Thursday’s Happy 50th, Rainbow Grocery

When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, before the days of Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, health food markets were often little more than Mom-and-Pop stores, smelling of Patchouli oil and BO. There you would find them crammed with products sporting home-made labels I'd never heard of. Sometimes they were even handwritten.

I remember one cafe in a little health food market sold something called a Vegetable Protein Chunk Sandwich. And it tasted like it was named. If you wanted to seek out nutritional guidance or just eat better, you had to want to find these little shops but then came Rainbow Grocery. And suddenly those weird legumes and tubers became normalized in an environment which felt familiar

Originally beginning as a bulk-buying program for an ashram. They coordinated those purchases through the People's Common Operating Warehouse of San Francisco, a nonprofit utilizing food distribution organization through the People’s Food System.

In 1975 the People’s Food System, which already had two retail outlets, consolidated them to create the Rainbow Grocery Cooperative. When it moved to its current location it became more than just a health food store, a retail model was created for prioritizing sustainability, support for local farmers, and profit sharing.

As their mission statement proclaims:

"Our goals include, but are not limited to:

Providing affordable vegetarian food products which have minimal negative impact ecologically and socially

• Buying goods from local organic farmers, collectives, bakers, dairies and other local businesses whenever possible

• Providing our customers with the best possible service

• Providing Rainbow Grocery Cooperative’s workers with a livable wage

• Creating a nonhierarchical work space based upon respect, mutuality and cooperation

• Offering low-cost health care products and resources

• Supporting other collectives and worker-owned businesses

• Supporting fair labor practices

• Donating to local non-profit organizations and schools

• Encouraging bicycling, mass transit, and alternative transportation

• Composting all in-store green wastes; recycling, reducing and reusing resources whenever possible

• Creating a diverse, non-discriminatory multilingual environment

We maintain an ongoing commitment to make Rainbow Grocery Cooperative an inclusive environment that is welcoming to everyone."

In their own limited fashion, they have created an almost Costco-like level of healthy, carbon-foot-print-reducing products and services. As one health and beauty conscious friend I know shared, "Hippies don't read Vouge so make up is not their priority." But she also was disgusted by how the big makeup companies pack unearthly chemicals into their products and then test them on animals.

Then she found that Rainbow Grocery had a health and beauty section, with someone stationed there who could answer questions. She freely admits Rainbow Grocery is not Sephora. They don't have nearly the number of makeup options, but they have enough to where she can look fabulous and still sleep well at night knowing she is not torturing animals.

In this section of the market, you can also purchase an empty reusable bottle and refill shampoo, conditioner, sunscreen and moisturizer. Thus, reducing the amount of packaging that is wasted when those containers are thrown away. In addition to their health and beauty products, they also excel in sustainable garden supplies and houseware accoutrements. I bought a frying pan there that was built by union labor and without the chemicals. Chemicals which would go into the same product if I bought it at Walmart.

If you have peanut allergy or are lactose intolerant, the staff at Rainbow will guide you to products which won't put you in the hospital if improperly ingested. I know one person who has Celiac Disease and could end up in the hospital if even a tiny amount of gluten enters her body.

She discovered that the staff at Trader Joes and Whole Foods, as nice as they were, directed her to products which could have done serious intestinal damage. They could read "Gluten Free" on the label but were unfamiliar with the ingredients. She was delightfully surprised to learn that the staff at Rainbow Grocery knew what Celiac Disease was and guided her to the right products which would have otherwise sent her to the emergency room.

On this, the 50th anniversary of their existence, let’s take a moment to honor Rainbow Grocery, a great underappreciated San Francisco institution.

SFHotelStories.com is looking for contributors: writers, videographers, and photographers. Contact us at SFHotelStories@gmail.com, Subject: Contributors.