Fresh produce, vegan food and juice at Crenshaw Food Hub in South LA

On a windy January afternoon, dozens of watermelons lined the back of the mall at the corner of West 77th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard in Hyde Park. The striped green balls were spread across the asphalt, a green look at the summer season in the middle of winter.

To get her there, Imani Diggs drove a total of 43 hours from Los Angeles to Florida and back. It's a trip he made four times during the month, each time returning with thousands of pounds of watermelon.

“I made contact with some black farmers in Florida in December and went there to pick up the watermelons,” he said. “Just so people can continue their fruit fasts and things like that. People have been telling me, 'I've been on a fruit fast for 10 days and you're just saving my life.'”

Diggs drives around the country, picking up seeded watermelons from farms in one state and selling them in another. He sources watermelons from farmers in Florida, Mexico and Houston. In recent years, he has delivered watermelons to Las Vegas and throughout California, including Richmond, Woodland Hills and Orange County. Now he sells watermelon, juice and other products from his first store called Imani Gardens in the Crenshaw Food Hub.

The new food hub has taken over the space formerly occupied by Kathy's Kitchen. Kathy Alston opened her small juice shop in 2020, selling produce and making juice from whatever she bought at farmers markets around the city. Their lemon, ginger and turmeric juice was sunny in a bottle. Her celery, lime, and ginger elixir turned me into a green juice person. But after five years in space, Alston made the difficult decision to close the company.

“I always had a dream to bring healthier foods to the community,” she said. “I started Kathy's Kitchen to make that dream come true, and I did everything I could do.”

Now Diggs and his partners Adam X and Compton Community Garden director TemuAsyr Martin Bey are continuing Alston's dream, but on a much larger scale.

Diggs and X have spent the last few years hosting fruit and vegetable pop-ups together in Leimert Park.

“We had plans to transition to a brick-and-mortar store,” said

The plan was to take over the lease from Kathy's Kitchen and convert the space into a food center. Imani Gardens would serve as the anchor tenant, with a permanent market featuring fresh juices and other foods at the forefront and several food entrepreneurs who could operate from the kitchen.

“The idea is to create a place in the community to go and buy food in a food desert,” X said.

At the moment there are two resident chefs operating out of the food hub. The first is Amin Muhammad, who grew up in a nearby apartment complex. He grew up vegetarian and would take the bus with his friends to Beverly Hills to get eggplant pizza at Mulberry Street Pizza. Now he makes a vegan eggplant pizza himself with grated banana squash instead of cheese.

“It’s not that there aren’t places to eat, but there’s no quality food anywhere,” Muhammad said. “When Adam told me where it was and I told my mom and brother, they thought it was right in the neighborhood. It's part of my roots, so I had to be a part of it.”

Visitors can purchase Muhammad's pizzas, white bean soup, bean pies and a handful of other prepared foods from a small freezer in the grocery section of the store.

Also in the kitchen is Wolf Collins, who runs a pop-up called Electric Wok. He specializes in alkaline vegan foods and stocks the fridge at Imani Gardens with grab-and-go sandwiches and fried quinoa. When he's in the kitchen and can get Diggs soursop, Collins makes what he calls his soursop fish sandwich.

“It was just kind of an experiment, but it went ridiculously viral on TikTok and Instagram,” Collins said.

He breads unripe soursop in a mixture of chickpea flour and spelled breadcrumbs and then deep-fries it until golden brown. He garnishes the soursop fillet with alkaline cucumbers, alkaline garlic aioli, alkaline habanero sauce and red onions on sourdough spelled bread. The fruit takes on a tender, fleshy consistency, similar to a white fish fillet.

Collins also makes burro fries, turning the green, dull fruit into crispy wedges with a fluffy center.

The center, market and chefs are just one arm of a healthy food supply and distribution operation. X, Bey and Diggs plan to expand and spread to other downtowns across the country.

“We establish markets for Black farmers, produce nutritious food products, and distribute fresh, culturally relevant foods to eradicate food deserts and strengthen our communities,” the food center’s mission statement states. “By prioritizing Black food sovereignty and the cooperative economy, we are revitalizing agriculture and expanding access to healthy foods to promote human longevity.”

X and Bey are behind Asyrs Bridge, an agricultural consulting firm that advocates for equal access to the agricultural industry.

At the beginning of the 20th century, black farmers made up about 14% of farmers in America. As of 2022, this number has fallen to less than 2%.

X leverages his background in business and finance, as well as Bey's position on the California Department of Food and Agriculture's BIPOC Advisory Board, to advocate for federal funding to build infrastructure for Black farmers and grocers.

The two were able to help secure $1.25 million in funding for the Ujamaa Farmer Collective, an organization whose mission is to help BIPOC farmers secure land and resources. The name comes from the Swahili word for “extended family”. In 2024, the collective was able to purchase a 22-acre property outside of Woodland.

“The goal is to eventually start farms so we can source our own food,” said X. “It will take years. We are building a prototype that can be duplicated so we can be the solution to our own problem, especially not eating healthy.”

The next step is to purchase the building that houses the Crenshaw Food Hub.

“We could actually build the entire food system and be our own solution to food deserts,” said X. “Now we want to buy the building so we can own the farm, the building and the entire supply chain.”

Diggs sources produce for the market from a network of about 10 farms from San Diego to Sacramento, including WeGrow Farms, an urban farm in West Sacramento. Recently, soursop, black sapote, dragon fruit, Indian mangoes, chirimoya and granadilla have appeared on his shelves. He also curates a selection of pantry items like honey, sea moss fruit roll-ups, and coconut dates.

Although he hasn't stopped traveling to host his watermelon seed pop-ups, he's grateful for the permanent space and regular business hours.

“It feels good,” he said. “It gives the community better access to us, and that's the most important thing. We need more spaces like this.”