[00:00:08] Speaker A: Good planets are hard to find out Temperate zones and tropic climbs and run through currents and thriving seas Winds blowing through breathing trees and strong ozone and safe sunshine.
Good planets are hard to find. Yeah.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hello, K SQUID listeners. It's every other Sunday again and you're listening to Sustainability Now, a bi weekly case good radio show focused on environment, sustainability and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California and the world. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipschitz. Food insecurity and food deserts are a common challenge in many low income and minority neighborhoods across the United States. Big supermarket companies avoid those areas because stores are unprofitable and small stores find that they make the most money on junk food, sodas and liquors.
Saba Grocers, an Oakland based organization founded in 2019, works with those small stores to enable them to sell fresh produce sourced for minority farmers across the region. My guest today on Sustainability now is Leena Ghanham, co founder of the Saba Grocers initiative in Oakland.
Lena Ghanham, welcome to Sustainability Now.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: Hello. Thank you.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Why don't you start by giving us a brief description, first of all, of the mission of Saba Grocers and how you started it.
[00:01:42] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah. Well, Saba Grocers is based in Oakland, California. We work with corner store owners to expand fresh fruit access and food deserts through the apartheid neighborhoods and underserved neighborhoods. And we do that by supplying fresh produce and working with farmers, but also doing civic engagement and education on produce and healthy foods. Our ultimate goal is to address and impact the health disparities across race and fresh food access.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Well, now you've answered all of the questions that I have.
[00:02:17] Speaker C: Oh, no. Okay. And I can actually, like, just pull up our mission statement.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Well, no, we will come back to all of those things. So I read that you used to be a public health worker and I was wondering, how did you get from that to this project?
[00:02:33] Speaker C: Yeah, I was a public health researcher.
So I worked for a research think tank in Berkeley that looked at, excuse me.
That looked at the distribution of alcohol and tobacco across Alameda county and specifically, I mean, just across the county. And through that, got to meet a lot of corner store owners because they are the main. One of the primary outlets. They're not the only ones that are licensed to distribute alcohol and tobacco in the state of California. But obviously the Safeways and the chains do as well.
In terms of numbers, they're a lot big, they're a lot bigger. In terms of size, they're a lot smaller. So it kind of makes sense. But I got to meet a lot of the store owners and at some point in our research I got into looking into the pro soda distribution as well and how that impacts public health. And through there I learned a lot about the Oakland soda tax through the store owners and the store owner customers while I was I was at the stores. And yeah started digging deeper and deeper and found out at some point that they were interested in running engaging in in the city with the city of Oakland on how the city uses the soda tax revenues which was up for for deliberations during the budget process in May in and I was tasked by one of our store owners to go around the stores and get others to be excited about this. So we I ran a campaign with a few store owners in 2019 and my co founder to to get the store owners out to to city hall in Oakland and engage on how the city this term decides to spend the soda tax revenues in Oakland at that year. At the year that year it was the first year the city was deter how to use the soda tax revenues collected and I believe from my memory was about 18 million that they needed to determine. I'm not 100 sure if it was. I can't remember at this moment if it was 18 million a year or 18 million in the two year. Because Oakland has a two year budget process.
So forgive me on that. I can can look it up if that's important.
And we engaged with it and with that process with a civic process had store owners come out speak about the barriers they face in stocking fresh produce in comparison to soda, alcohol and tobacco. And what we found out what was very eye opening. What I found out was very eye opening. What City hall heard was very eye opening was that there's barriers structure what I would refer to as structural barriers in the supply chain that prevents small businesses from acquiring and stocking fresh produce in comparison to soda. And that's become one of our primary programs here at saba.
The other things the store owners did so they listed a few items in the campaign that they need help with in order to shift their stock and or increase their stock of fresh produce. And one of them was not inability to access the supply chain for the pro in the produce industry. Inability to access the infrastructure needed.
Sorry, excuse me. Inability to afford the infrastructure needed to support produce in a small store which is usually needs refrigeration and a lot of times a wet rack which are much more expensive. And there are store owners noted also just like wanting training in terms of how to handle different produce especially Culturally relevant items in Oakland is a very diverse city. So the produce that customers request aren't necessarily something that store owners know how to handle. So they came out to city council. About 89 of them at the time came out, made public comments and attended city help meetings on the budget process. This was May and June. And expressed their experience of trying to stock produce and failing and or being taxed as a small business without additional supports or initiatives to help them shift the issue. The products that are being taxed and express their interest essentially to stock produce. If the city were to invest the soda tax in addressing the structural barriers small businesses and specifically corner stores face in stocking produce and it was a successful campaign. We received an allocation of $200,000 from the Oakland soda tax to start and lay the foundation for what is right now Saba Grocer's initiative. And all the points the store owners pointed out during the public campaign were, are the. Are the foundation of our programs right now. It's essentially what we do as an organization is these three points they brought up and if I may take just one step back and share that the Oakland soda tax was the ballot measure was up for vote in 2016. It started collection 2017.
