In the summer of 2008, after 6 years of building People’s Grocery and developing small-scale enterprises and urban agriculture projects in West Oakland, I came to the realization that these projects were ultimately too small to make a significant impact on the magnitude of food and nutrition needs in the community. This realization came after learning what the level of unmet food demand in West Oakland was and comparing that unmet demand to the output of our efforts.

To find out what food demand in West Oakland was I commissioned two studies. The first was a market study of West Oakland produced by consultant Pete Davis. This study determined that West Oakland residents spend about $60 million for “food-at-home” (not including food consumed at restaurants) each year. We then estimated that the food supply shortage relative to food demand in West Oakland, sometimes called the “grocery gap”, was around 60%. This meant that $36 million in annual food demand in West Oakland is not being met through local food outlets and is, consequently, being spent at food stores outside of the community.  

Once I knew what the level of food demand in West Oakland really was in both dollars and pounds, I looked at People’s Grocery’s output in 2008. By comparing our food sales to the $31 million dollars of unmet food demand and the pounds of food that we grew and distributed to the 11.5 million pounds of unmet food consumption, I came to the sobering realization of just how small, in real terms, our impact actually is. Our total efforts in 2008 met less than 1% of West Oakland’s food needs in dollars and less than 1.5% in pounds (the weight figure is higher because we distribute a portion of our food at no charge).

So while People’s Grocery gets a ton of recognition and celebration from across the nation for our innovative work in bringing healthy foods into the neighborhood, and while we’ve poured a lot of time, money and effort into our work, the sobering truth is that People’s Grocery has just barely chipped away at the surface of the food insecurity problem in West Oakland. How’s that for some humble pie?!!

Some of you might be thinking that it can’t really be that low because there are also other groups in West Oakland working on this issue and the result of these collective efforts must have a bigger impact than any single effort. Well I also estimated what the collective impact of People’s Grocery and the three other main West Oakland food organizations (City Slicker Farms, OBUGS, and Mo Better Food) might be. Assuming that all of our organizations have about the same level of output in sales and in food pounds, my analysis indicated that we collectively still met less than 1% in demand in dollars and 2.5% in pounds.

This analysis made it clear to me how imperative it is that we scale up our work to levels in which we can make a bigger dent on the issue. After grappling with what models have the greatest potential for reaching this level of scale I came to the conclusion that a grocery store is still, by the far, the best way to do it. In our preliminary planning we’ve projected that our store will capture about 30% of the West Oakland food market. That’s a level of impact that dramatically dwarfs our current efforts. And we’re now beginning to develop a low-cost low-tech enterprise that can enable the next iteration in our scaling up so that we can show that we’re moving toward a grocery store (more on this to come). But no matter what strategies People’s Grocery pursues, achieving scale is becoming a central component of our work.

I often say that while People’s Grocery has done good work and demonstrated some worthy models, our biggest and best work has yet to come.