The sign at 2901 N. Walker Ave. says
“Samir Groceries.” The sign at 3020 N.
Walker Ave. says “Flora Bodega.”
We’ll let you decide which one is the
grocer and which is the bodega. You
can buy beer and wine at both, but
cigarettes at only one and fresh greens
only at the other.
Flora Bodega is the newer kid on the
block but is serving needs in different
ways than Samir.
“I always wanted a free fridge,” co-owner Angela Renee Chase said.
More about that later. But, for now,
let’s talk about the bodega itself.
You’d be hard-pressed not to be able
to make one of your best meals from
only ingredients gleaned from the store.
Local and fresh greens, dairy, meat,
grains, toppings and condiments can
all be found among the shelves of the
modest but rapidly-expanding Flora
Bodega. The outline of the state marks
the spot for Oklahoma products, of
which there are many.
Flora Bodega officially opened for
business at its current location on the
north end of the Paseo District on
April 1. But it had been operating for
the six months prior as a coordination
hub for online orders and grocery pickups due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They previously worked as
owners of the Paseo Farmers Market
at SixTwelve at the corner of NW 29th
Street and Lee Avenue.
Chase, Jenna Moore, Megan Sisco
and Thanh Tran opened the store, with
Sisco stepping away from co-ownership
since its opening.
“Me, Megan, Jenna and Thanh, we’re
like, ‘Let’s just turn this thing into a
worker co-operative.’ If you’re doing
the work, then you should probably be
the owner of it. If you’re making it run,”
Chase said.
“It feels October 1st, October 2nd, I
think that was the first day of pickup
for online orders again, so we basically
like opened to maintain
the online orders that we had done as a
pop-up in the middle of the pandemic
once we lost our outdoor space. … So it
was the beginning of October and we’re
like, ‘We’re here!’ but literally we had
almost nothing on the shelf. It was like
folding tables. We still kept maintaining
the online store and then just kept
working on the space simultaneously,”
she said.
Imagine a farmers market with heating and air-conditioning that’s open seven days a week with a little artistic
flair and you have an idea of what Flora
Bodega looks like in late September.
That’s 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday through
Thursday with an early start at 9 a.m.
on Saturdays.
But those hours should hopefully
expand as business grows.
“I open the store a lot of time early
anyways on Sundays. I just go ahead
and show up early and do it so that I
would say in my idealistic world, yes,”
Chase said.
She’s eyeing 7 p.m. on the later end
but would like to first focus efforts
on opening earlier
on other days
moving forward.
Chase spent
several years
working at and developing Forward
Foods before they
closed their doors
on Western Avenue.
She hopes to bring
the energy and expertise to Flora
Bodega that larger
grocers find hard to
replicate.
“There’s such a gap in people having like specialty food skills, because a lot of people
just work at places and they are on like
maybe a fad diet or something, they
don’t actually know that much about
food products and true seasonality,”
she said.
Flora Bodega also has their system
set up to allow use of Access
Oklahoma cards.
“We do EBT food stamps and we do
the double-up, so anybody that’s on
food stamps, they can do it once a day
if they want to. They get matched up
to $20 free every single day in produce,”
Chase said.
They also made sure the Flora
Bodega spot would have space for that
free fridge Chase mentioned earlier.
“We looked at other locations and then we’re always like, ‘Where will we
put the free fridge?’ … So then, Tamar
[Cohen-Davidyan], she lives on Walker,
she launched one … So we basically
joined forces and she moved it from her
house down the street to ours. The big
drops during the week are usually
Sunday night. Wednesday night is one.
Sometimes, if there’s enough food they
do like this weekend with a Saturday
night and Wednesday and Sunday night
drop,” she said.
[Trader Joe’s] sends an insane
amount of waste food that’s still good,
perfectly good.
The rules are
not to put
rotten bad food
in there. Be respectful to
people. There’s
kind of a big following. I don’t
have to promote
it too much
unless I come
out there and
I’m like, ‘Okay,
this food has
been sitting,
people don’t
even know it’s
here. Come get
it. So we’ll flag.
But on the
Sunday nights, especially the nights
that people know to come pick up,
they’ll wait for hours in front of the store,” Chase said.
On the other end, Chase also makes cakes with local, organic ingredients (a
full two-layer cake as pictured on the
cover of this issue is $70 and maybe
ordered through her site at angelerenee-
chase.com).
If the spirit of the spot hasn’t been
captured by now, there’s also an endcap
displaying a Flora Bodega T-shirt with
a design by artist Melissa Jacobs (@pityparty on Instagram).
For more information about Flora
Bodega and/or the Paseo Farmers
Market, email paseofarmersmarket@gmail.com, or text/call 405.531.0708.
This article appears in Gusty fauna.