This Oakland restaurant was developed in the spirit of mutual aid

WHEN THE PANDEMIC hit, Jenabi Pareja — like most of his colleagues working for Bay Area restaurants — lost his job. He quickly transitioned to cooking and selling food through pop-up events in his home. “I was feeling the brunt of the pandemic and trying to figure out what I wanted to do next,” he says.

He became connected to the 8th Street Collective, a loose organization of Oakland residents, most of whom lost their jobs in the food industry and became active in local food distribution and mutual aid. This summer, the collective had an opportunity to fill an empty commercial space in Old Oakland where a restaurant wasn’t able to complete construction as planned. “We were talking about a potentially shared kitchen space, where folks could do pop ups and we could figure out what a new model could be,” Pareja says.