BSFC: Putting the "Campus" in Campus Grocery
Grant Amount: $57,886
Project Theme: Environmental Justice, Agriculture & Food Justice, Education & Behavior Change
Project Sponsor: Student Food Collective
Project Description:
A 1,000 square foot former nail salon does not a grocery store make. And yet, students at the Student Food Collective (the Collective), the RSO-governed and operated grocery co-op have endeavored to try and make their space at 2440 Bancroft Way work anyway — and for a decade, they have. The Collective serves over ten thousand student patrons each year with affordable, healthy, sustainable and local foods from minority vendors and farmers — including over 150 weekly student member-volunteers each semester — out of a small space never intended for food service. By scaling up their space and moving onto campus, students who’ve been sustaining a tiny shop for over ten years will finally be able to make good on their dream of building a full-service, on-campus, student-run grocery store.
Project Goals: The Collective has asked The Green Initiative Fund — after building the Collective’s skill sets and capacity over the past 12 years — to support them in fulfilling the longtime student vision for a dedicated full-service student-run grocery store on campus by helping the Student Food Collective move into a dramatically larger space capable of offering full-service groceries in the Student Union. A larger, campus-based space will accommodate the Collective’s continued explosive growth and directly address the most salient limiting factors in their ability to expand our ability to serve students: space and location. This project seeks to expand on the success of the Food Collective’s 10 year legacy of student-run grocery to provide a true full service campus grocery co-op, run and governed by students, with emphases on hyperaffordability, local vendors, and radical food systems education.
Project Leaders:
Ethan Collier, Board Chair, Berkeley Student Food Collective
J. Noven, Full-time Staff, Berkeley Student Food Collective