San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood and the Food and Agriculture Action Coalition Toward Sovereignty (FAACTS) announced a pilot on Thursday that lets small grocers and neighborhood nonprofits pool their produce orders, KQED reports. The goal is to lower wholesale costs by around 10%.
How it works
The District 5 Grocery Affordability Initiative is a micro group purchasing organization. Mahmood told KQED that big chains such as Safeway and Whole Foods get better prices because they buy in large quantities, and the pilot tries to give independent grocers the same benefit. He said it is modeled on programs in Philadelphia and Paris.
SFist reports that FAACTS director Jade Quizon told Mission Local the group plans to focus on roughly a dozen pantry staples that participating stores already carry, possibly including tomatoes, onions, potatoes and milk. The group would also negotiate prices on the grocers' behalf.
Who is involved
KQED says the pilot is funded with $50,000 in seed money from former congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti. It will start mostly with the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center and the nonprofit Farming Hope, and Mahmood expects at least five independent grocers to take part. SFist says the effort targets neighborhoods such as the Tenderloin, Fillmore, Haight-Ashbury and Western Addition, where full-service grocery stores can be scarce.
The pilot follows Mahmood's earlier proposal to tax vacant grocery stores and pharmacies, which lost political support. He hopes to make the program permanent and citywide with funding in the next budget cycle.