Table of contents
In this final episode of our special season of Forever Neighbor, host and owner of Dolores Deluxe Ramzi Budayr sits down with Sam Mogannam. Mogannam is the second-generation owner of the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses. Together they explore how food can be a starting point for forming a community. From its humble beginnings as a corner store to one of San Francisco’s most cherished culinary institutions, Mogannam reflects on Bi-Rite’s evolution, the values that fuel its mission, and the long journey towards creating an equitable food system — one tomato tasting at a time.
Guests
- Ramzi Budayr, Dolores Deluxe owner and host of the Forever Neighbor podcast
- Sam Mogannam, founder of Bi-Rite Family of Businesses
About Forever Neighbor
Forever Neighbor is the official podcast of Dolores Deluxe. Owner Ramzi Budayr interviews small business owners, creatives, and activists as they explore what it means to be in community with one another. In this special four-episode mini-season, Budayr interviews five local business owners in the Mission District of San Francisco.
Transcript
Ramzi Budayr: Think quality food in San Francisco. What business comes to mind? Probably Bi-Rite right to me and to everyone in my neighborhood. Bi-Rite is where you go to get the good stuff. If you’re not able to make it to the farmer’s market, you go to Bi-Rite, figure out what’s in season to have the best nectarine or the best peach or the best cherry that you’ve ever had. When I look at what they’ve been able to achieve over these many decades, I’m just in awe. I’m constantly inspired and they really set a standard that pushes me to want to be better.
Hi, I’m Ramzi and you’re listening to The Forever Neighbor Podcast this season brought to you by Square. In our final episode of this season, I cannot believe I got the opportunity to sit down with Sam Mogannam, the founder and owner of the Bi-Rite Family Businesses. Bi-Rite has been in Sam’s family since the sixties. He stepped away from the business in the nineties to go open his own restaurant and then bought it back from an interim owner and really brought a chef’s perspective to a grocery store. It’s a really out-of-body experience for me to be talking about his journey and the steps because so much of how I’ve moved through my life and career has at least mirrored the beginning stages of Sam’s career. And so to see what he’s been able to develop since he took over on 18th Street is absolutely mind blowing, and I’m so grateful to Sam and his whole team for their time and generosity and just opening up their spaces to us and to the whole extended Bi-Rite community. Thank you for seeing what we’re doing and welcoming us with open arms. So I’m going to leave this in Sam’s very capable hands. Enjoy.
Sam Mogannam: My name is Sam Mogannam and I’m the second generation owner of the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses here in San Francisco. The original market on 18th Street has been in my family since 1964, but the market itself has been on that block with the original storefront since 1940. I worked there as a kid, came back to it in the late nineties, and after working in restaurants for a dozen years and brought a chef’s perspective to a grocery store, built out a kitchen so I can continue to cook, stocked it with ingredients that I love to cook with, and from farmers and ranchers that I had built these amazing relationships with, and people were blown away. We bought hospitality and high quality food to a bodega and just changed how grocery can be in San Francisco. It was very unique for the city at the time. Yeah.
Ramzi Budayr: I’d love to dive into, zoom into, those few first few months or first year relaunching Bi-Rite under your stewardship. I mean, how big was the team then? How much of this were you doing by yourself, and how much of this were you even able to delegate?
Sam Mogannam: Yeah, yeah. It was actually a really magical time, and it was a time of discovery. My brother, Raphael and I, and a staff of six who I brought with me from the restaurant, we had a restaurant for seven years and lost our lease, and that was kind of the impetus to come back to the family business. And so I brought these amazing people, service providers, and cooks to the market with me and we’re all hustlers and we all wore lots of hats. So it was a small nimble team. It was eight of us, and we kind of had no idea what we were reviewing. Yeah, sure. And I think that that was a big part of our ability to be successful, however you wanted to define that because we were thinking outside of the box, and we were more than anything else, providing that restaurant type of hospitality where we’re welcoming each guest into the business.
If they were walking into our home and we were getting to know people, we were building relationships with them, we were taking guest requests and responding to them immediately. We were teaching people how to cook and to use these ingredients. One of my favorite things to share with people is that when Bi-Rite first started, it wasn’t like everything was farm direct and everything was organic. We had conventional tomatoes from Mexico that were 99 cents a pound, and we had dry farmed tomatoes from Molinari Creek, which eventually became Two Dog Farm down in the central coast. And when people, and those were $3 a pound, they were $2.99 a pound where people were like, well, why should I pay three times as much for a tomato? We would just cut it and let them taste the conventional tomato and then let them taste the dry farm tomato, and then their heads would explode.
