It’s rare to see a young man like James Berk taking on the distribution of healthy food in underprivileged neighborhoods. At age 20, he is the youngest owner-worker at the Mandela Foods Cooperative, a full-service grocery store and nutrition education center in West Oakland.
When asked by Civil Eats why he got into the grocery business he said:
The food I was eating was killing me, and it’s killing my community. I wanted access to better food for myself and the people in my neighborhood.
