The other night, I happened to walk into Centennial Market, a local convenience store in Springfield while the owner and a few community members were discussing a viable opportunity for the store to provide fresh, organic produce, sourced from a local distributor. I was just there to buy some tea, but the owner, Mahi, noticed I was listening in on their conversation and asked me if I’d like to join the discussion. He explained to me his plan to buy large quantities of produce directly from the distributor36 lbs of bananas, for exampleand portion out the food into boxes, including eight to ten varying types of fruits and vegetables, that would be custom ordered and tailored to an individual’s or family’s needs. He told me that this idea for the prepaid boxes is a new strategy for the market. His previous attempt of stocking the market with local produce failed because there weren’t enough customers coming in to buy the food, so most of it would end up rotting away on the shelves.
Like many other local produce retail efforts, the immediate and long-term challenge he’s facing is finding enough support from community members to keep the prices low, in order to compete with our area’s large grocers such as Fred Meyers and small alternative markets like Sundance Natural Foods. In class, we learned about similar efforts from Willamette Farm and Food Coalition, who developed a website where customers can order foods directly from local farms and be able to pick them up once a week at designated locations around town.
Talking with Mahi and his customers got me thinking about how his effort to offer local organic food to the neighborhood compares to the projects of Julie Guthman’s Community Studies students in Santa Cruz, as described in her research paper, Bringing good food to others: investigating the subjects of alternative food practice. Guthman’s article describes a ‘good neighbor program’ as an effort to convince liquor and convenience store owners to stock fresh produce, so people in areas with limited access to fresh food can have an opportunity to purchase it (432). In some ways, this is what Mahi is offering to the Centennial Shopping Centeran opportunity to conveniently purchase organic produce, in an area where it is relatively unavailable. Admittedly, creating an opportunity for folks in the Centennial neighborhood to buy local won’t necessarily translate into radical social change, but it’s a start and a valiant effort from a concerned local business owner.
Guthman’s article focuses on her students’ interactions with African-American communities in various parts of the United States (433). While the demographic of the Centennial neighborhood in Springfield may not be similar to that of communities described by Guthman’s students, their needs are similar. Community members meeting at Centennial Market described convenience and affordability as their top two limiting factors for buying local organic produce. When a person is buying for a family of four, I can understand why they may be opposed to shopping at one of our local natural food stores such as Sundance or Capellas. These markets are great for some folks in that they offer a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere with friendly staff and locally sourced products that are sensitive to many people’s diets. But all this luxury definitely comes at a price that is too costly for many families. In addition, bringing your kids into a small intimate market like Sundance may prove to be more of a hassle than it’s worth. Mahi’s business plan seeks to outcompete these smaller markets by offering solutions to the hurdles of convenience and affordability. I could tell that Mahi genuinely cares about providing organic food for his neighborhood. He’s not looking to turn a huge profit off his business model, because as he told me, the beer sales already pay the rent.
Works Cited
Guthman, J. “Bringing Good Food To Others: Investigating The Subjects Of Alternative Food Practice.” Cultural Geographies (2008): 431-47. Print.