We were like how much of a flavor difference it was, and that was how we taught people. That was how we built relationships with them. It was kind of an amazing period. Also, in San Francisco’s kind of culinary evolution, there was an awakening to the eater’s responsibility and a good food system, and there was more being written about supporting sustainable food and responsible ranching and organic farming, and we were there kind of at the very early stages of it and providing people with what they could only really get access to at farmer’s markets or in restaurants that had that philosophy, that ethos behind them.
Ramzi Budayr: So you could have acted as a bridge into those worlds, right? That had a very, very small neighborhood scale, much more accessible scale.
Sam Mogannam: Yeah, that’s right. And as a consequence, it ended up without really, it ended up becoming a destination of sorts because people around the city who were craving access to these types of ingredients were then coming to buy right for them. It was a really fun, a fun journey. Honestly, we’re really trying to set up the foundation right now or continue to build on the foundation so that we can be a grocery store and a cornerstone for the community into the 22nd century. I mean, we really are thinking way beyond my life and my leadership and thinking about, alright, what’s the future of leadership going to look like and what’s the future evolution? Will the business going to look like so that we can be here, continue to serve our community and continue to be a connecting point for those in the rural environment who are making, growing, raising good food to those that in the city who are wanting something that’s just delicious.
Ramzi Budayr: Absolutely. No, and it’s really, I mean, we’re recording this in your central offices here on Polk, which is in the new Bi-Rite location, and to see how it’s evolved and to literally be in the physical space representing its evolution is super cool. So I’m excited to get into what the present and the future look like, but just to go back a little bit more into those early days selfishly, because I’m very much in, you’re in it, it because about what, two and a half years, two and a half years, and we have an extremely small team. I have four people and then me. And so I love this picture of a staff member cutting a tomato, a conventional tomato, and an organic tomato, and having had the guests taste it, we are staffed so lean that that doesn’t feel possible maybe here and there, but not as part of the experience that we build. So I wonder, do you think it was just that you were appropriately staffed early on and that’s why you were able to do it? Or were you saying, this is the kind of experience we want to give people and we’re going to build our business and our staffing accordingly? Or was it more just like happenstance?
Sam Mogannam: Yeah, I think there was definitely, we were definitely a lean team. There’s no question about that for sure. Literally, it was just my brother and I and six people, and we were doing all the ordering. I would go to the produce market, I would go to the farmer’s markets. I mean, we were stocking the shelves, we were ringing on the registers. I mean, we were working nose to tail and because of our history in the restaurant world, we were no strangers to hard work. I mean, the magical thing about being in a grocery store versus in a restaurant is that when 20 people walk in, they all kind of take a number or they stand in line and you can kind of go one by one and help ’em out. Twenty people walk into a restaurant and you’ve got to see ’em all at the same time, get water to ’em all at the same time. Kitchen gets hit and then you’re running. But much like a restaurant, each table, you want to give them attention, but it was the same level of hospitality that we were doing in the restaurant world and providing people with the knowledge that they needed in order to make a confident decision. And at the end we felt that if we provided that to them, they would walk away happy. And with this memorable experience, and I don’t know how many times I can count that guests came back and said, Nan, I went and checked out this other store. I was traveling, I shopped somewhere else. It’s like nothing like the experience that I get here. And that’s the most powerful thing that we can do when we’re providing hospitality is create a memory because those memories and especially memories of taste, when somebody has something delicious, they’re always going to compare it against that. And so that was always top of mind for us.
Ramzi Budayr: But it sounds like it was also just kind of natural and built into the starter culture that you had by bringing these people in from the restaurant world. And so I was going to ask you about your outward core values, but I think one of the cool things about Bi-Rite is that it’s sort of baked into your messaging, into your merchandising, into your brand.
Sam Mogannam: Our three core values, and these were values that were developed when I had the restaurant. And so that team of six that came with me to open Bi-Rite back in 1998 already had love, passion, integrity as the foundation for how we treat each other, how we treat our guests, how we treat our vendor community. We just treat the world. And I think I’ve talked to business groups and people who like going, there’s no room for love in business. And I was like going, sorry, brother, you’re missing the boat. I mean, I think it’s one of the most critical ingredients, especially when you’re feeding somebody.
Passion. I mean, I think there’s two vital ingredients for somebody to make a decision to become an entrepreneur or to pursue any sort of career. It’s like you’ve got to be an expert. You’ve got to have that expertise and in a constant curiosity and desire for improvement, and you’ve got to have passion. If you’re not excited about it, if you’re not lit about it, then everybody around you is just going to feel, it’s just going to be work at that point, and it’s going to be boring work because passion brings that an energy, that life, that positive kind of the momentum, the flow. Totally. Yeah, totally.
