How one Angeleno built a health-conscious oasis in L.A.’s food desert

Olympia Oseth's journey to opening a health food store in one of Los Angeles' food deserts began with her own trips to the grocery store.

This was 16 years ago. Oseth had just graduated from college and was living on a vegan diet. There were few healthy food options in her area, and she had to commute two hours back and forth to work on the bus to buy nutritious food that fit her budget as a recipient of federal food assistance.

“You spend all this time on the bus, get somewhere where there is healthy food, and then you have to argue with yourself: Can I afford this apple?” – recalls Osset.

After those demoralizing trips around town, Aarset founded Süprmarkt, a nonprofit organic food business on Slauson Avenue in South Los Angeles that started as a street-level pop-up in 2016 and grew into a grocery store in 2024, thanks in large part to a community crowdfunding campaign.

Inequities in access to healthy food extend throughout the county, but hurt its poorest residents and communities of color the most, University of Southern California researchers found in a study last year.

About 25% of Los Angeles County residents don't always know they'll have enough to eat, and even more, 29%, don't have access to nutritious foods that can help prevent heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Roughly 30% of blacks and Latinos who make up most of South Los Angeles have difficulty finding healthy food.

Among this state's CalFresh federal food assistance recipients, 39% are food insecure and 45% are food insecure.

And this in a state where nearly half the country's vegetables and three-quarters of its fruits and nuts are grown. According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

To Osset this increasingly seemed more like an injustice than an inconvenience. With just $300 and help from loved ones when she first started, Oseth bought enough groceries to load the trunk of a friend's Suzuki and sold it in Leimert Park and other places in South Los Angeles.

“When we first got there, we almost sold out, and people were just so grateful,” Aarset recalls. “It was crazy to hear from people in their 40s and 50s saying, 'There's nothing like this in my area.'

Since opening, Auset has offered special discounts to customers receiving monthly food assistance, most recently during the November delay in federal SNAP payments. As thousands of low-income Los Angeles residents lined up at food banks, Aarseth launched the SNAP Back program, matching 125 donors with clients receiving food assistance, allowing them to buy groceries at the store.

But it's not just those most vulnerable during federal aid delays or cuts that are at risk, said Kayla de la Haye, director of the University of Southern California's Institute for Food System Justice.

“Additionally, many people with low or even moderate incomes 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 two to three times higher for Black and Latino Angelenos than for white Angelenos, she said.

The insidious thing about food and nutrition insecurity, Aarset says, is that it can start to feel like a fact of life.

“That was the norm for me growing up” in Los Angeles, she said. “It was always, 'You have to go to the white neighborhood to do this… I knew something was wrong, but I never thought about the root causes.'

The first seeds of this growing awareness were sown while she was attending Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, DC.

She learned about Will Allen, a former professional basketball player who later became leader in urban agriculture and food policy after purchasing the last remaining farm in Milwaukee and selling the produce he collected, he needed to help the communities.

“Something clicked,” Osseth said. “We have the ability to feed everyone, but we don’t.”

But if finding healthy food in South Los Angeles was a challenge, navigating the bureaucracies and food distributors was even more challenging for a young black woman entrepreneur.

There was an inspector who, after inspecting the progress of the reconstruction of the building, asked: “Is this your husband’s project?”

The vegan ice cream seller expressed disbelief when he learned that Osset wanted to sell the ice cream in his part of town.

“He was like, ‘Vegan ice cream on Slauson? – recalls Osset. “He just laughed at me on the phone and never sent me a price list.”

One supplier agreed to sell Auset but then refused to deliver to an area it considered too dangerous for its drivers.

Moving west past Crenshaw Boulevard along the Slauson portion of the Süprmarkt market, auto repair shops and fast food restaurants dominate the scene.

Next comes a freshly painted black and white Craftsman-style bungalow with a towering “Süprmarkt” sign. Oseth said the location is significant to her because the late rapper and entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle, whose community-minded approach to business she admired, operated his clothing store, Marathon, located just down the street.

The Süprmarkt is dominated by sunny positivity and a black consciousness, a remnant of the building's former life as home to the Mr. store. Wisdom, who cares about his health.

Patio furniture and a planter box filled with fresh greens, wildflowers and cherry tomatoes greet customers on the wooden entry deck, while a pillar cabinet holds a tiny library of Afrocentric books.

Celebrating the beauty of black culture and black people is important to promoting health in the community, Aarseth said.

This mood permeates the interior, where a wall of glazed tiles in a rich turquoise color sets the mood. Some feature images of what Aarseth calls “ancestors,” including singer Nina Simone and activist Fred Hampton. The music is in R&B style. Incense fills the air.

The small space is filled with displays of fruits and vegetables, as well as vegan, nutrient-dense dry goods and snacks. Auset has a separate room with self-serve containers of beans and grains. She just expanded by opening a juice bar in the back of the store.

The backyard “teaching garden” is still a work in progress, but Oseth displays a collection of greens and herbs and says he plans to hold workshops there on farming and holistic health.

Hannibal Ali, a physical trainer, came to buy fruits and vegetables for his raw food diet. He shops here because of the convenient location, he said, but as a Black Angeleno, it goes deeper than that.

“We don’t have a lot of access to healthy food,” said Ali, who also volunteers at the nearby Park Hill Community Garden. “If we don't support ourselves, who will support us? Self-preservation is a very important thing in our society.”

Derly Barajas lives five houses away from Süprmarkt and comes every few days to buy ingredients for his raw food diet.

Barajas, an educator who works with adults with special needs, said that before the market opened, he also rode the bus to buy groceries in the neighborhood.

He describes the store as a blessing. For two years, Barajas battled a mysterious illness that caused fainting and pressure in the head and chest. Believing the illness might be related to his diet, he gave up fast food and sugary, processed snacks.

He recently surprised himself by purchasing jackfruit for a barbecue that looked just like Sloppy Joe's meat.

Part of the store's charm, he says, is that it introduces customers to a new way of thinking about ingredients, cooking and what it means to take care of your body.

“If someone decides they want to eat well,” Aarset likes to say, “it shouldn’t be a luxury.”

However, she added, shopping for your health can still be special.