San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood is betting that small neighborhood grocers can fight rising food prices the same way the big chains do: by buying in bulk. His office has launched a one-year pilot called the Grocery Affordability Initiative, which would let independent grocers and nonprofits in the Fillmore, Tenderloin, Haight Ashbury and Western Addition join a shared purchasing organization to buy roughly a dozen pantry staples together at wholesale prices.
The idea, according to KQED, is to mimic what chains like Safeway and Whole Foods already do by purchasing food in large quantities, which gets them steeper discounts and lets them pass along lower prices to shoppers. Independent grocers typically can't negotiate those same bulk rates on their own. “The innovation here was basically, how can we take what happens with larger chains and provide the same benefit for smaller independent grocers?” Mahmood told the station.
Mahmood's office estimates that grocers in District 5 could lower their wholesale costs by around 10% and cut consumer prices by as much as 25%, according to Mission Local. The pilot would be run by the Food and Agriculture Action Coalition Toward Sovereignty, with Jade Quizon serving as its director, the outlet reports.
Nonprofits Lead the First Round of Buying
According to KQED, the initial pilot will mostly involve two nonprofits, Booker T. Washington Community Service Center and Farming Hope, which Mission Local confirms have already agreed to participate. Mahmood expects at least five independent grocers to eventually join once the program gets off the ground, per KQED. Farming Hope is a nonprofit, and the micro-group purchasing organization is designed to negotiate pricing on behalf of the small grocers it brings in, the station notes.
Shakirah Simley, executive director of Booker T. Washington Community Service Center and a founding steering committee member of FAACTS SF, said her organization's food justice program has felt the impacts of San Francisco's food-access gaps firsthand, per KQED. “The pilot is an urgent and creative solution toward solving food access and uplifting the good work already happening in our communities,” Simley said, adding that she hopes the initiative can eventually model larger-scale solutions across the city.
The program would start by buying roughly a dozen key pantry items in bulk, likely including tomatoes, onions, potatoes and milk, according to the same Mission Local report. Saikat Chakrabarti, a former congressional candidate, provided $50,000 to kick off the pilot's design phase, the outlet notes — but the initiative still needs another $200,000 for data analysis and compliance tracking before it can scale.
A Smaller Plan After a Bigger One Collapsed
The buying club follows the collapse of Mahmood's more ambitious Affordable Groceries Act, which would have taxed large chains that leave storefronts vacant to help subsidize new grocery stores, as The San Francisco Standard reported in July. Mahmood concluded he didn't have the votes to move the measure forward and is now pursuing his broader grocery-access goals through a narrower city ordinance rather than a ballot measure, the Standard reported. Per KQED, Mahmood said political support for the vacant-store tax collapsed after a run-in with Mayor Daniel Lurie and Amazon at City Hall.
The later, narrower ordinance included permit-fee waivers for new grocery stores, which Mahmood's office estimated could save each new store between $50,000 and $80,000, as the Standard noted. Mahmood also proposed a faster permitting process for grocery stores and pharmacies. He told KQED that grocery prices are rising for everyone, citing affordability pressures on an immigrant family in the Tenderloin and a tech worker in the Marina.
The pressures behind the pilot are well documented. San Francisco food costs rose about 23% between 2020 and 2024, according to San Francisco Public Press, and a 2023 city report found two-thirds of San Francisco adults earning less than $27,180 a year were food insecure, compared with 44% statewide. Mahmood has pointed to the closures of a Lucky's, a Mid-Market Whole Foods, and the Fillmore Safeway — which shut down in 2025 after 40 years serving the neighborhood — as evidence of the strain, the outlet reported. Per KQED, two neighborhood full-service grocery stores have closed in the community, and federal cuts to SNAP and CalFresh in California have further affected food access.
How It Compares to Other Cities' Efforts
Mahmood has said the initiative is a first-of-its-kind neighborhood-level group purchasing program, and Mission Local reports it's modeled after similar buyer's-club approaches in Paris and Philadelphia, though none of those operate at this localized a scale. New York City has taken a different route with its Fresh Program, which aims to open city-owned grocers selling food at 30% below typical retail prices; the city has allocated $70 million for construction and earmarked $30 million for a store in East Harlem, Public Press reported. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, meanwhile, issued an executive order directing city departments to explore tools including eminent domain to keep grocery stores open in underserved neighborhoods, per the Standard.
Pennsylvania's Fresh Food Financing Initiative offers another model: since 2018 it has funded 78 healthy food retail projects statewide, according to The Food Trust. One of those projects, the South Philly Food Co-op, opened in December 2020 as the neighborhood's only cooperatively owned grocery store and is now governed by more than 1,900 local member-owners; state funding there supported construction, buildout and equipment purchases and helped the co-op hire 17 employees, per the same report.
What Comes Next for the Pilot
Mahmood hopes the Grocery Affordability Initiative will become permanent if the one-year pilot proves successful, and he's aiming to secure city funding for a citywide version in the next budget cycle, according to KQED. The pilot is expected to be running by mid-2027, the station reports.
