Defining local is not as simple as you’d expect. Buying local. Hiring local. Selling local. You could go very extreme and say that you will only buy from/frequent/or hire within your immediate vicinity, but is immediate vicinity determined by walking? Driving? Public transportation? In that case, buying food locally would be very hard for those living in the inner-city, since very little food is created within the city itself.

When With Love first started looking for suppliers, we intended to source as much of our food as we could from local urban farms, gardens, bakeries, and suppliers. One claim to fame that belongs to the greater South LA region is urban farming and local food unparalleled by that of most urban centers. There are plenty of organizations producing food locally, the problem is that most of them do not have the scale to create food for a grocery store on a regular basis, much less do it at an affordable price. The reality is that food takes much more time and effort to create than it takes to consume, and even larger urban farms have trouble providing a regular yield. Moreover, some products like coffee and rice simply aren’t grown in our region.

Today, when looking for suppliers, we cast our net out further, looking at the entire greater LA region, and when necessary, beyond it. We have no strict criterion of “local”, insteading looking at the values our potential suppliers have: Do they make a good quality product with love and care? Do they treat their workers fairly? Do they produce things in a way that is considerate of the environment? And most importantly, do they have a vested into in working for the good of the common space that we all share?

Local, to us, means quality cost-effective produce and goods as local as possible; Southwest LA first, then LA City, LA County, So Cal, California, etc. We will continue to refine our product offerings over time when we discover new vendors and products. But we will do our best to source locally to create the greatest possible impact in our area. We are local and we encourage you to be as well!