People’s Grocery & Mandela Foods Cooperative
Many people have asked us about our relationship to the Mandela Foods Cooperative effort here in West Oakland. I want to quickly tell people about People’s Grocery’s past relationship to this effort and our support for it.
People’s Grocery was a part of this effort about 4 years ago under what was then called the West Oakland Food Collaborative. At that time the store that the collaborative was planning for was called SoulFoods Coop. For a number of reasons, including differences about location, store size and decision making process, People’s Grocery chose to pull out of the effort (along with other local groups such as Mo Better Food and Black Dot Artists Collective) and began pursuing our own store model that would entail a different geographic area, as well as approach, from Mandela Foods Cooperative.
A smaller group of people continued on under the West Oakland Food Collaborative banner to develop the original retail store concept, which was subsequently renamed the Mandela Foods Cooperative, and to secure a retail location on 7th St. across from the West Oakland BART station. After many years of hard work and the overcoming of numerous challenges, the Mandela Foods Coop secured a lease and is improving the location with the hope of opening in the near future. People’s Grocery is happy for this group’s long-deserved progress toward launching a retail space and supports their future success in the community.
Why would we support another effort to start a grocery store when we are trying to do the same? The reason is simple: Mandela Foods Coop, similarly to People’s Grocery, is working to create much needed health and economic opportunity in West Oakland. Rather than taking a competitive position, we believe that the level of unmet food demand in West Oakland is far greater than what any single enterprise can meet on its own and that there is plenty of opportunity in the marketplace for numerous community-based ventures to co-exist and thrive. This is easily demonstrated by the fact that, while there are 53 liquor stores in West Oakland today, 60-70% of the community’s food shopping is still unmet locally. So we support Mandela Foods’ success as part of a vision for a robust and diverse network of food retailers, distributors and producers in West Oakland.
