Over a $5 lunch of kale and arugula salad with a carrot ginger dressing, served with a Caribbean-style potato coconut soup, Ms. Gaston said the bodega is “an ode” to activist-driven community programs, like the free breakfast program run by the Black Panthers in the late 1960s .

It’s the latest venture of Love Without Reason, the nonprofit she founded four years ago. Her organization runs a meal program, Lunch On Me, that serves 10,000 meals to the homeless per month in Los Angeles , and provides similar services in Hawaii and New York City, where Ms. Gaston is from.

The shop is called a bodega, she said, because the term brings to mind a sense of community. (The term “bodega” may not be big in Los Angeles, but for Ms. Gaston it has more resonance than “tiendita” or “minimart.”)

To foster a sense of community, she plans to hold events like monthly birthday parties for children and open-mic nights at the store, as well as sip-and-paint classes for children (with cold-pressed juice). The cafe offers vegan salads, soups and chili — all made from scratch in-house — as well as organic snacks, donated by sponsors and companies, that sell for $1 to $2 each.