Faced with the loss of another major grocery store and too few food shopping options, a group of Pittsburg residents is working to fill in the gap.
Led by local businessman Wolfgang Croskey, they have launched a Facebook page called “Project Pittsburg Grocery Store” to share ideas about how to replace Food Source, which recently closed after seven years in the city at Highland Square. Food Source had replaced full-service grocer Raley’s. A few years earlier a Save Mart had also closed.
Although warehouse store FoodsCo is thriving not far from the defunct Food Source, only a handful of grocers remain, including WinCo Foods, Cardenas Market, Island Pacific Supermarket and Safeway.
“When it comes to buying food, we don’t have a lot of (grocery) options,” Croskey said.
The group’s mission is to appeal to full-service grocers “to make Pittsburg their new home,” said Monica Couture, CEO of the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce.
Calling itself Pittsburg’s Grocers Initiative, the group isn’t just sitting still hoping for the best. Along with the chamber and Highland Square landlord Sierra Pacific Properties, it recently held a widely attended block party in front of the old store to show potential grocers the city’s spirit. Pittsburg High School’s marching band, cheer squad, police, firefighters and a slew of entertainers rallied to show their support for a new grocer and star in a video to give potential suitors.
“We don’t look the best on a demographic spreadsheet, so we are trying to show them, ‘We are Pittsburg,’ and we’d love to have a full-service grocery store here,” Croskey said.
“It’s a grassroots community effort,” Couture added. “It takes a village — no one person can make it happen. We wanted to show potential retailers how much support there was and what a tight-knit community we have.”
Some, however, think the village should be trying to form its own food cooperative for the community. When Councilman Holland Barrett White learned Food Source was leaving, he began exploring whether a food co-op model could work in Pittsburg.
“The community, from what I have learned, is very disheartened,” White said. “It’s not the same grocery stores here that you would find in Walnut Creek or Brentwood. A lot of people travel to those cities because some of the stores here don’t have an inviting, welcoming feel to them.”
A recent Pittsburg economic opportunity study found residents spend about $70 million in food and beverages outside the city each year, White said. The USDA also identified a number of “food deserts” in the city where healthy eats aren’t available.
“We need to see what we can do to intervene as a city,” White said. Although he asked at a recent council meeting that the city consider funding an economic feasibility study, his colleagues didn’t go along.
White said he backs what Pittsburg Grocers Initiative is trying to do.
“We care about the health of our community,” he said. “What this is doing is starting the conversation.”
White and others meanwhile are regrouping to do outreach and muster up support for the idea of forming a food co-op, he said.
“We need to identify some key stakeholders and nonprofits, to help mobilize a community group to understand what the positives would be and how we move forward,” White said.
The co-op model requires community participation, including residents purchasing equity shares, White said. City Manager Garrett Evans noted that starting a co-op is different than landing a traditional grocery store and sometimes can take three to five years, depending on community involvement.
“I think this is just a fundamentally different way of doing business,” White added, explaining that community members would have more say in the quality of the food and a share in the profits with a co-op.
Another supporter, resident Karen Lewis, said she sees Food Source’s departure as an opportunity for the community to do “something really amazing” by starting up its own grocery store.
“I appreciate all the efforts that have gone into bringing in a more traditional grocery store because we need one, and I’m on board with that too,” she said. “But grocers like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s think we don’t fit the (economic) demographic.”
That’s why a food co-op may be the way to go, she added.
“What if we could have exactly what we wanted here,” she said. “If you look at the culture and the diversity that is here, you see that the need is greater than simply Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.”
A co-op would sell a variety of healthy foods with profits going back to the community in the form of lower prices and consumer education, she said.
“I would like to work on taking care of ourselves rather than begging other people to save us,” Lewis added.
Croskey said he is not opposed to a co-op but thinks attracting a new grocer will be quicker.
“Having a grocery store is more than just food — if we can’t attract one, it is going to be hard to grow the Pittsburg economy,” he added.
Join the Conversation
We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.