Ingredients for social justice in Oakland culinary industry

News of a Bay Area chef with a farm barely raises an eyebrow these days. But when Sarah Kirnon became the social-enterprise director of Dig Deep Farms four months ago, she wasn’t out to cultivate premium ingredients for her Oakland restaurant, Miss Ollie’s. She had a bigger mission in mind.

The 6-year-old farm, which has 8 acres in the hills above San Leandro, isn’t just a source for organic radishes, greens and carrots. It is funded in part by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, and many of the farmers who tend its citrus trees and lush fields were once incarcerated.

Kirnon’s dual role at Miss Ollie’s and Dig Deep Farms embodies a spirit that has grown in Oakland alongside the city’s stature as a food destination. Oakland has become a hub for chefs, artisans and activists seeking social change. They’re employing people marginalized from the restaurant industry, starting worker co-operatives and using food businesses as a tool to address racial and economic disparities.

Gentrification may have brought the taste (and the budgets) for high-end restaurants and precisely pulled cappuccinos to Oakland. Even as the restaurant industry is changing Oakland, Oakland is changing the restaurant industry.

As the Bay Area likes to remind itself with smug frequency, higher-end restaurants here have long embraced the idea of an ethical cuisine that values environmentally sustainable farming and, more recently, animal welfare.

At the same time, said Saru Jayaraman, founder of Oakland’s Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, the Bay Area’s restaurant industry falls behind those of other metropolitan areas when it comes to racial disparities in pay. According to a study the organization published in June, more than three-fourths of high-paying positions in California’s most expensive restaurants go to white workers.

“We have higher wages here,” Jayaraman said. “That is a sign of progress. But with the higher wages have come higher wage gaps between white workers and workers of color.”

Both of Kirnon’s jobs attempt to remedy that imbalance. She is transitioning Miss Ollie’s, whose staff is largely people of color, into a worker-owned cooperative. As she helps Dig Deep Farms connect with some of Oakland’s best restaurants, she’s encouraging cooks to spend time working alongside the farmers. “It’s really important that people know that there’s a representation in the people of color community who are growing great produce,” she said.

It’s also essential to Kirnon that Dig Deep Farms pay its workers a good wage, and that they bring home fresh produce to their families in addition to their paychecks.

The mission to address economic and racial justice also permeates Keba Konte’s work at Red Bay Coffee in the Fruitvale neighborhood.

“A lot of specialty coffee roasters have done a lot of great work in paying higher wages in origin countries through direct trade,” he said. “We wanted to close that loop. If we were going to bring more folks of color into the retail side of specialty coffee, but they’re still getting minimum wage, that didn’t feel significant enough.”

Hiring workers who are formerly incarcerated or who have aged out of the foster system is one way Konte strives for significance. Offering profit-sharing to the workers at Red Bay’s new cafe in Uptown Oakland to help them build equity is another.

Many cite the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Children program as the origin of the city’s commitment to food and social justice. In 1968, volunteers began cooking breakfast for young children at a West Oakland church, and the program quickly expanded to 19 cities. Free breakfast for children in need was eventually adopted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Brahm Ahmadi, founder of the People’s Community Market, which is building a grocery store in West Oakland, called the city’s spirit of activism contagious. “Even for someone opening a restaurant, there’s an opportunity to make their business more meaningful.”

Shaniece Alexander, who moved from Atlanta last year to become director of the Oakland Food Policy Council, said that the city’s culture of community organizing was immediately apparent upon her arrival.

“As tiring as it can be, people are still working toward what they deserve,” she said. “That has energized me in this work to say, hey, I can go to any community and there will be people who show up to have this conversation.”

There are almost too many food-justice programs to name. They include urban farming nonprofits such as Acta Non Verba, Phat Beets and City Slicker Farms, as well as social enterprises like Youth UpRising’s Corners Cafe and a startup called Town Kitchen, which trains young people from low-income communities and delivers box lunches to offices and conferences.

It is not surprising that Oakland is home to Camino, one of the first Bay Area restaurants to abandon tipping and restructure the way its staff is paid. Or to the first Bay Area location of Locol, Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson’s fast-food chain, which serves healthier food and employs people from Oakland’s most economically challenged quarters. Or to Juhu Beach Club’s Preeti Mistry, who has used the media attention she attracts to discuss racial and gender discrimination and how she hires and supports an inclusive workforce.

The Oakland Museum, which highlights the Free Breakfast program in its current Black Panther Party exhibit, is planning an exhibit on food justice in Oakland for early 2018. New mission-driven restaurants are in the works as well. At the end of 2017, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United is partnering with Oakland’s Ella Baker Center to open Colors, a full-service restaurant that will also house training for workers, restaurant owners and the public.

There’s an urgency to this work, Kirnon added.

“There’s this huge shift in Oakland going on,” she said. The city’s African American population declined by 25 percent between 2000 and 2010 alone, and gentrification is pushing even more people out.

“There’s a generation of folks here who are saying, look, in order for us to feel represented in a city that’s changing so rapidly, these are the things we believe in and these are the causes we fight for,” Kirnon said. “It’s not just something to put on a menu.”

Jonathan Kauffman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jkauffman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jonkauffman