And then the integrity is it’s, I mean, that’s the foundation of trust, and we’re doing something, and it might seem very menial that we’re just selling groceries, but I look at it as a much higher calling. Our mission is not to sell groceries.Our mission is to create community through food. And so we have this purpose that we’re constantly in pursuit of that helps align our entire team knowing that we will never, ever be done with creating community through food that is work that we’ll be in pursuit of for the rest of our lives and for the lives of those who continue beyond us.
But knowing that when we are building these relationships, which is what creating community is with each of our stakeholders, we’re creating an environment where people are feeling connected, where they care about each other, where they show up. And we need more and more of that right now, especially in a world where our leaders are unfortunately doing as much as they possibly can to divide us, keep us divided, and that’s not a world I want to participate in. I want to be participating in a world and be part of catalyzing a world to come together to unite.
And so having these three really clear values of leading with love, pursuing with passion, and acting with integrity, and having this mission of creating community through food really helps unify our team in this pursuit of doing the best work that we possibly can. It might sound like it’s easy, but it’s not. It’s very complicated because dealing with people who go through various levels of security and comfort in this world, and I think the most important thing that we try to provide for everybody who comes into our doors as a safe place where they feel welcomed and seen and cared for, whether they’re our staff or our guests or suppliers, is they’re making the deliveries. I think with those intentions, we’re able to actually really deliver on that first value of leading with love. Yeah.
Ramzi Budayr: One thing I’ve been struggling with, especially in this economic climate, is trying to be as accessible as possible to as many people at different levels from the socioeconomic ladder. What are some of the ways that the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses have been able to do that. Then maybe what are some of the challenges that you’re facing in meeting that goal?
Sam Mogannam: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s a very common question, and it’s a complex one to tackle because we’ve got our philosophy, our mission of creating community through food and very clear understanding of what our food is. We’ve got its desire to support a responsible food system where food’s grown sustainably, where it’s got not grown with pesticides and chemical fertilizers and doesn’t have any sort of added preservatives or coloring agents. It’s not cheap to produce. No, it’s not cheap to produce. And industrial food, industrially produced food, which is the cheap food, is artificially cheap, not only because of a lot of these inputs that have external costs, but also because of subsidies that the government provides. And so we’re unfortunately making a comparison against something that’s grown, made, raised responsibly, naturally, if you want to say that, against something that’s produced in a more industrial manufactured fabricated environment.
And when you’re consuming these foods that are high in trans fats, high in salt, preservatives, chemical additives, coloring agents, you’re inevitably going to develop some sort of food related disease. You’re going to get diabetes, you’re going to get hypertension, you’re going to get high cholesterol, you’re going to get heart disease. And that in and of itself then causes a ratio of your income and a significant ratio to be then spent on healthcare, which could be avoided to your better diet. We’re also paying a high price for the damage that we’ve been doing through this industrial food system to the planet. And so our water is polluted in many areas. Groundwater is running out, soil is not clean and full of chemicals that are affecting the health of those that work in the fields. And cancer rates are extraordinarily high for those farm laborers who are working in these industrial farms.
The death and injury rate in these meat processing facilities that are part of the factory farming system is way too high, and the government hasn’t really stepped in to control it probably, and I think mainly because they want to keep the food prices low so that they don’t have to pay people more. And so minimum wage has artificially also been kept low and keeping people at the lower end of the income stream, barely at or below the poverty line, almost never being able to rise above it. And it’s been proven if you’re eating these foods that are high in high end sugars, high in fats, high in preservatives and chemicals, your brain function, your brain development’s also going to have a challenge. And so you’re not going to be able to learn in school as effectively as if you’re eating nutritious food that was actually feeding your brain and feeding your body.
And so you’ve got all of these external costs in addition to the subsidies that go into the industrial food system that keep the prices of that crappy shoot artificially low than a good food system. And it’s tough, and we recognize it, right? And what we’ve tried to do is find opportunities where we can have varying product offerings on our shelves where there’s a good better invest offering where we might not be able to find just a really solid product that’s a third of the price of the best version of it, but we’ve got those options for our guests so that they can actually get access to still delicious and clean food. We also do a lot of work outside of our four walls. We support a lot of organizations throughout San Francisco. We support a lot of food pantries. And our desire to continue to work on solving the hunger crisis that exists in San Francisco is super important to us.
