoom model because it worked, but that depended on how many shareholders and members they were able to attract.

The Wangoom co-operative was still paying off the loan, which was now down to about $75,000, but last year it spent about $30,000 doing repairs and renovations and this year will install solar panels.

Mr Melican said the idea of the co-operative was to keep putting money back into the business so the person who had the business had the best possible chance of it being successful.

It has been such a success that the co-operative was now just basically a landlord for the property, he said. "The business is basically run as a for-profit, like you would run a shop," Mr Melican said.

During COVID-19, the co-operative was able to support the store stay afloat despite the lockdown restrictions on its tearooms. "It was something we could afford to do because we have got so much equity in the physical building," Mr Melican said.

He said the current tenant was a Wangoom local who grew up visiting the shop as a kid. "That's been a dream of hers since she was a kid to run the Wangoom shop, she's in there now and that's fantastic," Mr Melican said.

"When there's no COVID around people gather on that doorstep on a Saturday morning to get the paper, and that's the only way in a community that people will see each other." Anyone interested in the Dennington co-op should contact Mr Ziegeler on: therapy.z@hotmail.com

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