El Cerrito Natural Grocery Company - El Cerrito, California

Julie Voice

An excellent natural grocery store with all you’d expect. Great produce and super quality meat department. Very friendly and helpful staff.

James K

Well, I quite liked this place! (5/5 green stars)
I can definitely see how business owners become frustrated (enraged, even) by certain online reviews. El Cerrito Natural Grocery seems to receive more than its fair share of unreasonably whingey reviews. Wah, there are nuts in some pastries! Wah, there’s gluten in the thing I bought without looking at the ingredients list! Wah, regular parkers park in the electric car spot! If there’s a regular car parked at the charging station you would think it’s more reasonable to blame that driver rather than give the store one star.

Anyhoo, I dropped in for just a coffee and pastry and found it to be a fairly pleasant spot to do some writing – there’s no WiFi by the way. Good mix of people inside, having coffee, lunch or a beer. It’s not a place that I would have ever considered coming for a beer but they have an interesting selection in their fridge and will provide glasses. My latte was better than I had expected – the foam was dense, almost like a flat white, and considering that they use organic milk it was not expensive at $3.25 for a medium. Similarly, my hot cross bun was $2 even though it was made from organic ingredients. So I’m not sure that the complaints about prices are warranted. Wah!

I’m giving them 5/5 “green stars” for social and environmental impact, based on these reasons:

• The Natural Grocery Co. uses 100% green power and does a good job at waste minimization.
• They are employee-owned and if you look them up on Glassdoor it looks like employees are pretty happy. E.g., they are offered good health benefits after working there for 60 days and after 5 years they get stock in their company.
• They use local organic butter, milk, cream and eggs in their bakery.
• Their mission is to use local, organic / sustainable ingredients and they have partnerships with the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA) and FishWise, amongst others.
• Their beer selection is heavily represented by local brewers such as Fort Point and the East Brother Beer Co.
• Their coffee is from Equal Exchange, pioneers of the direct trade movement and a great cooperative company. The majority of their coffee is shade-grown and some is certified organic.

Interested in writing green star reviews? If so, contact me! (greenstarsproject)

Laurel Maha

Expect decent quality and variety of most grocery items, produce was a little old when I went, but not expired completely. The staff was helpful and kind. Very pricey, but glad to have a grocery store option close to my house. Store was clean.

Kris Johnson Michiels

Great neighborhood grocery store!! Easy parking and friendly staff! Good quality produce!

Don May

My wife and I call this the "Ripoff Store" because the prices dwarf those of Whole Foods.

Their trail mix is $22 per pound. You read that right: $22 per pound!!!

The meat spoils super fast so definitely don't buy meat there.

And their bread is terrible.

Go to Whole Foods instead... you'll get better quality at much better prices

Great staff however.

Very good hot bar. But they need to offer Shepherd's Pie in bulk more often. If it's not in bulk, it's $8 for a tiny little serving. And their meatloaf is like $20 a pound. For meatloaf?!?

Again... "ripoff store"

Mary

Old school organic store with aisles of bulk for sale. Love it!

Karen

Nice store with lots of organic foods. Good vitamin section. A little pricey but you are what you eat. Watch out for the contaminated food supplies they have in regular stores. It's GMO and chemicals in everything. Buy organic. Helps the planet also.

swirly ink

Their produce, both in variety and quality is amazing. They have SO many kinds of apples, including a lot of heirloom hard-to-find ones. Often have some neat exotic types of fruit, I've seen passion fruit, dragon fruit, custard apples, Buddha's hand, just to name a few. They have a great selection of dry bulk goods, about any kind of herbal or vitamin supplement you can imagine. A ton of teas! A variety of types of milk including lactose free, A2, and raw. They have a good variety of household items including hygiene (bath, tooth, deodorant, hair care) and things like reusable containers, paper towels, and bottles. Their meat department is awesome and they have duck eggs and meat available. They also have RO water available (I keep shrimp so this is such a nice treat!)

The staff are always super helpful and friendly and it always feels very welcoming there. The prices are high, sure, but between being an organic, health focused business and a local grocer I think their prices are more than reasonable and it's not hard to find things in budget especially if you stick to the produce and dry goods. You get your money's worth that's for sure. I'm getting distracted writing this thinking of the persimmons I got recently. Last time I had persimmons that good was when I was picking them off the tree myself. Go here, you won't be disappointed.