SunCoast Community Fund
Many lower-income neighborhoods in the South Bay area of San Diego County have lost their neighborhood grocery stores, and now the region suffers from an overabundance of fast food, convenience, and liquor stores and the diet-related illnesses they cause.
Join us as we address this problem by opening a 100% community-owned, cooperative grocery store in Imperial Beach.
Every community faces unique challenges for which large-scale approaches don’t always work. Often, these approaches leave significant portions of the community behind.
Faced with a lack of access to fresh and healthy food, South Bay residents have banded together to open a community-owned and governed full-service grocery store focused on local sourcing, healthy options, reducing packaging, and making healthy food access equitable for all. SunCoast Market Co-op gives a voice and meaningful opportunity to the people most in need.
SunCoast Market opened it’s doors to the public on January 31, 2026, offering long-term solutions to area residents. The store will serve as a community wellness hub, offering ongoing support for healthy living, classes in cooking, healthy eating, nutrition, and home vegetable gardening. SunCoast will be a model for other lower-income, diverse communities in how to build community self-reliance and resilience from within.
SunCoast Market Co-op is a full-service grocery store providing healthy, locally sourced groceries and produce. The store is open to all, but owners receive additional benefits and owner-only discounts.
SunCoast Market helps reduce packaging waste by offering a large selection of bulk foods, coffees, herbs, and spices
After ten+ years of visualizing, planning, development and implementation by the volunteer board of SunCoast Market Co-op, and over $4 million raised, the store celebrated its Grand Opening on January 31, 2026. You can support the co-op’s mission by making a tax-deductible donation to the SunCoast Community Fund.
The store is under construction in the Silver Strand Shopping Center at 600 Palm Avenue, Imperial Beach 91932. The store is easily accessible by car, biking, walking, or transit. We need your help to cover the remaining costs to open and get us to the finish line. Donations and grants of all sizes are welcome!
SunCoast Market Co-op is a community-owned grocery store built to be a source of healthy food for the South Bay community. To become an owner-member of SunCoast, click the logo above and join your neighbors to make lasting change to the health of our community!
SunCoast Market Co-op Objectives
Focus on health
Food access is a social determinant of health and South County residents suffer from higher rates of chronic diseases. The impact was pronounced during the pandemic when diet-related chronic conditions put people at higher risk of COVID complications and death. SunCoast Market improves equitable healthy food access, accepts CalFresh benefits, offers discounts to low-income residents, and provides education on healthy eating.
Foster regional economic growth
When the store is fully operating, we anticipate 30 or more permanent jobs, and the store will generate $6.5 million annually in the regional economy. Co-ops also source up to 35% of products regionally and can prioritize BIPOC vendors, supporting the growth of California small businesses and farms. By acting as an incubator program, co-ops foster the growth of emerging businesses Co-ops share profits among the member-owners through in-store discounts and rebates and reinvest in the community, donating 44% more to charities than traditional stores. Food co-ops build stable, sustainable communities by recirculating profits within the region.
Supporting local food systems is about more than just providing fresh, locally produced products to customers — strengthening the connections between consumers and producers is an investment in the community. It promotes the health of the local economy by ensuring that more money spent locally stays in the community, and it promotes food safety by shortening the supply chain between producers and consumers.
Care for the environment
SunCoast utilizes environmentally friendly practices, such as an all-electric kitchen using cutting edge induction cooktops, that help community members reduce their carbon footprint. SunCoast emphasizes sourcing from farmers using organic/regenerative practices; reduces packaging waste via bulk/bin shopping and refill stations; and shortens the supply chains by sourcing more local products.
Locally sourced foods are fresher, have far fewer food miles, provide more nutrition and flavor and reduced food waste. Local staff and shoppers can walk or bike to work instead of driving.
Imperial Beach Demographics
27,000
Population
0
Full-Service
Grocery Stores
1
Outlet Grocery
Store
69%
Resident are
People of Color
34%
Income Below
County Median
SunCoast Community Fund
is a program of San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project
a California 501(c)3 food-centered educational nonprofit
Educating, cultivating and empowering sustainable food communities in San Diego County since 2008
eWhy SunCoast Co-op matters to San Diego Roots
San Diego Roots’ home base is Imperial Beach, California, the most southwesterly city in the continental United States. The region was once a dominating agricultural area, supplying much of the San Diego region with fresh produce and dairy products. The area was the home of Wild Willow Farm & Education Center, the educational farm SD Roots developed and operated in the Tijuana River Valley from 2010 to 2019. Now there are few farms and no dairies in the area.
Imperial Beach is bordered by the Pacific Ocean, the San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge, and the beautiful Tijuana River Estuary Reserve. Tijuana, Mexico is our neighbor to the south, and the City of San Diego borders our north and east. Despite the city’s magnificent setting, when it comes to food access, I.B. is critically deficient.
In recent years, this city of 27,000 did not have a full-service grocery store with reliable fresh produce. The region’s demographics (key factors outlined above) make the area unattractive to grocery store operators. So every day, area residents were forced to travel miles to the nearest grocery store, or rely on the meager pickings from fast food, convenience stores and outlet markets closer to home. The region suffers heavily from obesity and chronic, diet-related diseases. It is classified as an economically disadvantaged community that meets the USDA definition of a food desert.
In 2016 a group of residents in Imperial Beach gathered to discuss how to address these disparities and bring a full-service grocery store to San Diego’s South Bay. The group determined that a community-owned and -governed cooperative business model best fit the needs of the community it would serve, and SunCoast Market Co-op was born.
SunCoast Market Co-op is part of a resurgence in food cooperative designed to meet the needs and address disparities in underserved communities. Our goal is to create a model for similar communities.
SunCoast Market Co-op opened its doors to the public on January 31, 2026 as the first Southern California grocery co-op in an economically disadvantaged community, and the first in the nation to open in a majority Hispanic community. The store focuses on regional sourcing, healthy options, reducing packaging waste, and making healthy food access equitable for all. The market, now with over 1500 vested owners (San Diego Roots was among the first 20), offers healthy eating education and acts as a community wellness hub.
Which is where we come in….
SunCoast Market Co-op offers the most-meaningful, long-term way to address critical food access and insecurity issues in Imperial Beach. Recognizing this, in 2022 San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project partnered with SunCoast Market Co-op to establish SunCoast Community Fund as a vehicle to fundraise toward opening the store. Now that the store is open, the fund will help expand store services to the public, help fulfill SunCoast’s social mission to educate the public about healthy eating, and demonstrate what a truly local food system looks like. Please make a tax-deductible donation today!
