Help us bring healthy food to South Vallejo!

Peace and solidarity! We are South Vallejo Grant Grocery Cooperative Inc. (SVG Grocery Co-op) and are excited to announce the seeding of our city’s first Black-owned worker-owner grocery cooperative. We are a beautiful collective of community members fighting for the health and equity of the Vallejoan people and the greater Bay Area. Help us lay the groundwork toward expanding food options and building a brighter food system for the people of Vallejo for generations to come!

SVG Grocery Co-op is a worker-owned cooperative that seeks to invest in the health, wellbeing, and economic opportunity of South Vallejoans. Founded in 2021 by a group of community members Hakeem Brown, Helen-Marie “Cookie” Gordon, Whitney Fraizer, Myisha Leverett-Gibson, and Marlon Brown, SVG Grocery Co-op will be the first worker-owned and operated full-service grocery store to serve the greater South Vallejo community.

Background:

For over 30 years, our neighborhood has been without a full-service grocery store. A local convenience store known in our community as Grant Groceries was among the first and only to serve South Vallejo with consistent foods such as canned goods, sliced meats, cheese, and occasional fresh produce. Since closing in the 1980s, there has yet to be a store to replace what it offered the people of South Vallejo.

SVG Grocery Co-op seeks to honor the legacy of Grant Groceries and address food apartheid in our city by bringing healthy, culturally relevant, convenient, locally sourced, affordable food to our people for the first time in decades.

Since coming together exactly one year ago we have:

Mission and Vision:

We envision the co-op serving as a hub for the development of a stronger local food system by providing access to healthy food for South Vallejoans and economic opportunity for worker-owners, local vendors, producers, and farmers of color. In addition to providing a full-service grocery store experience, it will also serve as:

Our commitment to Black collectivism, cooperative development, and the people of South Vallejo is the driving force behind our determination to bring fresh, healthy, and accessible food to this community. As a board consisting entirely of Black members and long-time Vallejo residents, we have endured the struggle to get fresh food to those in our community who need it most. We have been witnesses to and victims of the legacy of economic divestment in our community for far too long. With the opening of our grocery cooperative, we have a monumental opportunity to take power over accessing good and nutritious food back into our people’s hands.

Cost Breakdown:

Help us in our efforts by donating toward the start-up costs of building community engagement and solidarity around our cause!

Over the next year, we will be hosting a ton of fun pop-up and seasonal events on our lot, tabling at local events and farmer’s markets throughout the community and creating our web and social media presence for folks to join our movement and follow along on our journey. For more details on where funds will go, see below:

We envision the co-op being a space of love, solidarity, and mobilization toward the changes we’d all like to see happen in our community. We recognize that it is up to all of us to ensure a healthier Vallejo. It is only the beginning of cooperative ownership in the city of Vallejo - SVG Grocery Coop will serve as the flagship cooperative and incubator for many more to come!

Thank you so much in advance for hearing us out, and we hope to see you at our future events!

#BlackBusinessGrant #SVGGroceryCoop #SupportBlackOwnedWorkerOwnedBusiness