Why would a nonprofit open a bodega? To bring vegetarian food at affordable prices to a food desert. LaRayia Gaston, founder of Love Without Reason, had been running the Lunch On Me program that serves 10,000 plant-based meals per month to homeless persons in Los Angeles, with chapters in Hawaii and New York City.
“We all know how expensive healthy food is, so after running Lunch On Me for four years, she wanted to open a corner store that served those same foods in an underserved area,” said Venus Nari, president of Lunch On Me. “LaRayia’s Bodega brings all types of people together around plant-based foods.”
Soul Food
The bodega’s humble beginnings are rooted in serving the homeless. “LaRayia was bringing all these people together to eat vegan pizza and help feed LA’s Skid Row homeless population,” Nari said. “Our passion is helping everyone, including the homeless, to eat healthy.”
Lunch On Me came about when Gaston noticed how a lot of homeless people had health problems. “They didn’t care or couldn’t care about what was on their plate, so she wanted to provide them with good food,” Nari said. “Now, we have some of our street family, which is how we refer to our homeless friends, asking for kale and other healthy foods.”
Once a month, Gaston throws a block party for the homeless to feed them salad and vegan mac-and-cheese, get their hair cut or do yoga. Out of that outreach came the idea for a bodega, which would be a more permanent place to serve the community and raise awareness for Lunch On Me.
Knowing how expensive healthy, vegan and vegetarian foods can be, the bodega only serves vegetarian and vegan foods but at a low price point. For example, the café offers homemade meals like jackfruit tacos and kale salad with ginger carrot dressing for under $5. “We are here to help not only our street family but our neighbors,” Nari said.
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Ideas 2 Go showcases how retailers today are operating the convenience store of tomorrow. To see videos of the c-stores we profiled in 2019 and earlier, go to www.convenience.org/ideas2go.
The bodega's humble beginnings are rooted in serving the homeless in Los Angeles. Photo by Magdalena Wosinska/The New York Times/Redux. Used with permission.
The store stocks cold-pressed juices in glass bottles, packaged trail mix, teas, coffee, organic cereals, snacks, chips and healthy sodas. Nestled among the typical c-store items are crystals, candles and store-brand oils and incense. “Our store has a very home feeling, a very loving energy,” Nari said. “We talk to our customers to build relationships with everyone who comes in.”
Reaching Out
The bodega also provides a way for Gaston and Nari to connect with the community. “I feel we’re a place that gives back to the community,” Nari said. While the store gives away a lot of food, Nari also hires people from their street family who need job training. “We want to give them a second chance to learn the skills for a job,” she said. “When we have catered events, we hire from our street family as well.”
The proceeds from LaRayia’s Bodega are funneled back into Lunch On Me to provide additional meals. “It’s been a blessing that our mission has garnered so much free press from articles in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times,” Nari said. “We have many customers come in after reading an article or from our Instagram account postings. Our Lunch On Me volunteers have also helped to spread the word, too.”
Our passion is helping everyone, including the homeless, to eat healthy.
For Nari and Gaston, their journey from nonprofit to corner store operators started with a story. “It begins with welcoming people in with good, healthy food, with having an open door policy,” Nari said. “We see this as a kind of healing love party for Skid Row.”
The store also hosts community events, such as workshops on meditation, poetry, music and spoken-word nights. “We offer a way for neighbors to come together for these type of events in order to facilitate a sense of community,” Nari said.
Because the bodega reinvests all of its revenue into Lunch On Me, the store solicits donations in the form of ugly or imperfect produce and healthy packaged snacks like freeze-dried raspberries and sea salt veggie chips from Nature’s Path Foods and Love Crunch cereal. La Colombe coffee and Revive Kombucha are among the companies donating products to the bodega. In the café, donated cans of beans, boxes of pasta and rice and tortillas are used to keep the meals affordable.
Header Photo by Liz Moughon/Los Angeles Times,© 2019. Used with permission.
Bright Ideas
The genesis behind LaRayia’s Bodega began with the founder’s heart for the homeless and a desire to share that with the wider world. “We hope that our customers leave the store realizing how blessed they are,” Venus Nari, president of Lunch On Me, said. “We work to help everyone be kind to one another, to say hello.”
To that end, bodega staff educate customers on the store’s mission and encourage them to help fulfill that mission by donations or volunteering. “Our customers often come out to help serve the homeless with Lunch On Me, and that has been a beautiful thing,” Nari said.