And so partners like The Women’s Building, the Mission Community Farmers’ Market, the heart of the city farmer’s market, we provide funding to them so that they can continue to provide access to good food to more people. We’re also working on a business plan. We’re hoping, and we’ve written this into our 2034 vision to create a nonprofit community grocery store. We feel that there’s possibly a better way to provide access to fresh food, to more communities, as opposed to just the various food pantries that exist throughout the city where people can go six, seven days a week, shop whenever they want, and actually shop for themselves as opposed to just getting whatever is available at the pantry. And so, yeah, we’re hoping that that could be something that we build, prove is possible, and then create a template that we can then share with others so that others can replicate it around the country. There’s no reason that people should be hungry in the United States or anywhere in the world. There’s a surplus of food in this country, and we’re just not tackling this issue at its root and prioritizing, unfortunately, things like defense as opposed to taking care of our people. And I feel really strongly, it’s incumbent upon all of us as citizens to do whatever we can to make a difference with those people that we live with that are part of our communities. Every single human, it matters and every single human is important.
Ramzi Budayr: Very inspiring to hear your unwavering commitment to those values. And I think what I struggle with as a small operator is that I don’t feel like I have the resources to be uncompromising. I have to believe. I mean, why else would I do this? I have to believe that I will get there. Yeah, that’s right. But I’m not quite there yet.
Sam Mogannam: Yeah. It’s been an evolution for us also.
Ramzi Budayr: For you guys.
Sam Mogannam: Yeah. I mean, like I said, when we first opened half the product was clean, half the product, and it was a journey. We needed to have the less expensive products in order to make the store accessible to people. And we needed it so precious and so pure that people were uncomfortable coming in and couldn’t find what they wanted, that we would’ve failed. And so it had to be an evolution. It had to be a process. And the most important thing that came through that was the trust and the relationships that we built with our community. And I don’t think it would’ve been possible if we were so dogmatic about our product set in the beginning. I don’t think we would be where we are today.
Ramzi Budayr: For sure. Yeah. Well, can you describe then that moment along the journey where you were able to make the switch? What made it possible?
Sam Mogannam: Yeah. I think there were definitely a lot of moments when guests started calling us out on products that we were selling that didn’t meet the integrity that we were professing, even though community led almost. It was absolutely, it was community led mean, and at every member of our community, I mean, it was our guests, it was our suppliers. We would’ve suppliers coming in, amazing ranchers coming in and saying, why are you selling that meat? Did you know that they do this? It’s like, oh, wow, cool.
And then we would learn, and we were constantly open to feedback and to that education. And this really copes too with anybody who’s in any industry, in any business, you’re as much a teacher as you are a student every day. I mean, you’ve got to constantly be learning if you’re going to be able to teach, and you have to take both responsibilities really seriously. I think it was led by the community in pushing us, but I grew up with parents who were both food insecure. My mom’s from the village of Bethlehem in the West Bank of Palestine, and my dad’s from the village of Ramallah, also in the West Bank. And after the Nakba, after the creation of the state of Israel, there was an influx of refugees that came from the newly created state that moved into Bethlehem and Ramallah along with refugee camps that were in Jordan and in Syria and Lebanon.
And all of a sudden the resources were strained and they grew up food insecure. And my dad working in the store with him because of his own personal experience, knowing what hunger was and not knowing where his next meal was going to come from, if somebody came in and said they were hungry, he would make them a sandwich, he would feed them and never turned anybody away when they were hungry. And so I grew up watching this and realizing like, well, it’s not just about commerce, it’s about taking care of each other. And I really was, it was that foundation that I learned from them. And then that kind of continued along where I had four years of education at a Jesuit high school here in San Francisco called St. Ignatius. And the Jesuits really in addition to being great educators, are trying to create servant leaders and people who are going to go out and make the world a better place and in community service and giving back, and was woven into every aspect of my education, my four years of education at si, and it gave me just a basis for where I needed to prioritize my efforts.
And it was only about making money then. This isn’t really, there’s other ways to do that. I really think that Bi-Rite is a front for giving love back to the world, and I’m proud of that. And being able to feed people who want to shop with us on a daily basis, and also being able to feed people who can’t afford to shop with us on a daily basis is equally important to me.
Ramzi Budayr: I mean, you didn’t really speak on 18 Reasons, but that’s a huge way in which you and your company has given back to the communities. I’d love to touch on maybe the impetus, what was like, all right, we got to do this. There has to be, speaking to the passion, you feel maybe limited by the canvas that Bi-Rite as a store afforded you. What made you go and buy another campus? Basically?