The the tax was put on the ballot specifically because of the impact of diabetes on underserved neighborhoods in Oakland. And I want to say off top of my head, it was what the ordinance says is 2/3 of black and brown children in Oakland are predicted to have diabetes to. To develop diabetes in their lifetime and also another outrageous number for non black people of color as well. So it's, it's unacceptable. And when you look at public health policies, as a person that was researching public health and aware of this industry or not into this field, the policy itself, the tax collection itself is not enough to address these conditions. You have to accompany it with programmings and initiatives that change the conditions in the neighborhoods to improve. Improve these disparities. So to me, as a, as a resident of Oakland, as a voter in Oakland and a taxpayer here, it having the soda tax on the books is not alone going to lower my probability of developing diabetes or my children or my family or friends. It's going to have to be accompanied with residents engaging in the civic process and ensuring the city does invest those money towards the programs that would address these conditions of diabetes and health related diseases, chronic diseases.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Let me ask you a couple of questions about the soda tax itself. I mean, how much is it.
[00:09:15] Speaker C: So the soda tax is intended to.
Is designed to decrease over time when it first started, that was the first budget process we were involved in. It was about 18 million. And forgive me that I can't.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: No, no, I meant, I meant how much per drink?
[00:09:30] Speaker C: You know, it is a penny per ounce right now in Oakland. So if you buy a 12 ounce bottle, you're paying 12 cents sense on it.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: I mean I, I know that part of the theory is if you increase the price of soda, people will buy less soda, but that doesn't. Has never struck me as a fairly very compelling point. Right. It's sort of classical economics. And on the other hand, was, was the tax, I mean was the argument for the tax more for the programming then, then sort of to reduce consumption?
[00:10:06] Speaker C: So let me answer the first question. So before Oakland put a soda tax, Mexico has a national soda tax that is reporting high success in terms of people not drinking soda. Then after that Berkeley put a soda tax and San Francisco and Oakland put a soda tax and then we won't get. You may want to get into this later. But then the industry did organize at the state level. Now we can't have any more soda taxes because of the state preemption. But in the, in the United States because it's not a national tax. Yes, folks can drive to, to San Leandro and get a soda from there versus buying it from Oakland and they. And not pay the tax.
So is it fully. Is the decline we're seeing fully because people are not consuming produce soda? It's. I haven't seen an evaluation on that yet. The tax is decreasing significantly.
Like I said, I haven't seen personally an evaluation on that. In terms of your core question, is that enough for people to not consume soda? I, I'm not of the belief of that. I think it's one pronged solution. It's a multi pronged solution. That public policy is one way to contribute to lowering the consumption of produce. But soda but alone is not. It's not a solution.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Did you say that tax collections from the soda tax in Oakland have gone down?
[00:11:30] Speaker C: The, the tax revenue has gone down.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: It has.
[00:11:33] Speaker C: They're still collecting at the same, the same number of outlets and distributors. But then total revenues has gone down significantly. I think right now it's at 7 million a year.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Wow. So. So. But there's no way to tell whether people are crossing city limits in order to, to buy. Although.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: Yeah, that seems, that's part of it. But it's also a distributor tax. So from my knowledge, some just soda beverage distributors did leave the city of Oakland. But I'm not sure if that's related to the sort of tax itself or any other economic reasons. Yeah, but that there's a loss of tax collection there.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, let's go on and just talk briefly about.
I mentioned, I think food deserts and food insecurity. And I was wondering if you could give our listeners a brief definition of both.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: Yeah, so food deserts is a term that was used to describe neighborhood. That is used to describe neighborhoods that have low access to fresh produce and healthy products. It has been.
Has been. What's the term? Just re. Rethought. And we agree on that. As, as a term that describes the term desert refers to a natural phenomena that a lot of times does provide.
It's an ecosystem that is very effective and very natural. And the newer and more recent term that we do agree on and use more often is food apartheid, which refers to public policies and the lack of public policies, the activities of corporations and big capitalism, essentially that creates the conditions that we currently have for across urban America. This isn't an issue that's just for Oakland or the Bay Area, but we do have neighborhoods in Oakland, like West Oakland is nearly 20,000 residents. And there's one co op that I believe is nearly like 2,000, maybe 2,500 square feet. Feet only. So in terms of. That is a food apartheid neighborhood.
And that is not. That is by design. So that's the term. That's why folks are trying to move from the term of food deserts into food apartheid. Because it is intentional. And what we've looked into and the research done, it is certainly not natural phenomena for, for that to happen.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Okay, well, that's good to know. I hadn't, I hadn't seen the term, but. Okay, yes, I'll use that one in the future.
