Arena Market & Café

Arena Market & Café is Point Arena's community grocery — a member-owned cooperative that three dozen locals dreamed up in early 2009 and, five months and hundreds of volunteer hours later, opened on Main Street on May 19 of that year. Before it existed, town had no natural-food market, no place for a hot soup on a cold day, and no everyday gathering spot; fifteen years on, the co-op is all three, staffed by neighbors and open seven days a week to members and visitors alike.

It's a real full-service grocery, not a token corner store: organic and natural food that's sustainably and regionally sourced, a deli and a bulk section, fresh produce and meat, frozen goods, eco-friendly home and personal-care products, and a genuinely good selection of local and organic wine and beer. Tucked inside is a cozy café — the reason a grocery run here easily turns into lunch. It's the kind of place that earns the visitor's line the co-op loves to quote: "I didn't think places like this existed anymore."