Sam Mogannam: Yeah. Going back to this notion of teaching, we had these amazing experiences in the store where over the counter teaching people how to cook the meats or how to prepare the vegetables, how to use the particular ingredient was powerful. And these conversations would be 30 seconds, maybe sometimes five minutes long. But we wanted them to go deeper. And not only did we want to have just a longer timeframe to be able to teach people more in-depth knowledge about these particular foods, we wanted them to also meet the people that were behind it, the people who were growing it, raising it, the makers who are so important, they’re hidden. They’re in their kitchens or they’re on their ranches, they’re in their fields, working their asses off. And we walk into these stores, we go into restaurants, and we expect to get all this deliciousness. We might recognize a farm or a ranch name, but we have no idea who this person is.
And these people are fucking amazing. They’ve dedicated their lives to giving us something that’s just delicious and done well. And we wanted the urban and the rural to come together to connect. And so a little space around the corner from the store on Guerrero Street opened up, it was about 200 square feet, and we decided to rent it so we can hold classes in it. And we put a little bootleg kitchen in it and started doing dinners with ranchers and with wine makers and with cheese makers, and with farmers, really connecting the people that were supporting these farmers and makers on a daily basis so that they can actually see each other, so they can learn from each other and recognize and understand the hard work that it goes into doing it every day so that they could actually have a higher appreciation for the value of it. And we did that, and it was so well received. I mean, people were craving for these experiences and craving for these connections. It creates an intimacy. Absolutely. And then you’re able to trust the food better. You basically look eye to eye to the person is doing it.
Ramzi Budayr: Yeah, they fed you your hand.
Sam Mogannam: And so we did that and for a couple of years, and it was totally scrappy. Like many of us who were part of the founding team, we would do our day jobs at the store, and then we would go and roll a cart down the street and feed people. And it was hard work, but it was so lovely and beautiful. And then a few years in, we hired an executive director and we started to think about, alright, what more can we do? And we started to think about how we could work with communities that couldn’t afford to come to these classes or these dinners, and to provide access and knowledge to those beyond our four walls. And we started a program working with prenatal moms. We were doing classes with students in schools just to try to further the message of how important it’s to care about where your food’s coming from. But we didn’t have the competency. We weren’t really experts in that. And in 2012, I met a woman named Sarah Nelson who had another nonprofit in San Francisco called Three Squares. And Three Squares was doing exactly the work that we wanted to do, which was in communities and underserved communities throughout the Bay Area, really building relationships and teaching people about nutrition and teaching people the basics of cooking so that they can be empowered to feed themselves and to feed their families better. And we merged with the two organizations. We kept the name 18 Reasons.
Ramzi Budayr: Sorry, it was 18 Reasons. Was it a nonprofit beforehand or…?
Sam Mogannam: It was a not for-profit, but with the merger. Tthat was one of the other primary reasons we merged. We assumed the 501(c)(3)of Three Squares, and we became an official nonprofit, and then we could go out and actually do the fundraising efforts so that we can actually expand the work and the mission of what we were doing. What was interesting is that we operate from visions. I encourage you to write a vision. We operated without a vision from 2008 to 2013, so what is that? 15 years we operated without a clear vision. I don’t know how we did it, honestly. I’m seeing how we’re able to operate now.
Ramzi Budayr: Well, it’s also, it’s interesting because it forces a level of accountability. That’s right. We’re always faced with these gut checks as an entrepreneur, oh, does this feel right? And you may be able in the moment to say yes or no, but then having this thing can actually explain why it’s not hitting the gut in the right way. And that can be a little bit scary, honestly, because then we’re always faced with this mirror. It’s like a hall of mirrors in small business, but to get a very clear picture of yourself in your own words, face yourself in those moments, that feels, honestly, I’m getting a visceral reaction even thinking about it. But I think that’s also very telling, and probably, you’re right, probably a good exercise to force myself into it and to help guide my team with.
Sam Mogannam: You’re a hundred percent right, because it took me from 2007 to 2013 to commit to writing the vision and the reason that we finally did it, and a lot of it was like I didn’t want to hold myself accountable to this commitment. And because it’s a commitment, you’re basically committing on paper what the future’s going to look like. And I was afraid to. But, I realized that was necessary. When we announced that we were opening our second store, and this was in 2012, and we had a bunch of staff members ask, how many more stores are you going to do? What’s the future look like for Bi-Rite? What’s the future look like for me? Is there growth opportunities? Are you going to take outside investment? Are you going to stay in San Francisco? Are you going to go outside the city? I had all these questions coming to me, I fucking don’t know how to look. I ain’t want to bullshit ’em and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no. I was like, I don’t know. Kind of like if you’re leading a couple hundred people and saying you don’t know. I mean all of a sudden doesn’t create the greatest amount of confidence in your leadership when you don’t know where the future’s going to go. And if you’re going to take a hundred people, 150, 200 people, four people on a journey…
Ramzi Budayr: You should have some idea of where we’re headed here.