[00:14:08] Speaker C: Thank you. Yes.
And then in terms of foods and security, it's.
That one is a multi sort of level definition there. It does refer to economic access and being able to afford produce, but it also refers to if you have certain health conditions and you cannot just walk to the corner store and eat chips for lunch, that means you refer your food insecure because you cannot just consume that food. But even. And so, but if you don't have a certain income and you. All you live around is a corner store and you have to ride two buses to get a grocery store. And that just pushes you out, you know, over what you can afford. That's also food insecurity.
Food insecurity is really just this when you're doing research and asking residents, it's this feeling of not Having enough food. When you're hungry, it doesn't necessarily mean right now you're hungry, but does that happen at the end of the month? That's your food insecure. It's the knowledge that I don't know when the next meal is going to come from. I could get the next meal from my neighbor, from, I could get a benefit here from there, but it doesn't necessarily mean I know where my food is coming from. That's food insecurity.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: You're listening to Sustainability now. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipschitz and my guest today is Lena Ghanham, co founder and CEO, I guess, or executive director of the Saba Grocers Initiative in Oakland, which seeks to provide fresh produce to corner stores across low income neighborhoods that are experiencing food apartheid, which is a term that I've just learned. And, and I was wondering, let's go on and talk about the structural conditions that you mentioned earlier. The, the first question is why don't major supermarket chains set up stores in those neighborhoods that are experiencing food apartheid?
[00:16:02] Speaker C: Well, the simple question there is, it's the cost, is it impacts their low, their bottom line. Essentially, we have had a Walmart in East Oakland that came up and started and ran their store for at least a decade, maybe a little longer, and now they're shut down and shut down and gone. They're no longer operating in East Oakland. Do they come out and say specifically the reasons that they made that decision? No, but there's been enough of a pattern across the country of that happening that the information that I would conclude is it just impacts their bottom line. But there is, I wouldn't say I haven't seen information out there specifically what happens. What I have observed and read about and talked in the community to residents and store owners that around these big box chains that come in and leave and know there's a level of impact on not only the residents but also the distribution network, the whole, the, the, this just the, the, in creating a hole in this, in the distribution ecosystem. Once a big chain comes in and then leaves, because when you come in, you've just killed a lot of the small businesses around there. Not only the small businesses, but the distributors that come out to these small businesses. And once you leave, you, you, you know, you leave your store, the small businesses are likely still there. They just shifted their products to something else that they can sell and make a profit on. But you're leaving a hole in terms of distribution because now distributors aren't going to that neighborhood.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: So small, smaller Stores that might be offering, that might be markets can't compete. Right. When the larger ones come in and, and then as the larger ones operate in these, in these neighborhoods, they basically go out of business because they, they can't afford to, to start to stock and try to sell the, the, the products. Right, exactly.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: You're trying to get better than I do. But I do have a good story on, on this I want to share is that you're right, they can't compete with a big box store in terms of the pricing and the price point. And specifically in East Oakland when the Walmart came out, there was a lot of community hearings about hey, this is coming in by the council at that time. And the small businesses engaged in those conversations and there was a promise that Walmart will not stock X products so that doesn't kill their businesses. And of course for the first few years they abided by it and then after that there's no sort of regular law or regulations for them to follow this. So they continue expanded to stock any products that they need to stock in that neighborhood. And what we have observed in the ecosystem of small businesses there is that there was a few grocers that were selling produce in that neighborhood and this is in deep East Oakland. And by the time Walmart started running, they had to move their product lines from fresh produce into fried chicken at that time in that store and have, you know, before Walmart came in, invested in the infrastructure of refrigeration to do that, invested in getting the distribution out to East Oakland. And once that Walmart killed that line of business for them, they had to go into products that are less healthier, that are more accessible and that Walmart wasn't selling. And at the time it was fresh, it was fried chicken. And now the store is still there. It does sell fried chicken. It doesn't sell produce and they don't want to sell produce. They feel very burned by this experience. And the neighborhood doesn't have fresh produce because Walmart left too.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Okay, so I saw that there are at least 120 small corner stores in Oakland. This is, this is, was on your website and I'm, why do small store owners set up shop in these areas? What are their motivations? Okay, so we know why big stores come and go.
[00:19:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: You know, presumably the corner stores were there before, they're there after. They might have shifted their, their product lines. But you know what motivates opening a small corner store in the first place?
[00:20:11] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I, I just want to correct something. So yes, it is on our website, there's 120 Arab owned stores in Oakland. It's about 200 stores.
