The food court rising above San Francisco’s ‘doom loop’: ‘We’re breaking down stereotypes’
From her coffee counter in La Cocina Municipal Marketplace, Santana Tapia has a clear line of sight into every gloomy prediction that has hit San Francisco since the rise of the Covid pandemic.
From the marketplace’s windows in the heart of the city’s troubled Tenderloin District, she notices the decline of foot traffic that has come from employees choosing to work at home rather than travel to their downtown offices, spawning some dire predictions of an economic “doom loop”. And she can see the ravages of the fentanyl epidemic happening all around her, with its record numbers of overdose deaths and scenes of homeless desperation.
Yet Tapia – and other small business operators in La Cocina Marketplace – are mounting a community-minded effort to battle the dire predictions, one cup of coffee and one lunch plate at a time.
Tapia’s coffee house, the Fluid Coop Cafe, which she started last year with two other trans activists, serves up drinks with names like “Expresso Yo Self” and “Love You A-Latte” and hosts open mic nights celebrating the Tenderloin community.
The independent coffee business sits alongside seven restaurant counters that are part of La Cocina’s non-profit incubator for small, women-owned food businesses, featuring dishes like Nepalese dumplings, pupusas from El Salvador and fluffy North African couscous.
While Whole Foods abruptly closed the store it had opened just a year ago in a fancy new apartment complex up the street, citing concerns for employee safety, La Cocina’s entrepreneurs are taking the opposite tack.
With the brightly muraled food space serving up a $5 community meal and offering a free lending library and computers for public use, the food sellers are pushing against disinvestment and calling on
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