Other Avenues is a worker-owned cooperative grocery store that has served the Outer Sunset community of San Francisco since 1974. Other Avenues is a worker-owned cooperative, where the workers are members of the cooperative and manage all aspects of running the cooperative. 

Other Avenues provides local, organic, and healthy food and is deeply committed to sustainability and workplace democracy. Other Avenues’ mission is to provide food and supplies that support sustainable living while supporting local and organic farms, small businesses, and co-ops. They achieve their mission through having an emphasis on their food sources being organic, sustainable, vegetarian, and fair-trade products while avoiding unnecessary packaging, GMO’s, and preservatives within the food they sell. 

Other Avenues also has a Charitable Giving program that has supported a number of nonprofits who work on, “civil rights, immigrants’ rights, workers’ rights, sexual and reproductive freedom and safety, and environmental protection and stewardship.”

In 2018, Other Avenues became a San Francisco Legacy Business from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, a designation reserved for historic small businesses that have operated for 40 years in San Francisco. 

Going Solar with RE-volv

Other Avenues had a long-held dream of going solar and in 2015 that dream became a reality! Through a crowdfunding campaign run by RE-volv, more than 230 generous donors donated to the campaign to pay for the upfront cost of bringing solar to Other Avenues. As Other Avenues pays back RE-volv over time for their solar lease, those lease payments are added to RE-volv’s Solar Seed Fund, a revolving fund for solar used to bring solar to more community-serving nonprofits across the country. Watch the crowding video for this campaign below!

Other Avenue’s has a 32 kW solar array on the roof of their building, which will offset more than 949,400 lbs of emissions from the atmosphere over the life of the system, which is equal to maintaining more than 820 acre of trees. By going solar with RE-volv, Other Avenues will have stable electricity costs and will save more than $124,300 over the life of the system, money that Other Avenues can use to further their mission of providing organic, sustainably produced food to the community.