And so the, that's of a different cultural background in terms of why stores opened. Small businesses is the question or are you saying what, why do they underserved neighborhoods?
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Well, you know, I mean, why are they, you know, why are they doing business in, in these, in, in underserved neighborhoods? But your point just now about there being 120 Arab owned corner stores is also kind of interesting. You see this in different kinds of industries and maybe you could, you know, explain that as well. Why this, you know, concentration, why this particular ethnic group goes into corner stores?
[00:21:05] Speaker C: Yeah, well, like if you look at the history of corner stores, at least in, in Oakland, it hasn't always been owned by Arab immigrants. It started out there in the 60s and the 70s. There was a lot of black ownership in corner stores. Right now there's about four corner stores in Oakland that are owned by black families. There is a large ownership of Asian Americans and Asian immigrants in the corner stor store community. Not only in the Bay Area, but across the country there in la, there was a big Jewish ownership of corner stores. It's, it's one of those industries that once there's a wave of migration and refugees, it tends to be an easy way into building a livelihood in the country. But it's also, if it's that American dream, you know, you move into the country, you start a business and that's your way of living and growing. And there's waves of that in why right now it's Arab owned. I, I don't have specific research on this, but what I've noticed is just that that's the migration of refugees right now is Middle Easterns, primarily Yemenis. And that's what we're seeing in the Bay Area. Prior to the Yemeni store owners in the Bay Area, there was a significant amount of Palestinian store owners. And that was after the 1948, 1967 wars in Palestine. So I, I have to say I'm not the best to talk about the ethnic sort of makeup and transitions of this. There's a lot more researchers out there that have dug or deeper into this. But that's my understanding in speaking in the community and talking to store owners is the main and the primary way to get in a livelihood once you first move into the country because your probability of getting a job when you don't speak English yet having worked in like, like different settings and getting your degree set up is, is a lot higher.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Barrier for you and, and the family can help.
I, I just, I bring it up because I've, you know, observed this and, and I've been very interested in sort of the political economy of small businesses.
[00:23:11] Speaker C: And they certainly support each other too.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
[00:23:14] Speaker C: And that's part of why it becomes this ethnic sort of, of a group. That's all in this industry. Yeah.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: So tell us about the, the structural obstacles that small corner stores face in terms of, you know, their product lines and the, the problems with, with selling, you know, fresh produce and other kinds of foods that require refrigeration or, or, you know, preparation.
[00:23:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I will talk specifically to corner stores, but from our observation, this applies to a lot of small businesses in general. And you can think through everything I'm saying as the impact on small and big conglomerations and corporate, just massive entities impact on small businesses because I'm pretty sure our senses this applies across the board. But to use the example of produce and soda, for example, to illustrate this. So Pepsi and soda have the biggest, one of the biggest infrastructures in terms of retail settings across the globe and markets and marketing. And they go into the corner stores, they provide the refrigeration to stock the soda. They come in every week, they deliver the soda, they stock it in the fridge that they already purchased and provided to the stores. They set the pricing, they merchandise it, brand it, set the pricing, and they even, they go out of their way in terms of things like they'll purchase the signs for the store owner. So that's why a lot of times you drive around the neighborhoods, they'll say, you know, Q and S Market. And then you'll have, you'll see the Pepsi sign next. They've supported them in that you could at times purchase soda on a loan or on consignment. Whatever doesn't sell, you don't have to pay for it. And on top of that, soda doesn't expire. It does have an expiration date, but technically it doesn't expire. And if it does expire, it's nowhere near in comparison to what a tomato, how the fast the tomato would expire and, or will need to be removed. So in terms of that sort of picture, that illustration of what soda does in the soda industry provides to small businesses. I'm going to compare it to what this produce industry offers right now, which is insignificant if you're trying to in comparison stock produce right next to your soda. For example, as a store owner, you have to purchase that fridge on your own. On your own.
When we started working in this. A small 3 foot fridge is about $10,000. Right now it's more about $12,000 with inflation. If you're looking at a 8 foot fridge, you're looking at $21,000 worth of money investment. On top of that you have to the extra electricity bill you have to keep in mind. So that's an upfront prohibitive, prohibitable cost for small businesses to stock produce that the industry doesn't support in. On top of that in most urban areas there is the wholesale terminal produce markets. We're located in the Oakland produce market here as Saba's warehouse. But as a small business you have to leave your store and go to the produce terminal markets. San Francisco has one la Oakland and you have to go out and purchase your produce. That those markets are at night markets. They tend to open between 1 to 2 1am and they close around 7am because produce is moving from the central valleys, moving from Mexico. It's fresh, it has to be fresh. So the businesses are going out, the small businesses are going out and shopping for their produce to stock on their shelves at midnight at 2am in order to get the freshest products and also for that day. So now as a store owner you don't have anybody dropping off produce at your store. You have to go leave your business, get up super early in the morning, go to the wholesale market, pack your truck or your van or your car with around 30 to 40 varieties of produce, which is a small amount of produce varieties in comparison to produce departments and then go back to your store, stock it up, merchandise it, price it, and then open up your store at around 8am 9am that so that is not. That's a level of effort and that small businesses that are already working 10, 12 hours a day are just not able to do.