Sam Mogannam: You got to know what the destination’s going to be, because otherwise, everyone’s going to get lost. People are going to go in different directions. They’re going to go backwards. They’re just going to go against the flow as opposed to the effectiveness that happens when you’re all moving in the same direction together. It was a powerful learning lesson, honestly. I mean, it came at the right time, and I don’t regret not making the decision when I did. I’m happy with where we are. I love that there were struggles along the way because I think those struggles build character and they build resilience within the organization. And I think we could have been a little bit more effective if we had the vision in place better, whatever.
Ramzi Budayr: No, I mean, but I’m grateful for the reminder. And that’s the thing, isn’t these pathways, whether it’s through conversation with a mentor or a customer or whatever, the pathways illuminate when it’s time. Yeah, it feels like it might be time. Last few questions, just to be sensitive to our timing. Square is sponsoring this season. What are some of the ways that Square has helped you connect with your community and better serve your community?
Sam Mogannam: I think the way Square has really helped us has been with our prepared foods, with our deli order ahead platform. We, for a long time before we had Square, if you wanted to order a sandwich ahead of time, we’d have to call, oh God, it gives me indigestion.
I can’t even imagine fielding that many phone calls. Well, imagine all the complexity with that, but man, it made that whole process so much better. So it’s been indispensable in all three markets in our day-to-day operations for helping our guests actually just get what they want in a timely manner. Because that was the other thing, because if you didn’t call in, then you’d have to come in, take a number, wait to place your order, place your order, and wait for the sandwich to be made, then wait in line to pay for it. The whole process is done. Maybe come in, pick it up, grab it, go.
Ramzi Budayr: And it’s a cool way to also bridge this culture of convenience where people expect things right away with. Also, because you’re not using delivery apps for your prepared food. It’s like they’re forced into the space, or they’re forced to interact with your team in some way. And so it’s a nice balance that I agree with. I agree with that. And then there’s still fortunately a handoff. There’s still a connection with the guest. The guest has to come in, and I appreciate that. That’s vital.
Ramzi Budayr: I think especially with food that’s made with so much love and intention.
Sam Mogannam: I mean, especially in a business where for us, it’s really the connection to the guest that’s most important to us. We want to build a relationship with ’em, and so it still gives us an opportunity to just do a little tap.
Ramzi Budayr: That’s right.
Well, you just spoke to this, but I’d be curious, now that your footprint has gotten pretty big in San Francisco, how would you define your community?
Sam Mogannam: There’s so many ways to answer that question. I mean, I think about just the definition of the community that we teach. So our mission is to create community through food. And so defining what community means is actually an important part of helping our staff understand what our North Star is, what our mission is. And so there are the three primary stakeholders in our community. It’s our staff, the people who we employ who are part of the team that connect and make the connections, facilitate the connections between our guests, the people who come in and shop with us every day, and our makers, all the producers, the people that grow, raise, and make the food that we sell. So those are the three primary members of our community. I pictorially draw it as an equilateral triangle because each member of that community is inextricably linked, and each one is equally important.
There isn’t one member of the community that’s more important, the other, because we need all three in order to be able to do the work that we do. The fourth, slightly more abstract member of our community is the planet. We think that the planet is an important resource. Without clean water, without clean healthy soil, without clean air, it would be really hard to have this amazing food that we use as a connector. The food is the blood that connects us all. I also think that businesses have to think of their community beyond their four walls. And so all of those stakeholders are kind of engaging with each other within the four walls of our businesses. But there’s a larger neighborhood that we’re responsible for making sure that our sidewalks are clean, that the delivery trucks that come early in the morning are not coming so early and making so much noise that it’s waking everybody up, that we’re doing our part to be good neighbors and good citizens within that community.
Because not everybody who lives in our neighborhood or adjacent to our businesses shops in our stores. And so we still want to be responsible community members for them. And then I also feel that there’s a responsibility for us now as a business in San Francisco that’s been in my family for 60 years, that we take a role in helping make this city as great of a place as it can be. And so I try to get involved in partnering with neighborhood organizations and nonprofits and with collaborating with our city leaders to continue to do whatever we can to help improve the quality of life for all of the citizens of San Francisco, and to increase good food access and to just make San Francisco as vibrant as it is, it’s one of the most amazing places in the world, and we’re so lucky to be here. And a big part of that is that we have a lot of people who really care about this city and helping it realize its potential.
