Bodega is sorry, in case you missed it.
The startup that wants to put high-tech vending machines in apartment lobbies, college dorm halls, and gyms (not exactly a novel concept) is, in fact, the opposite of a bodega — the New York term for the mom-and-pop grocer, deli, 24-7 purveyor of milk, cans of tuna, cigarettes, and emergency six-packs of beer.
In San Francisco, we call them corner stores, even if they are mid-block. In Boston, they’re called packies. Whatever you call them, they play a crucial role, especially in neighborhoods without easy access to a larger grocery store. Some like the famous Bi-Rite have pivoted from run-of-the-mill mom and pop to fabulous food purveyor. Many others have not.
Either way, “our corner stores are part of a community fabric and provide qualities a vending machine could not,” says Lisa Juachon, co-coordinator of the Tenderloin Healthy Corner Store Coalition. Her examples: more variety, special orders, IOUs, a friendly and familiar face.
After this Fast Company article blew up Wednesday, the Bodega CEO Paul McDonald apologized for perhaps not doing the right branding research. He didn’t think naming his Silicon Valley company after the type of business he aims to put out of business would seem so insensitive. Or tin-eared. Or Orwellian. McDonald wrote:
“Despite our best intentions and our admiration for traditional bodegas, we clearly hit a nerve this morning, we apologize. Rather than disrespect to traditional corner stores — or worse yet, a threat — we intended only admiration. We commit to reviewing the feedback and understanding the reactions from today. Our goal is to build a longterm [sic], durable, thoughtful business and we want to make sure our name — among other decisions we make — reflects those values.”
Bodega does not want to put bodegas out of business, he said. Bodega wants to be a job creator, not a job destroyer. Additive, not subtractive. “We’re here to learn and improve and hopefully bring a useful, new retail experience to places where commerce currently doesn’t exist.”
But here’s a McDonald quote from the Fast Company piece: “Eventually, centralized shopping locations won’t be necessary, because there will be 100,000 Bodegas spread out, with one always 100 feet away from you.”
McDonald’s LinkedIn description of Bodega has similar dismissive language: “For the last twenty years you’ve had two options if you wanted to buy something: drag yourself to the store or order online and wait a few days for the things you need. With Bodega we are offering a third option, a totally new shopping experience. We shrink the store, fill it with the essentials you need and put it where you already are — where you live or work.” (All emphases are mine.)
The city has noted the importance of corner stores, especially when it comes to public health. Its Healthy Retail program, launched three years ago, has funded makeovers of corner stores in the Tenderloin and Bayview-Hunters Point to encourage sales of produce and healthy snacks and de-emphasize alcohol, tobacco, and junk food. The city puts up to $20,000 into each store accepted into the program — there have been nine so far, with a few more in the pipeline. The money can pay for a store redesign, new equipment, spruced-up signage and lighting, and a point-of-sale system so the merchant (and the city) can track whether the fruits, veggies, and other good stuff is actually selling.
In its 2016 progress report, Healthy Retail said produce sales were up 25 percent over the life of the program, aggregated across its nine stores. That’s nearly 450,000 units of produce sold in the previous fiscal year, according to Jessica Estrada, a health program coordinator with the SF Department of Public Health. With plans to add one or two stores a year, the number will keep climbing.
But the report and the people who work on the program don’t say if the stores are making a profit from the better food; fresh produce, with its seasonal availability and short shelf life, is a tricky category.
‘They say hello’
Larry Brucia, president and CEO of Sutti Associates, says the fact that stores remain in the program is a testament to its benefits. (Headquartered just south of SFO, Sutti is a leading design-and-build firm for grocery retail, from huge chain stores to mom and pops. It helped design the Divisadero Street expansion of Bi-Rite, and it’s also a big Healthy Retail supporter, pitching in with redesign and new equipment for participating stores.)
It’s hard to tease out what’s helping the stores more: the new products, or the physical makeover and management help that the program also provides? Is fresh fruit good for business, or are these stores just tracking their inventory better?