It tends to be prohibitable to do both of these activities, both purchase the fridge and go on a day to day basis. Or maybe you do it on a cadence of three to four days because produce can last that long. But that's still, that's still an that it's not comparison comparable to what soda provides, which is dropping off to your store right now in the wholesale market, if you do have a large enough volume, they will drop off to your store. So the Berkeley bowl will get deliveries delivered to them.
All the bigger stores will get a delivery delivered. Our stores tend to be an average of 800 square foot of retail. So their orders are already going to be small enough that it doesn't make sense for a wholesaler to go out and drop off for them. Their quantities are small enough. Their total order is very small. And on top of that, in the produce industry you have to purchase a minimum box size. So tomatoes come in in 25 pound boxes. Onions are about 50 pound boxes. Avocados are 40 pounds. You cannot buy a 10 pound box of avocados. And if you just started stocking produce, your customers don't know that you have this product and it has a shelf life of four or five days, it's likely to go to waste. Waste. So in comparison to soda, what we think of what we do is leveling the playing field. We do provide the fridges to the stores and that's through support from the state fund. We provide the. And we are right now a primary distributor to corner stores. So we have a warehouse, a food hub in Jack London. We purchase produce both from local farmers and from the produce wholesale market, depending on the season and the variety. And we distribute it to the corner stores right before they open their stores. So we're. That is the, that's the infrastructure, the structural infrastructure that is not. That wasn't available before setting up Saba Grocers to corner stores. And it's, it's a barrier a lot of small businesses face. And it's not just produce, it's a lot of their other products they have to get out and get the. Get into their stores. And on top of this, we haven't even started talking about marketing. Pepsi does all the marketing. They. To get the customers into these stores on YouTube, on TikTok and all that stuff. And TV produce industry doesn't have that kind of marketing to attract the consumer to small businesses that decide to sell produce. So if you're a small business, it kind of makes sense that you stop prod soda instead of produce in terms of.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: And, and other packaged foods with long shelf lives and coming from big companies.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. The candies. Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: And candy and, and the like.
You're listening to sustainability now. I'm Ronnie Lipschitz and my guest today is Lena Ghanham, co founder and executive director of Saba Grocers initiative in Oakland, which works with small corner stores in Oakland to help them provide fresh produce to their customers. And we were just talking about some of the structural and distributional aspects of. Of get. Of enabling small store owners to even offer produce for sale.
So to go back to that, so do you have a, do you have a truck that goes around and, and drops this stuff off?
[00:30:56] Speaker C: We, we partner with a local other nonprofit that does the drop offs for us? We don't yet. We don't do it ourselves yet.
Yeah.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: And, and how does the, the process. So how does this process work? Well, why don't we start by having you tell us how you, you know, reach out and, and you know, link up with, with, with stores and store owners.
[00:31:20] Speaker C: So the stores we're working with today were all stores that we worked with in 2019 on our campaign. Our campaign was one of the first, based on my knowledge, that has was successful campaign run by, by and for the Arab community in Oakland.
Most of the store owners have been living in Oakland since the 70s and the 80s. We have obviously new migration of store owners and residents in the community. But, but our second and third generation Oaklanders and the campaign we ran in 2019 was one of the first civic engagements that was focused on this community that is part of Oakland and has been in many ways invisible in terms of their needs and in terms of how they contribute to the city by running these business, not only these businesses, but a lot of small businesses. So that has brought us a lot of just marketing, I suppose within the community. People know who we are, the store owners know who we are, what SABA is, what SABA does. Because that campaign was the first where that has led to building an institution that serves specifically this community. So we haven't had to do much marketing and outreach to small stores. They know who we are and they can come to us. And we are still working with a lot of folks that we partnered with since the campaign in terms of our produce distribution, how we go about that. Was that the second part of your question?
[00:32:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just wondering, you know, once, once somebody has approached you, what, what happens?
