Olympia Auset’s journey to opening a health food store in one of Los Angeles’ food deserts began with her own trips to the grocery store.
It was 16 years ago. Auset was just out of college and living a vegan diet. Her neighborhood was largely lacking in healthy options, and she ended up taking a two-hour round trip by bus to buy nutritious foods that fit her budget as a recipient of federal food assistance.
“You spend all this time on the bus, going to a place where they eat healthy, and then you have to debate with yourself: Can I afford this apple? » Auset remembers.
Hannibal Ali goes shopping at the Süprmarkt. Ali goes there for the organic options and because it’s a black-owned business in the neighborhood.
After these demoralizing trips across the city, Auset then founded Süprmarkt, a nonprofit organic produce company on Slauson Avenue in South Los Angeles that began as a street pop-up in 2016 and grew into a storefront grocery store in 2024 thanks in large part to a community crowdfunding campaign.
Inequality in access to healthy food extends across the county, but hits its poorest residents and communities of color hardest, USC researchers found in a study last year.
About 25 percent of Los Angeles County residents don’t always know they will have enough food, and even more, 29 percent, don’t have access to nutritious foods that can help prevent heart disease, diabetes and obesity. About 30 percent of Black and Latino residents, who make up the majority of South Los Angeles, struggle to find healthy foods.
Among recipients of federal food assistance through the state’s CalFresh program, 39% are food insecure and 45% are nutrition insecure.
This in a state that grows nearly half of the nation’s vegetables and three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
To Auset, this increasingly looked like an injustice rather than an inconvenience. With just $300 and help from loved ones when she started, Auset bought enough product to load the back of a friend’s Suzuki and sold it in Leimert Park and other locations in South Los Angeles.
“The first time we came there, we sold almost everything and people expressed so much gratitude,” Auset recalls. “It was crazy to hear 40- and 50-year-olds say, ‘I don’t have that in my neighborhood.’”
Manager Chelsea Carson shares a warm moment with customer Eliana Vela after packing her groceries at the Süprmarkt.
Since its opening, Auset has offered special discounts to customers receiving monthly food assistance, most recently during the November delay in federal SNAP disbursements. As thousands of low-income Angelenos lined up outside food banks, Auset launched the SNAP Back program, connecting 125 donors with clients who receive food assistance, allowing them to purchase food at the store.
But it’s not just those who are most vulnerable in the event of delays or reductions in federal aid who are at risk, said Kayla de la Haye, director of USC’s Institute for Food System Equity.
“There are also a lot of people who are just low-income, even middle-income, who are really struggling to make their budgets work,” said De la Haye, whose team authored the food and nutrition study.
Rates of food insecurity are consistently two to three times worse for black and Latino Angelenos than for white residents, she said.
For Auset, the insidious thing about food and nutrition insecurity is that it can start to seem like a fact of life.
“It’s something that was normal for me growing up” in Los Angeles, she said. “It was always: ‘You have to go to the white neighborhood for that. (…) I knew something was wrong, but I never thought about the underlying reasons.’
1. Organic Matcha and Mushroom coffee is available for shoppers. 2. Organic caffeine-free drinks. 3. Various drinks made from raw cane are offered to customers. 4. Malcolm X, left, and other notable African Americans stand on the “Wall of Ancestors” inside the Suprmarkt.
The first seeds of this growing awareness were planted while she was studying at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, DC.
She discovered Will Allen, the former professional basketball player who became a leader in urban agriculture and food policy after buying the last remaining farm in Milwaukee and selling the produce he harvested to underserved communities.
“It clicked,” Auset said. “We have the capacity to feed everyone. But we don’t.”
But if finding healthy food in South Los Angeles was a challenge, navigating bureaucracies and food distributors as a young Black female entrepreneur was even more daunting.
There was an inspector who, after reviewing the progress of the building’s renovation, asked, “Is this your husband’s project?”
A vegan ice cream distributor appeared incredulous upon learning that Auset wanted to sell the items in his part of the city.
“He said to me, ‘Vegan ice cream on Slauson‘”, recalls Auset. “He just made fun of me on the phone – and he never sent me the price list.”
A supplier agreed to sell to Auset, then refused to deliver to a neighborhood he deemed too dangerous for his drivers.
Olympia Auset, owner of the organic and vegan Süprmarkt, stands inside the bulk room where shoppers can choose from a wide variety of grains and nuts.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Driving west past Crenshaw Boulevard along the section of Slauson where the Süprmarkt is located, auto repair shops and fast food restaurants dominate the scene.
Next comes a craftsman-style bungalow freshly painted in black and white with its imposing “Süprmarkt” street sign. Auset said the location was meaningful to her because the late rapper and entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle, whose community approach to business she admired, operated his clothing store, the Marathon, just down the street.
At Süprmarkt, sunny positivity and black consciousness predominate, a legacy of the building’s former life that housed Mr. Wisdom, a health-conscious store.
Patio furniture and a planter bursting with fresh herbs, wildflowers and cherry tomatoes greet guests on a wooden deck at the entrance, along with a cabinet on a post containing a small library of Afrocentric books.
Celebrating the beauty of Black culture and Black people is important to promoting well-being in the community, Auset said.
This mindset also permeates the interior, where a wall of glazed tiles tinted in rich teal sets the tone. Some are painted with images of what Auset calls “ancestors” – including singer Nina Simone and activist Fred Hampton. R&B music is playing. Incense fills the air.
Displays of fruits and vegetables, as well as vegan and nutrient-rich dry goods and snacks, anchor the small space. In a separate room, Auset has self-serve bins containing bulk beans and cereals. It has just expanded with a juice bar at the back of the store.
The backyard “learning garden” is a work in progress, but Auset displays a collection of greens and herbs and says she plans to hold workshops there on farming and holistic health.
Hannibal Ali, fitness trainer, came to collect fruits and vegetables for his raw diet. He shops here because of its convenient location, he said, but as a fellow Black Angeleno, it goes further.
“We don’t have a lot of access to healthy foods,” said Ali, who also volunteers at the nearby Park Hill Community Garden. “If we don’t support ourselves, who is going to support us? Self-preservation is a very important thing in our community.”
Dérly Barajas lives five doors from the Süprmarkt and comes every few days to pick up items for her own raw food diet.
Barajas, an educator who works with adults with special needs, said that before the market opened, he, too, resorted to taking the bus to leave the neighborhood to do his shopping.
He describes the store as a blessing. For two years, Barajas has been battling a mysterious illness that causes fainting spells and pressure in the head and chest. Thinking the illness might be linked to his diet, he cut out fast food and sugary, ultra-processed snacks.
He recently surprised himself by buying barbecue jackfruit that looked like a sloppy Joe’s meat.
Part of the store’s charm, he said, is that it introduces customers to a new way of thinking about ingredients, food preparation and what it means to take care of your body.
“If someone decides to eat well,” Auset likes to say, “it should not be a luxury.”
That said, she added, shopping for your health can still feel special.
