[Editor's note: This column was filed before news broke that Whole Foods will come to JP.]

When City Feed & Supply decided to expand from the tiny store near the Stony Brook T to a larger location on Centre Street, those of us who had come to value the little café/store/neighborhood meeting place were anxious. Would the new place be too big, would it have the same vibe?

We remembered how much the original City Feed store had changed the Stony Brook neighborhood. Instead of the convenience store of dusty canned goods in a haze of cigarette smoke with the TV blaring in the background, City Feed provided a community café with fair trade coffee, high quality baked goods and other good food, a place to sit and chat with neighbors, a place for all kinds of neighborhood notices.  Every day the City Feed coffee grounds went to the compost bin in a nearby community garden. And there was a space for CSA pick-ups from Stilllman’s Farm, and there were window boxes and bike racks and outside seating for folks to sit and watch their neighbors go by. The neighborhood — it was all about the neighborhood.

So we worried about scale – could the bigger space maintain the same relationship with its larger neighborhood? On opening day I went in to check it out. It turns out I was not the only one with an interest in how it would turn out; I didn’t get there until one o’clock and by then the store had been swamped with so many customers that every scrap of food in the kitchen had already been sold!

The rest is history, the good timing of a business focused on locally-produced food coming as consumer interest is turning toward eating local food and doing local business. “Green, local and fair” business, as the Sustainable Business Network puts it.

City Feed is one of several JP businesses that have gone through the six steps identified by the Sustainable Business Network as essential to running a green business. (JP has more than its fair share of businesses that have made their operations more sustainable, including Wainwright Bank (soon to be Eastern Bank), Boston Building Materials Co-Op, Ula Café, and Red Sun Press.) City Feed has also won a City of Boston Green Business Award 

David Warner, who founded City Feed with his wife Kristine Cortese“What does local mean? It means you watch each dollar to see how much of it can go to your neighbors. You support the contributions of each of those neighbors to the community. Not to be xenophobic – nothing against other places. The problem is when the unique identity of each place is lost and we all live in Anywhere, America.” 

Part of David Warner’s passionate support of small local farmers may stem from his own background. He knows how close to the edge many small farm operations are because his own family’s farm failed when he was growing up; his parents had to take non-farm jobs to support the family.  That experience may also explain his participation on the Mayor’s Advisory Board, working toward rezoning for urban farming in Boston

But how is business at City Feed? When I talked with Warner, he said the challenges of the business come in the costs of the product, the fact that it often costs the consumer more to have a local, organic product that is marketed in a sustainable manner than to buy a product that is mass produced and trucked over thousands of miles.  He explained that the hard part of a business like his is finding the sweet spot where the added value to the consumer and the price of a product intersect at a level that allows him to stay in business.  

Warner might be thinking of people like City Feed customer Nora Heink when he articulates this dilemma.  Heink is attracted to City Feed by the ambience. “It feels snug, and the coffee is really good. And yes, it makes a difference that it’s fair trade.”

Although she enjoys the ambience, Heink is only an occasional customer: “I feel bad that I can’t support the local economy as wholeheartedly as I would like to… Everything is just a tad expensive for a young person saving for the future. There are some products that I am willing to pay more for -- supermarket tomatoes can be pretty sketchy in winter. And this coffee is really the best in town.”

Fortunately there are also customers like Nathan Frederick, who admits that City Feed is expensive, but adds “I don’t mind paying more for things if it’s supporting practices that make for a better world.  I like buying local eggs, local milk. I like what they represent. I like that it supports local food.”

Or Shari Z, who won’t buy her sandwiches anyplace else. Why does she buy them at City Feed? “They taste better. They make a real sandwich. They are one of the good things about JP.”

There are plenty of nonprofits in JP who agree. City Feed’s support of local organizations is legendary, and is an expression of the pleasure and pride Warner and Kortese feel in being part of the JP community. Over the years, City Feed has provided support for Spontaneous Celebrations, Bikes not Bombs, the Regan Youth League and many other organizations. If you’ve been to a community celebration in JP, you’ve probably eaten food from City Feed.

Jane Zerby of the JP Food Pantry housed at the Unitarian Church describes the tables full of really good baked goods at City Feed that someone from the Food Pantry picks up every other Thursday. A counselor at the Curley School has good food to offer students during counseling sessions thanks to City Feed. And many more venues.

I was worried that City Feed might be getting too big. Warner laughed at the idea, pointing  out that the Centre Street Store may be bigger than the Boylston Street store, but that it is tiny compared with the stores it is competing with (Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Roche Brothers).

Small scale can impose limits on some of the green endeavors Warner would like to undertake. The New England climate imposes some limits of what kind of local products are available. And there is always the complicated dance of suppliers, products, deliveries, displays, customer tastes, and price.  Trusting that customers will pay the price and play their part in building sustainable businesses.

City Feed makes an effort to connect customers with suppliers with photos and stories  and  in-store events.  Education is one motive – expanding taste, introducing customers to new products.  But as Barbara Kingsolver has pointed out, it also gives you confidence when you know the person who grows (and sells) your food – and you can look him in the eye.