[00:32:50] Speaker C: Yeah, so let's say somebody does approach us and they're new to us, we'll sign them up, we'll go visit them, talk to the store owner, understand a bit about their ownership structure and who's the main decision maker in the business. We need to make sure we're working with the decision maker over there. We take a look at their infrastructure in terms of fridges. Sometimes they will have an old fridge that just needs to be fixed. Sometimes they will have a good fridge that is they already bought. Sometimes they won't have anything. So we'll take a look at what sort of refrigeration they have that can stock produce and what they might need. We'll also take a look at their location. We'll prioritize resident stores that are next to schools, stores that are next to low Income, housing and in neighborhoods that don't have big stores in them. So we'll, we'll do that sort of analysis on our end. And once the store, let's say they don't need a fridge, they have that infrastructure, we'll sign them up in our e commerce platform. They can go online every Monday, place an order. We have on average 120, 150 varieties out on the produce. On the e commerce platform. On the e commerce platform, they're able to purchase by the pound because we do, in our warehouse, break down the produce boxes that are standard in the industry. So they can, Instead of buying 25 pounds of tomatoes, a box of tomatoes, they can buy 10 pounds of tomatoes, they can even buy 3 pounds of tomatoes if that's where they want to start.
And we'll, we'll package that up for them. And that's an option on our e commerce for them to select from there. We get the order, they pay online with their credit cards. We get the order, we purchase the product, procure the produce, receive it, package it for the units they ordered, and we distribute it out to them the next day.
If they do need a fridge, we'll go ahead and purchase a fridge. We do ask some of our stores to contribute a percentage of cost towards the fridge so that we can ensure that they have a deeper commitment versus receiving a fridge. So what we've done in the past is we'll ask the stores to contribute 10 to 20% of the cost in the fridge, but we will purchase it with the rest. We'll pay for the rest and purchase it and deliver it to their stores.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: Do you, do you get any, any revenue from, from these transactions at this point?
[00:35:10] Speaker C: We deliver the produce at the cost that we get it at.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: At the cost. Okay.
So there are three levels of membership in Saba for stores, I noticed, and I wondered if you might be able to, you describe each, you know, and what each one entails.
[00:35:29] Speaker C: Yes, we, we have the bronze, the silver, and the gold.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: And we wonder where that comes from.
[00:35:36] Speaker C: What is that?
[00:35:36] Speaker B: I wonder where that comes from.
[00:35:38] Speaker C: Yes. When we first started working with the stores after the campaign, we realized you can't approach all stores like they're the same, or they might be all registered as corner stores that have the same license, the same business license, the same neighborhoods, but that they're not really the same. And one thing we did notice in other, in the industry in general, when people approach corner stores, they tend to think of them as this one monolithic block. And you can approach each Store the same way you approach the other ones. And we realize that's not the case. So we set up this tier system, and it really is a reflection of their not only commitment, but their ability to. To. To shift their business model. Some stores have multiple owners, and if two of them are very invested and interested produce, and the third one is maybe halfway there, it's not yet fully available or convinced to think about this. They're not going to be a gold store because they're going to have a very limited.
They're going to fall more into our bronze and silver because they are interested in stocking produce, but they're not interested in shifting their entire business model. So in order for us to continue to center that the goal of Saba is to make produce available to residents, we've created these three tiers because it means we can still work with you if you're not shifting your entire business model, because that means residents are still having an increased access to fresh produce. And it doesn't mean that you're bad because you still decide to continue to sell the soda and alcohol, but instead of removing it fully, you're just putting produce next to it. It just means that you're at a different level than other stores that have been able to reshuffle their entire store business model. So that's what it helped us as an organization do, is to manage our expectation and be clear that our end goal is really to have increased access of fresh produce. So whether a store is shifting their entire business model or just simply adding extra produce in their store, it's still important to us because it does increase access to residents in the neighborhood. And what we. So getting clear on that helped us get clear on our success metrics, that it's not about turning every store in Oakland into a healthy corner store. It's about increasing the total amounts of pounds of produce that we pump into the neighborhood through our distribution. And by that, we were able to keep track of our success metrics as a total amount of produce that we distributed. And right now, five years down the line, we've put out over $650,000 worth of produce through corner stores.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: And. And is there a. Is there a. A reliable customer base for the produce? I mean, what. What, you know, how do. How do people in the neighborhood respond?
[00:38:23] Speaker C: Well, they buy it. And we're. We're not convinced that any small business would. Or a group of small businesses would pay $650,000 worth of produce money towards produce if it's not selling on their end. And it is selling.
We, we do have stores that have for example the five to 10 senior customers and they are just providing a three foot fridge and every week their produce is selling and they're restocking it again and they have these loyal customers. And then we have other stores like I mentioned that have reshuffled their entire store and have, are started to attract new customers into their, their, their store because they are not only doing the 3 foot fridge now they have a 12 foot fridge and they're stocking it every week, week.
So in terms of the customers, they're buying the produce. We have been doing some surveys as well. They're also reporting to be consuming the produce, reporting a change in their quality of life and change in their ability to manage their day to day life as they please by just simply going to their local store around the corner and getting the produce they want to eat versus either being food insecure or having to wait in free food distribution lines which are usually the alternatives in our neighborhoods.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: Are the customers aware of your role in all of this?