Ramzi Budayr: Helping people realize how great it already is as well.
Sam Mogannam: That’s true too. I think that it always upsets me, and sometimes I get caught up in it so hard not to, but we need to stop [hating] on San Francisco.
Ramzi Budayr: I think that trend, I think the pendulum is swinging. I agree. I can feel it even just in the streets and the kinetic energy of the city and in the excitement and also in this new generation of entrepreneurs and creators that are really trying to make something beautiful and make something their own. And you don’t make something your own in a place unless you really believe in it.
Ramzi Budayr: And so that is very encouraging.
Sam Mogannam:
A hundred percent. A hundred percent agree with you. And I do believe that it, it’s swung. I think it’s definitely kind of like the momentum’s on the positive right now. And we all need to jump in what to do it and lean in/
Ramzi Budayr: How about your community? You Sam, your community, how would you define your own?
Sam Mogannam: I’m pretty lucky. I’ve got my family. I’ve had an amazing wife and two daughters, and they’re both young adults and they give me inspiration every day.
Haven’t expressed that they’ve both worked in the businesses since they were kids, and we’ll work on their various summer breaks, but I’m like, I’m not going to do it. What my dad did, which was push it down my throat though. I barfed it up and wanted nothing to do with it. And here you are. And then of course, Liam, of course, I came back to it. Anyway, my dad, he was like, oh, I knew you would come back. I was like, of course you did. He always
Ramzi Budayr: Gets go on. But it was up level. We want to spite them, but then sometimes they’re right.
Sam Mogannam: And he was, but the thing that I admire about my dad is that once I made the decision to walk away from it, he didn’t keep pestering me. He let me be free. And so space to figure it out.
And afterwards, after I came back and he said, if you didn’t have that time, you wouldn’t have been able to do what you’re doing. And Byron would be very different. And I’m so glad that you took that time. He made that acknowledgement, which our paths are not linear.
Ramzi Budayr: It’s all an amalgamation. So every little bit of experience you picked up is I get to experience it.
Sam Mogannam: Yeah, that’s right.
Ramzi Budayr: As a guest here and that if you didn’t have that, then we probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now.
Sam Mogannam: Yeah.
Ramzi Budayr: It’s pretty cool.
Sam Mogannam: Yeah, it’s really cool. So anyway, so I’m not going to force ’em. It would be nice if they want it to be part of it, but I also want to respect their own dreams and let them discover where their passion was. They think it’s a gift to be here on this earth, and we have one chance. And I think it’s so important that we find something that gives us fulfillment and then brings us joy. And I want them to figure out what that is for themselves. So I’ve got my family, I’ve got my bi family. I mean, it’s like so many of these people I’ve worked with for decades. And then I’ve got my greater food community, and I feel so blessed to have peers that are farmers, ranchers, cheese makers, wine makers, and chefs throughout the city. And then I’ve got my larger food community around the country and around the world.
And when I decided to become a chef, I did so because I wanted the ability to be able to travel and see the world. And I figured if I could cook, I could get a job anywhere in the world. And it’s led me to being able to connect with people everywhere I go. It’s impossible when you have that language and that you’re somewhere and you see somebody feeding you well, not to want to just embrace them and acknowledge that they’re putting all this love and passion into what they’re doing, and you make connections for life that way. And so I feel really blessed, man.
Ramzi Budayr: Yeah, you can feel it. That’s great, man. Okay, we have two closing questions. The first is, is there a neighbor that you’ve either lived by or operated your business close to that has really made an impact on you?
Sam Mogannam: There was, back in 2006, we started growing food on the rooftop at Bi-Rite on 18th Street. We built some planters and had a rooftop garden where we were growing herbs and tomatoes and we had peas and just a few things. It was just an opportunity for us to do that magical thing, take a seed and plant it in healthy soil and give it sun and water and see it sprout and grow. And we had beehives also put on the roof. And so we were extracting our own rooftop, honey. And shortly after Edible San Francisco did a story on our rooftop garden and this desire that we had to expand it to grow more food. And one of our neighbors read the piece and said, I’ve got this big beautiful backyard around the corner. It was in Mission Dolores, which is one of the most amazing places to be able to grow food in San Francisco, always sunny. And the soil actually is really rich and healthy. It’s not sandy soil like it is on the western neighborhoods. And she let us grow food in her pot of land in our backyard. It was about a quarter acre. It was a nice big lot. Yeah, it was big in our neighborhood.
