Increasing Access to Healthy, Community Foods

45 Stories for 45 Years

Contributor: Brahm Ahmadi, CEO, Community Foods Market

My mission to bring the first full-service grocery store to West Oakland since the 1970s almost came to an abrupt end in 2016. After a long and expensive journey considering nine sites for Community Foods Market, we finally secured a location for the store on San Pablo Avenue with an angel investor willing to lend the capital to purchase the site, but not directly to our small, community-based organization. 

The East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) had joined the project early on as a consultant to provide us with technical assistance in managing the real estate process and in that moment, stepped up in a remarkable way. EBALDC took on the loan themselves, purchased the property, and leased it to us. Even more remarkably, as the project developed and grew more and more complex, EBALDC stepped up yet again, assisting us in convening a diverse range of partners and helping us overcome the barriers that have prevented others from bringing a grocery store to the neighborhood for decades. 

There is no doubt in my mind that if EBALDC had not stepped up in the way they did in that critical moment that Community Foods Market would not exist, and West Oakland would still not have a full service grocery store today. 

Unlike other affordable housing developers focused solely on housing, EBALDC’s focus on the social determinants of health — a broader spectrum of both equity and overall community health and wellbeing — led them to recognize the essential part that grocery stores play as a neighborhood anchor and their role in catalyzing neighborhood development. They saw the opportunity to better serve residents of the San Pablo Corridor by lending the community their power, and saw beyond the limitations of their own projects to support Community Food Markets to give neighborhood residents better access to healthy food choices. 

We opened our doors in 2019 and have been privileged to serve the West Oakland Community ever since. COVID-19 has been difficult for West Oakland residents, many of whom already have difficulty getting to grocery, but we will continue to show up for the community the way that EBALDC showed up for us.