[00:39:42] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say the face in the neighborhoods is our corner stores, but we do have a few like our civic engagement pro campaigns continue at the Oakland soda talks because we're as an organization believe that that policy is what created the conditions for us to come up as an organization. And that is a very important part policy to have. And unless our residents are aware of that and continue to engage and follow their representatives in ensuring that they deliver on what the intent of the tax is, then it's, it would be a loss for all of us because there's, there's so much, much more that can be done in improving health in Oakland. And the soda tax is, is a really important tool. So we do engage residents in that way and they do know us in, in that front. They also know that we distribute to them. But that might be a little bit of a level of detail that they don't follow all the time.
But I would. Yeah, I think that's, that should, does that answer your question?
[00:40:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it does. I think it does. Well, let's, let's turn to the sourcing of the produce you mentioned. You buy some of it at the wholesale market, but you source a lot from minority farmers around the region. And I wondering, you know, for example, whom and how did you find them?
[00:41:01] Speaker C: Yeah, we do. So we source. So as a food hub we have, and we've been around for five years, we've expanded beyond just sourcing to corner stores. We source right now to institutions that have good food purchasing policies on the books and want to invest their purchasing dollars in values driven supply chains. And what we do at Saba is connect them to bipoc farmers, minority farmers, but also we're expanded beyond bipoc farmers at the moment and source produce that are local farmers in California to institutions that need to access fresh produce as well. So we get a lot of our produce from farmers to serve our larger institutional purchases. At times it matches up with our corner store. So we'll add it to our corner store list. That is still a project in progress in terms of refining the logistics in there. And then it depends on the seasons and the varieties that are available.
In terms of how we find our part, our farmers, there's been a few that we just met through the farmers markets, but most, for most of the time we have a few partners in the Central Valley that we partner with to connect us with farmers and, or help us navigate those relationships that we partner with. And so that's been another way we go about it. There's multiple strategies that we've, but we've administered in the past at the moment. We also do. I'm sorry, not at the moment. We've also always have done just vendor sourcing. So we'll call up Farmers day all day, all week. That's one of our positions here at the organization and those relationships with them.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: You're listening to Sustainability now. I'm Ronnie Lipchitz. My guest today is Leena Ghanam, co founder and executive director of the Saba Grocers Initiative, which sources fresh produce from various places and works with small corner stores in Oakland as well as other institutions to provide them with produce for their, for their customers. And these are in neighborhoods that generally almost always lack large supermarkets or markets.
So you've got on the, what you, you sell the, the produce at cost. Right. So I mean, that's covered, right? Right. But obviously there are other operational costs. And is all of your funding coming from the soda tax?
[00:43:30] Speaker C: No. No.
[00:43:32] Speaker B: And, and I mean, you know, I realize this might be a, a sensitive question for you, so you know, you can answer it as, as you wish.
[00:43:43] Speaker C: Okay, thank you. No, it's not all coming and it's never all came from the soda tax as one as any organization. Organization. And Ed, for an organization, you never really want that to be one source of income for and your, your organization. So we do, we do have state funding, we do have federal funding, we have donors and foundations that support us here locally that we're very grateful to have. So we have a diversified stream of income. The soda tax was one of them. We at the moment the city did appropriate the soda tax towards the general fund because the city vote limited deep structural deficit. So not only we're not getting any soda tax funding, no other organization is getting sort of tax funding.
And the.
Yeah, the advocacy on that continues in terms of ensuring the. So the City of Oakland uses and invests those sort of taxing revenues towards the intent of the tax.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to going to ask about that. Have you experienced any, any cutoffs as a result of the shenanigans in Washington?
[00:44:49] Speaker C: Yes, we have. We have and we are in pending conversations. We have yet to hear back in terms of what the impact is going to be. But like any other organizations, we weren't able to access our online payment system. We also have a few grants that we're up for that are being paused right now for review for dei.
The Trump administration hasn't come out and talked much about food deserts to the DEI program. So but we'll see where that goes. But they are, last I heard is they're vetting applicants that are working in any neighborhoods that are considered underserved or so that's a term they're looking for beyond diversity, equity, inclusion, but underserved.
I'm not sure if low income is one of them as well. But they are vetting a lot of applications that we are being considered and as like a renewal for up for renewals for us us.
So yes, we are impacted by that. We have yet to see what that will look like.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: So I, I do want to apologize for asking this question, but I did read that that the city had conducted an investigation into the way that SABA was spending the money and I wonder if you could say something about that.
[00:46:01] Speaker C: Yeah, that's true. Thanks. No, thanks for the question, Ron. You don't have to apologize about that.
