‘Something Called Me to This Corner’: The Story Behind LaRayia’s Bodega

LaRayia Gaston describes Atlanta as a city full of fairies.

“I just thought it was magical,” she said. “It was literally a city full of fairies.”

That sense of wonder guided the Brooklyn-born entrepreneur to plant roots in a city she had never visited before she was compelled to book a flight during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The result was LaRayia’s Bodega, a Black-owned, plant-based grab-and-go eatery tucked into a corner of Ponce City Market’s Central Food Hall, and, approaching five years in operation, one of Atlanta’s most quietly beloved hidden gems.

Gaston’s path to Atlanta was anything but linear. She launched her first clothing brand, Apule  Town, in New York before relocating to Los Angeles, where she built a showroom, pursued acting and modeling, and eventually found herself at the intersection of the city’s fashion district and its most devastating reality: Skid Row.

“I was designing and having high-end clients while seeing homelessness and poverty that really affected the Black community,” she said. “When you start to see those things at a level of devastation, it kind of makes you question your art and what you do, and how much of it has impact.”

That questioning led Gaston to spend 43 days living on Skid Row as part of a documentary she directed. The experience reshaped her purpose. She founded Love Without Reason, the nonprofit that runs Lunch On Me, an initiative dedicated to ending starvation and enriching the lives of unhoused residents. Every month, Lunch On Me serves 10,000 organic meals six days a week to people on Skid Row, and in Atlanta, the nonprofit distributes free vegan food at Woodruff Park every Friday.

Out of that same mission came the first LaRayia’s Bodega, which she describes as the nation’s first organic 99-cent store concept,  a response to food access and waste on Skid Row. The concept married her background in design, mixology, and food with an abiding belief that healthy food should not require abandoning cultural identity.

“When I go to Whole Foods, I don’t find myself,” Gaston said. “I don’t find my identity, my representation, my culture. So it feels like when you’re in those spaces, something about your identity feels abandoned.”

The Atlanta location, situated at Ponce City Market, offers fresh salads, cold-pressed juices, smoothies, vegan lemonades, vegan milk teas, and hot dishes infused with Caribbean and international flavors. The menu includes items such as Jamaican Jerk Jackfruit Tacos with mango salsa, vegan comfort foods like chili, cornbread, and collard greens, and beverages like Black Girl Magic Lemonade with activated charcoal. Gaston developed the entire menu herself, drawing on her years of bartending and mixology as much as her time working with communities facing food insecurity.

She designs the apparel sold in-store as well. “The bodega is my brain,” she said. “It’s my mind. It’s what I think of. It’s the world I live in.”

Gaston said she did not set out to open in Ponce City Market specifically. Three weeks after arriving in Atlanta, she found herself in a meeting with the market’s team,  still new to the city, still learning its geography.

“I didn’t know Ponce was the most visited landmark in Atlanta,” she said. “When I went, I discovered things as someone new.”

What she discovered that she loved the most, she said, was Black Atlanta.

“Black people,” she said flatly, when asked what made her fall in love with the city. “I’m a pro-Black woman. I love my people more than anything in this world. To see Black people thriving, to see the nuance, to see the history,  it was special.”

The bodega reflects that ethos from the moment a customer walks in. Gaston said the most consistent feedback she receives is that something drew people to the corner,  an energy they could not name before they arrived.

“Something called me to this corner,” she said, recounting what customers often tell her. “It’s something divine. It’s something sacred.”

For customers new to the bodega, Gaston said she resists pointing them to any one item before learning who they are.

“I’m more focused on learning my customer than telling them what to do,” she said. “Context is everything.”

What she does want every visitor to leave with is a sense of being seen.

“Especially as a Black woman in my experience in life, I feel like we’re so undervalued and underserved,” Gaston said. “What I want people to recognize is that each customer, each visitor, we see them. It’s about being public servants. We want to connect with people. We want to serve them.”

The post ‘Something Called Me to This Corner’: The Story Behind LaRayia’s Bodega appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.