UCLA club brings fresh produce to student community

The original version of this article contained multiple errors and has been changed. See the bottom of the article for additional information.

Three students stood before half a dozen crates of sun-kissed strawberries and bundles of broccoli, grinning from ear to ear as if they were looking into a treasure chest.

“Oh wait, let’s just stop and smell this. It smells so good,” said Erin Gerber, a second-year philosophy student and the business development director of the Food Buying Club at UCLA. She grabbed a bouquet of basil and buried her nose in the leaves.

The trio were a few of several customers examining produce neatly arranged on the tables at a stall run by Gaytan Family Farms Sunday afternoon.

Every other Sunday, directors of the Food Buying Club drive to Brentwood Farmers’ Market to pick up orders of fruits and vegetables from a family-run local producer that sells organic goods.

The UCLA Student Food Collective operates the Food Buying Club, which aims to combine the purchasing power of the collective to provide locally sourced produce at a competitive price.

The club takes orders from students and makes bulk purchases at a wholesale price from a local producer, eliminating the line of intermediaries involved in the distribution of produce from soil to shelves. About 20 to 30 students regularly order fresh goods through the club’s website by Wednesday at noon every other week and pick up the goods from the Food Buying Club on Sundays on Landfair Avenue near Gayley Avenue.

Alyssa Lee, a fourth-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student and the project director of the Food Buying Club, said she started the club with four other students last spring to give students a wider range of fresh and affordable food on campus.

The club’s long-term goal is to create a student-run grocery store on campus, but the group does not have set plans for how to bring its business to campus yet, said Chris Laganiere, a second-year computer science student and the events director and website manager of the Food Buying Club.

Laganiere and two other students hauled the crates down the street lined with white-tented food stands and produce stalls. The savory smell of garlic spreads and jalapeño dips flowed from a nearby stall that was managed by a father and son.

Down a few stalls, a young man sold bolani, a vegan flatbread from Afghanistan. When asked what ingredients the fillings are made of, he slyly smiled and said, “I can’t give you the inside scoop on that.”

At the market, bundles of purple radishes were placed on a table, with their muddy sandy roots exposed in the air. Students can buy produce at a cheaper price than fruits sold on campus and nearby grocery stores, said Lee.

“Affordability is the issue. It’s not that (students) don’t have a place to get grocery items (off campus). You’re looking to pay a lot more than you might think of (paying), especially in (Los Angeles),” Lee said.

The biggest order the club has received
was worth about $133, which Lee said is a big improvement from the value of initials orders that were about $60 per order.

The students left the stall with half a dozen weighty crates full of carrots, brussels sprouts and spring onions, purchased for less than $120, after exchanging friendly greetings with Joana Gaytan, the daughter of the owners of Gaytan Family Farms.

Gaytan’s parents have farmed in the U.S. since 2000, and now she helps her parents run the farmers’ market stand and their family farm during the weekends, often washing vegetables and fetching eggs from the chickens.

Gaytan, along with her older sister and parents, wakes up at 6 a.m. on Saturdays to pick out fruits and vegetables from their farm and bring them to the farmers’ market on Sunday at daybreak.

“(This) is what we live for. This is what my dad has been doing for all his life,” Gaytan said.

Her father has been a farmer for the past 30 years, who started his toil with the earth back in Mexico.

Gaytan picked up bundles of broccoli and kale and placed them in a plastic bag for a customer.

For Lee, the Food Buying Club is what pinned herto UCLA when she was a first-year looking to transfer to a smaller school where she hoped she wouldn’t feel as lost.

“Now that’s my issue – food. That’s what everyone knows me for,” Lee said.

She said it’s uplifting to see people in the community who also share a passion for food.

To get back to UCLA on time to distribute the goods to students, the three students left the farmers’ market around 2 p.m. They carried the crates back to the car and organized the fruits and vegetables in the trunk.

After slipping into the seats, they took in deep breaths to smell the fragrant air.

The car smelled of fresh strawberries the whole ride back to the campus.

Correction: Alyssa Lee is a fourth-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student. Joana Gaytan’s parents have farmed in the U.S. since 2000.