Happy to talk about it. The City of Oakland audited itself. So the city auditor's job is to audit the City of Oakland to ensure the City of Oakland is putting out is following best practices in terms of its spending. SABA was used as a, as a grantee to conduct that audit, but it is not an audit of saba and that's what we were informed. However, there's been other non formal communications out there that this was an audit of saba. So I understand where this is coming from.
The city did find that the city auditor did find that the City of Oakland did not have enough measures in place to monitor spending and to request reporting for grantees, including for us at saba. And we were the example for that. We did follow all the requirements that we were informed of when we signed the grant in terms of reporting and in terms of invoice submission. What they found is examples on their end once the information reached the City of Oakland that they weren't doing their due diligence and following up on any sort of missing invoices or any information that to them was not sufficient to their. Their system. So that was found and that was. That's something we all knew here in the city of Oakland that needs to be done and the city needs to make sure that it's documentation in terms of administering these grants and the reporting is clear and communicated to grantees. Our program has. That audit has expanded beyond just assessing the City of Oakland's administration of our grant to include an assessment of the impact and efficient efficacy of our program by the auditor. And we. We have made a statement that, that this is outside the scope of the audit that we were communicated about for the financial audit. And to be essentially an evaluation of our program conducted by an auditor is not something that they have the capacity or knowledge to do as an office of the auditor.
The program they audited was a Covid program. We were granted a contract and had been given two to three months to execute it. And on our end at saba, what we learned through the audit is some of our documentation did fall through the cracks during that time. And we do take accountability of that. We have set up the systems and the structures since that day to shift it way before the audit started. And we have been implement implementing it because now we are funded by the federal government. And you know, if anybody else remembers in 2020, anything following it through besides your documentation at the organization, I would just say, you know, the ent world was through falling apart and our goal was to get the resources needed to residents that needed it at the time. The program was getting direct support, financial supports to most impacted residents by Covid. And it was an emergency response and we did exactly that.
I'm very, very proud. That program has grown in so many different ways in the community and has opened up doors for us to get funding from other funders in federal government that we still administer right now. Now. And yeah, the city of Oakland, it as we mentioned, is in deficit and there is, I would say, a consideration of that in terms of auditing different copies.
[00:49:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So do you have any big plans for the future for.
[00:49:50] Speaker C: Yes, we are very excited actually. We, we've set up, I Would say right now 80% of our infrastructure, we have a warehouse, we have our e commerce platform, we have an ERP system even we, our staffing in place both here and staffing that's oriented towards working with farmers in the Central Valley. And our next step is to continue our fundraising so we can reach our strategic goal of reach of delivering to 50 corner stores within the next five years. Right now we deliver to about a dozen stores, we put out about every year 200 to $250,000 worth of produce in corner stores. And we want to times that by five within the next five years and maximize our warehouse space, maximize our technologies that we've invested in and the team that we grow, the team that we have. So that's, that's our goal over the next five years.
[00:50:41] Speaker B: Yeah. My last question is, is, is what you're doing happening in other cities?
[00:50:47] Speaker C: So the idea of corn working with corner stores to, to stock produce versus you know, building a new store that is a big box store or even as building a new small store has been around for some time. I want to say like 10, 20 years now in the United States, in Oakland specifically, there's been other partners that have done this specific programs as what I'm familiar with right now. We're one, we're, I want to say one of the only organizations in the country that combines this non profit program with a supply chain arm. We've built our own supply chain essentially to supply these small businesses directly with farmers. And what we envision is an alternative food system that centers our most marginalized. That is something that we're, I, I don't know any other organization that has a supply chain warehouse as part of their corner store service. There is, there's, there's a combination of different programs that folks then to combine together, but it hasn't been the supply chain arm of it.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's difficult to build the, the infrastructure, the distributional infrastructure.
Right. Especially given the way that it's. It exists. Well, listen, I want to thank you so much for being my guest on Sustainability now. It was a very interesting conversation.
[00:52:04] Speaker C: Thank you, Ronnie. Thanks for having me.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: You've been listening to a Sustainability now interview with Lena Ghanham, co founder of the Saba Grocers Initiative in Oakland, which works with small urban stores to enable them to sell fresh produce sourced from minority farmers across the region. If you'd like to listen to previous shows, you can find
[email protected] sustainabilitynow now and Spotify, YouTube and Pocket casts among other podcast sites. So thanks for listening and thanks to all the staff and volunteers who make K Squid your community radio station and keep it going. And so, until next every other Sunday, sustainability now.
[00:52:51] Speaker A: Good planets are hot to find out. Tempered zones and tropic climbs and natural currents and thriving seas.
Winds blowing through breathing trees, strongholds on safe sunshine.
Good planets are hard to find. Yeah, good.