“That’s the hardest thing about this,” says Brucia. “You look at corner grocers A, B, and C, it doesn’t look like much difference. Fact is there are radical differences based on how the owners are running them.”
The successful ones in the program have at least one thing in common, notes Brucia: “They’re all very customer-centric. They say hello, know customers by name, wash the sidewalk in front, they’re patient with customers. They care. They didn’t get formal training. They had to learn on their own.”
Because of that engagement, Brucia agrees that Bodega’s vending machines are no threat. “Individuals living near corner stores have such a personal relationship with the owners, almost like they’re the old general stores of the past. People hang out and talk about the world around them.”
On the corner of Cole and Parnassus, Luke’s Local recently moved into the Alpha Market space, previously owned for 30 years by the Saba brothers, Abe and Sam. “Luke” is owner Luke Chappell, the son of the founders of Tom’s of Maine. It’s an extension of his prepared food and delivery business that runs out of a warehouse in the Dogpatch. In a recent interview, Chappell wasn’t shy with his ambitions: “I want everyone shopping here and no one at the Whole Foods in the neighborhood [on Haight Street]. I don’t want to be an in-a-pinch store, or just known for prepared meals. I want all the groceries they need.”
Chappell also mentioned more than once the delicacy of his situation, replacing a neighborhood fixture for several generations. “I was sensitive to fact that this is the younger generation coming in and doing something different than Abe and Sam were doing,” he says, sitting at one of the sidewalk tables now outside the store. “I didn’t want to seem like some tech company trying to take over.”
It opened just before the end of 2016, and Chappell keeps a suggestion sheet at the register for customers to jot down requests.
Not all corner-store owners care about their customers. When Brucia goes out to evaluate stores that have applied for Healthy Retail, he sees plenty that are dirty, dimly lit, stocked with expired products, and devoid of customer service. “No one says hello,” adds Brucia. “If you put healthy foods in that environment, the fundamentals aren’t there. You’re not starting at ground zero. You’re starting below ground zero.”
There are other reasons stores can’t last. Higher rents and lost leases are a big reason the Tenderloin has gone from 70 corner stores in 2013 to 59 today, according to Ryan Thayer of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation.
Sometimes it’s just time. At tiny Ford’s Grocery on the corner of Oakdale and Lane, a couple blocks east of Third Street in Bayview-Hunters Point, owner Kathy Ford says business has ebbed and flowed since she took over from her parents, Eugene and Lana, in 1982.
She reports ever-higher cigarette taxes are a problem. “It’s hard to stay afloat,” she says. In fact, Ford’s ready to retire. She’d like to heal up from an illness, and is thinking of traveling to Spain “to immerse myself in the culture for a few months.”
Ford was an original participant in Healthy Retail but her tiny business, roughly 20 or 25 feet square (she’s not exactly sure), didn’t have the capacity. That said, she still sells fruit and vegetables on two tables in the center of the store. But that’s not what she emphasizes when she talks about “the niche” that every corner store needs to find. “Ours is being a community store, a laid-back easy style. I know most of the customers. They listen to music, especially if it’s nice outside. They hang out, come to dance.”
Once in a while she sets up a barbecue on the sidewalk and fills plates on the tables inside. Ford remembers how her parents used to sell fish on Fridays, both cooked at the store and raw for people to take home and cook. “I had to clean off the scales,” she says, making a face.
A mural on the Oakdale side of the building commemorates Aloyd Davis (“Mr. D”) who died last year. He was a fixture at the store — such a fixture that the mural went up while he was still alive.
After seeing waves of people come and go — “it’s kind of reversing itself from 40 years ago, now blacks are moving out, a lot of young folks moving in, white, more Hispanic, gay and lesbian” — Ford is ready to go too, but if she has her way, Ford’s Grocery will outlast her. She says two guys have agreed to take over. She calls them “community-oriented neighbors, and they’re heavy into eating better.”
Alex Lash is the editor in chief of The Frisc.
