Catering to the Customer With Respect and Dignity

A very pregnant Brenda Smith and two of her seven children trudge along Broadway in South Los Angeles beneath a mercilessly hot sun.

Smith has just finished the grocery shopping. She stops every few steps to readjust an unwieldy armload of bags.

A gallon jug of red punch comes from a meat market at Broadway and 91st Street because red punch is cheapest there. She gets milk from a liquor store two blocks away for the same reason.

Eggs, however, mean another hike, this time to a brand-new, blue-and-white stucco building that houses Mom & Pop, a liquor-free, not-for-profit store at the corner of South Broadway and 92nd Street.

“It’s so clean,” Smith said, noting the absence of gang scribble that mars the walls of the two other stores and many buildings in the neighborhood. “And you never see people hanging around outside.”

Six months after it opened, the store--the brainchild of Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Bakewell--is demonstrating a point that Bakewell has repeatedly made: A market that sells dignity and respect along with its products and no liquor, beer or wine can survive in Los Angeles’ most depressed neighborhoods.

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One common feature among the small neighborhood stores that dot the commercial strips of poorer areas of South-Central Los Angeles are the neon signs that advertise competing brands of beer, wine and hard liquor. Inside many of these stores, customers can find paraphernalia that can aid drug use and gang activity--tiny plastic bags to package marijuana or cocaine, and bandannas to signify gang affiliation.

By contrast, Mom & Pop is as orderly and austere as a hospital pharmacy.

No graffiti obscure its walls, and it alone features a large, fenced-in parking lot.

You cannot even buy cigarette rolling paper there.

A large sign inside the store displays the words respect and dignity in giant letters. Clerks are unfailingly polite to most customers.

The occasional unruly child unaccompanied by an adult gets pulled aside and firmly but quietly admonished.

“This is not a playground, son,” the store manager, Myra Allen, scolds one boy. Allen is creating a “Wall of Dignity” behind the counter, where the pictures of outstanding neighborhood residents will be placed.

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The store is a not-for-profit venture that is part of the Mom & Pop Economic Development Corp., which Bakewell, one of South-Central’s most prominent activists, hopes one day will grow into a chain of no-liquor convenience stores.

The idea for Mom & Pop grew out of the rage Bakewell and other African-Americans felt after the March, 1991, fatal shooting of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins by the Korean-American owner of a store on South Figueroa.

Activists contend that too many merchants in mostly African-American and Latino South-Central were not from the communities from which they drew their income and that too many stocked substandard products, treated their customers with disrespect and sold liquor in areas where alcohol abuse is rampant.

“I think liquor store owners have gotten addicted to the quick and steady profit” from alcohol sales, said Sylvia Castillo, a member of Community Coalition for Substance Abuse and Treatment. “Danny’s store is a positive expression of what can be done with a little creativity.

“I feel as safe and as comfortable (there) as I do on the Westside, and the quality is comparable,” she said. “It is such a demonstration of respect for the community.”

Castillo, who lives in the West Adams district but whose office is only a few blocks from Mom & Pop, said coalition members banded together this year and descended on the store in a show-of-support shopping spree.

That is the kind of thing that Eric Wilson, a former Thrifty drugstore district manager who has been one of Mom & Pop’s guiding forces, encourages.

“If we can get each customer to spend $8 every time they come in, we will be fine,” Wilson said.

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It is stock day at Mom & Pop, and the staff is busy unloading boxes, dusting shelves and restocking them. Hot dried chiles go up in the section where items sought by Latino customers are kept.

The store also features products created by entrepreneurs of color, such as Homeboy soda, produced by a Chicago firm, and an African-style salad dressing.

Most of the five-member African-American and Latino staff is working this day, taking breaks from the stocking to wait on customers.

“Every week, we are increasing our sales,” said Allen, whom Wilson recruited from Thrifty to be Mom & Pop’s manager.

Allen said customers tend to be women, older people and children, those most likely to be intimidated at stores where liquor sales sometimes attract crowds that stand outside drinking.

But a liquor-free environment is not all shoppers on a tight budget are seeking. There are complaints that some items are far more expensive than at nearby markets--which explains why shoppers such as Smith go from store to store seeking bargains.

Bakewell acknowledges the price differences and has begun making changes.

One of the first things Allen and Wilson learned is that customers are not looking for the non-edible items that dominated the stock in the first few months. As a result, the store now touts its groceries.

There have been other changes, too. Mom & Pop used to bill itself as Our Community Convenience Store; now it is Our Community Grocery Store.

Last week, the store entered into a partnership with Vons Markets, which is helping it gain access to more popular merchandise. The giant food chain also will loan Mom & Pop one of its managers to serve as a consultant.

And the store is planning its first aggressive advertising campaign, targeting those who live within a one-mile radius.

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Albert Richardson, 35, who got a job at Mom & Pop through the Urban League, closely monitors the store’s progress.

For him, Wilson is a role model who can teach him skills that one day could lead to him to ownership of his own business, perhaps even his own Mom & Pop.

The same is true for Conica Washington, an 18-year-old clerk who had to leave high school because of a pregnancy and got a job at the store, and Yamilee Ribera, 23, a former baby-sitter who has worked at the store five months.

“They hired me to help set up their computers,” said Richardson, a former construction worker retrained by the Urban League as a computer specialist. “I got over here and found that this is really a worthwhile project.”