And so we started growing food on this plot of land and we were hooked. And she just offered it up. She just said here because she recognized this desire and this passion that we had. And she’s like, fuck, you’re going to beautify this for me, so why not? And she can go out and pig vegetables whenever she wanted. And I was like part of the deal. But it was the bug that we needed. It was from that point that we were committed to finding some farmland to grow on more legitimately. And we started with a half acre up in Sonoma and then eventually rented a larger parcel of land and started, and we’re farming three acres up until the pandemic. And so for about 15, it was about 12 years that we farmed. And then when the pandemic hit, we unfortunately had had to shut the farm down.
But it was a really important period in our Bi-Rite life because we all of a sudden learned so much more about the complexity and the challenge of growing good food and how much work it takes. And we even created a farm school through 18 reasons. It was like 20 students every year would pay to attend farm school, and for six months they would be part of the planting and the weeding and the eventual harvesting of the third. And then at the end, the final class, we would celebrate the harvest. I would cook for them, and then we would just all sit down together and just express our gratitude for the season. And we see that coming back. I’d like it to come back. It’s not on the plan for right now. Sure.
Ramzi Budayr: But that’s also, to your point, it makes you an even better buyer.
Sam Mogannam: It helped the conversations that we were having with our growers and helped our staff have actual, because staff would go up and work on the farm. It was part of the training for our produce teams. They would go and for them, this is part of the reason why they wanted to come work for us because they could actually have direct access.
Ramzi Budayr: That’s so cool.
Sam Mogannam: Yeah.
Ramzi Budayr: Alright, well the last question. What does being a good neighbor mean to you?
Sam Mogannam: I should have thought about this question. I didn’t think you were going to get all the way to the bottom now. Yeah. I think being a good neighbor, something I touched on early on, the conversation, right? It’s really recognizing that as a business that we’re here to serve not only the guests that walk through our threshold and do with us, we’re here to serve our entire community. And I feel it’s really important for businesses to be active members of their neighborhoods and active members of their cities, supporting organizations that bring vibrancy and joy and happiness to the people that live within them. And I feel it’s one of the things that I’m super passionate about, like small independently owned businesses, locally owned businesses, is that more often than not, you have an owner who’s present, somebody who’s there, who cares, who. It’s not just about, it’s not just about making a buck, it’s about making a friend and making a difference in somebody’s life. It’s not about making a buck, it’s about making a friend.
Ramzi Budayr: That’s really good.
Sam Mogannam: I see it here. One of the things that attracted me about Polk Street was, and this is a testament to supervisor Aaron Peskin, our ex supervisor and his commitment to preserving the identity of Russian Hill and of North Beach and preserving this fabric of local independently owned businesses and keeping big box formula chain stores out, is that I can walk down the street and I can look in to 80, 90% of the stores on Polk Street, and the owner is there. I love that they’re there. They’re, they’re sweeping their storefront. And in the morning, they’re in there talking and engaging with their customers throughout the course of the day. And they’re creating community every day. They are being good neighbors. And to me, as far as a business is concerned about being a good neighbor, that’s what being a good neighbor really means.
Ramzi Budayr: Getting gold T-shirts printed. It’s not about making a buck, it’s about making a friend. That’s really good. That’s really, really good. And that was Sam Mogannam of the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses. Once again, this whole process has just been a dream come true, to sit down with people that are so much smarter than me and better than me at so many different things. And to hear their thought process and their journeys. I hope you got as much out of this as I did. I certainly hope we get to do this sort of thing again at this level of production. And if not, we’re going to be carrying on this podcast for hopefully years to come. We’ve been releasing episodes basically every week for the better part of six months. And the plan is not to stop doing this, but to keep going and keep growing.
So if you enjoyed what we’ve built, please like and subscribe and share and download. That’s really helpful. For whatever reason, please go support Sam and Bi-Rite. They have three locations now. They’ve got the Creamery across from Bi-Rite on 18th and 18 Reasons, which is just such an amazing nonprofit serving our community and connecting people through food and through education. You can find more information about Bi-Rite and Sam @biritesf on Instagram. And yeah, you can come meet me at 22nd and Dolores at Dolores Deluxe, we’re open 7:30-7:00, seven days a week. I’m pretty much always there unless I’m recording a podcast, although often you’ll find me recording out on our little patio. And thank you so much for listening and for this opportunity. We can’t wait to do this more often and to meet all of you. See you soon.
