If you’ve never been to San Francisco’s Mission district, it’s a dense neighborhood of mid-rise buildings, many of them rental apartments, with street-level commercial spaces on main streets. It’s pretty impoverished for public green space or greenery of any kind, with the exception of a couple large parks (most notably Dolores Park) and a few community gardens. At a glance, it’s the kind of place that has “food desert” written all over it. But on a recent stay in the Mission (visiting friends for New Year’s), I was inspired by a excellent example of a local/organic foodshed reaching far into a hyper-urban setting.
Our friends introduced us to a tiny neighborhood shop called Bi Rite. I was pretty skeptical at first, as the name sounded like a discount grocery store with oppressive amounts of fluorescent lighting and aisles of products that little resembled food. But I was pleasantly surprised. Bi Rite is a little oasis of of local and organic produce, high quality meats, and really friendly people.
I was impressed by the dozens of index card-sized bios (like the one pictured below) they had posted in the produce section, each one introducing shoppers to a different farm that grew some of the produce offered. Every card also listed the exact number of miles the food traveled from farm to store, leaving the customers, the vast majority of whom live within walking distance, with no question about their foodmiles.
I was also inspired by two ways in which Bi Rite breaks the mold of what I have come to expect of small boutique grocers: it’s unpretentious, and by San Francisco standards, affordable, no more expensive than nearby Rainbow Grocery or Whole Foods. And while those other two establishments serve a drive-up market from beyond their immediate vicinity, Bi Rite clearly cateres to folks who live no further than they can comfortably walk with bags of groceries.
Bringing Local/Organic to Every Block
In very dense urban environments, there’s often a corner store every few blocks, and several grocery stores every square mile. Unlike Bi Rite, most tend to stock the usual smorgasbord of highly-processed food-like substances, cheap booze, etc. But what if communities in urban neighborhoods banded together to lobby their local stores carrotmob style to start carrying local/organic products? Enter a deep green corner store renaissance…
Do you live in a hyper-urban environment like the Mission or Manhattan? What’s your Zone 1 access to affordable, local/organic food like?
Bi-Rite is completely amazing! Did you make it to the bi-rite creamery up the street too?
I saw it, but didn’t make it there. I can only imagine amazing things resulting from crossing something as wonderful as bi-rite with ice cream.