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.
