Mandela Grocery Cooperative stands as a beacon of community empowerment in West Oakland, CA. It is a black-owned and worker-owned grocery store. This unique establishment nourishes its West Oakland neighborhood with healthy food, wellness resources, and collective ownership.
As a worker-owned co-op, the WORKERS OWN all aspects of the business. This model is an effective tool for creating long-term, dignified jobs, particularly in urban low-income communities. The workers are the owners.
Worker-owners invest time, energy and dollars into our neighborhood businesses and build up blighted areas. While working collaboratively to achieve our business goals, we build our skills, community assets and wealth. Our business model empowers us to build up our own communities. We come together. We learn. We build.
Mandela Grocery Co-op offers 50% off CA grown fruits & vegetables for customers with EBT.
Read also: The life of Mandela
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The worker Co-op model is an effective tool for creating long-term, dignified jobs, particularly in urban low-income communities.
The Vision and Mission
The worker Co-op model is an effective tool for creating long-term, dignified jobs, particularly in urban low-income communities.
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We intend to strengthen and diversify our local economy. Our worker-owned grocery store sources from local entrepreneurs and farmers in California with a focus on black and brown farmers and food makers.
In the store, you’ll find fresh, pesticide-free produce, high-quality meats, hormone-free eggs and dairy, local bread and a growing sundries department with natural and high-quality locally-made beauty and wellness products.
Worker Cooperatives (Co-ops) are principled, values-driven businesses with workers’ lives and community benefits at the core of our existence.
The Impact of Employee Ownership
The beauty of cooperative workflow has been on full display at Mandela Grocery since the shelter-in-place order was enacted. Immediately, our buyers began communicating with one another closely to coordinate efforts on who will buy what and from where.
Unlike big-box grocery stores, we source from a number of regional and local vendors (as well as from large national and international vendors).
Read also: Mandela and African Economic Change
Demand on our business increased by 35%. When the protest against police violence in the Black community began, demand on the store increased again due to smart consumers wanting to support Black-owned businesses.
While we are grateful for increased demand, we have to use a lot of wisdom, energy, thought and patience to protect ourselves, each other, our families and the store.
We voted to reduce our operating hours to allow more time to sanitize all high touch areas like door handles, counters and pin pads. Also, an increase in sales requires us to purchase, receive and stock almost twice as much as we usually do.
So we voted to be closed on Sundays in order for our bodies to have some rest.
Community Support and Outreach
In April, a teacher reached out seeking support to help her students whose parents are working less due to COVID-19 and (obviously) the children are no longer eating breakfast or lunch at school.
Mandela Grocery put out a call to our larger network asking folks to donate money to our online Karma Jar. The Karma Jar funds are used to buy groceries for people in need. To date, our grassroots crowdfunding efforts have raised over $5,000. And we’ve donated over 94 large bags/boxes of food to families with small children.
In addition to that, we began offering Sunday Service. Once a month on Sunday we donate prepared food to our neighbors living in the encampment on 5th street and other houseless neighbors.
All of us worker-owners of Mandela Grocery are deeply grateful to our friends and community for their generosity and kindness. Their donations make it possible for us to uplift our neighbors in need.
Employee-Owned Response
Overall, our team has grown stronger as a result of COVID-19. A beautiful kind of teamwork started happening at our store. No one asked anyone to do it; it just started happening.
Everyone is empowered to do their job here. No one had to ask. You know what your role is and you know how to do it. We each are taking good care of ourselves because we know the store and our community needs us to be fully present at work.
