I built this map because I was curious: where are all the worker-owned businesses in Germany? Turns out, nobody had put them on a map before.
Three public sources → merged → deduplicated → geocoded → published.
I scraped worker-coops.de (44 entries, curated by worker-coop advocates), Wikipedia's list of worker cooperatives (German entries), and the GitHub tech-coops directory. All three were merged, deduplicated by name, and classified by governance model (worker majority, governance-based, statute-based, or in founding).
Each business was then geocoded to its street address using OpenStreetMap's Nominatim API. For addresses that weren't obvious, I visited their websites directly and extracted the address from their Impressum pages.
The result: 62 verified worker-owned businesses across 15 sectors — from IT co-ops in Berlin to carpentry workshops in Bavaria, food co-ops in Leipzig to roofing co-ops in Bremen.
Every entry is attributed to its source. The database is CC BY-SA 4.0. New entries can be submitted via the map's "Add a business" form — they're reviewed and added within hours.
I like playing with AI, databases, maps, and anything that combines all three. This is one of those projects.
If you find this useful, have corrections, or want to collaborate — hit me up.
💼 LinkedIn 🐙 GitHubThe data is CC BY-SA 4.0. The map is free. The co-ops are real.