In June, Erika Crenshaw and Patricia Torres opened El Sereno GreenGrocer. The journey began with a simple comment from a neighbor, Torres said. “We need a grocery store.” Crenshaw and Torres knew this because they had to drive to other supermarkets in other neighborhoods for fresh fruits and vegetables.
But this is also a Los Angeles neighborhood where many do not have cars and, like people everywhere, they can not walk long distances or take a bus with multiple bags of groceries. A recent USC study found El Sereno is a community where many households have no supermarkets or grocery stores within a 15 minute walk. So Crenshaw and Torres decided they would start a healthy food market that their neighbors could easily get to, with produce they could afford.
The El Sereno GreenGrocer storefront on Huntington Drive.
Just as it is hard for their neighbors to get to a grocery store, Crenshaw and Torres found it is hard to open one in the neighborhood. First, they could not get a bank loan. Banks wanted evidence that they had run a profitable market, Crenshaw said. Torres had worked as a consultant for nonprofits. Crenshaw installed solar panels at Tesla; before that, she was a teacher.
“Banks don’t hand money over to people who don’t have money,” Crenshaw said.
So the couple, along with Torres’ mother, took out a personal loan for $250,000. Once they signed the lease, Crenshaw, using what Torres calls her “contagious enthusiasm,” enlisted help remodeling the space — pulling down plaster walls, scraping the floor, installing electrical outlets and transforming a 42-year-old beauty salon into the El Sereno GreenGrocer. Torres sought grants to support their business, landing an L.A. County grant for $200,000 administered by Community Services Unlimited (CSU), which goes to pay staff.
They expect to be profitable in their first year, Torres said.
most businesses that cant turn a profit wont last that long. taking out a personal loan… may have been a poor decision.
