Jan 3, 2023
In this episode, we kick off the
new year by resuming our series on
San Francisco co-ops.
This one is all about
Rainbow Grocery
Cooperative. To guide us, we'll meet Cody
Frost, a marketing and creative strategist at Rainbow for
the last three-and-a-half years. Cody has been a worker/owner at
Rainbow for almost 16 years.
He grew up in Carmichael,
California, just outside of Sacramento, in the 1980s and '90s. He
pursued art in his early twenties and had friends in Sacto, where
he moved around 2004/2005. Then he heard about an effort to make a
new art space in The City in 2005 and moved here in 2006. That
space turned out to be the Secret Alley, a place near and dear to
our hearts.
Cody first got a job at Bi-Rite,
where he worked for a year before landing the gig at
Rainbow.
At this point in the recording, we
dive more deeply into Rainbow history. It starts with a faith-based
group that used food for community support and political activism
in 1970s, the People's Warehouse. Many co-ops, including some that
are still around today, were created out of that group.
Rainbow's original location, which
first opened its doors in 1975, was on 16th Street between Guerrero
and Valencia in the Mission. Back then, groceries and a general
store were at separate addresses. They moved in the '80s to 15th
and Mission and combined stores. Then, outgrowing that space,
Rainbow found its current location in 1995 and opened the next year
following renovations.
We end Part 1 talking about the
co-op's incredible bulk-food section.
We recorded this episode at Rainbow Grocery Cooperative in
November 2022.
Photography by Jeff Hunt and Michelle Kilfeather