Local Roots founder reflects on year one of her cafe (and 11 years as a CSA)

'I wanted to create a virtuous cycle,' says Wen-Jay Ying of her innovative (and kinda punk) community supported agriculture operation

By Brian Braiker

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Wen-Jay Ying is a woman on a mission.

Eleven years ago she launched Local Roots — a new kind of C.S.A., or community supported agriculture operation, working with diverse farms within a five hour drive of the city. Last year, she opened her first Local Roots Market & Cafe, an eatery and community space on Court Street. Through it all, Ying has been single-mindedly driven to bring hyperlocal nutritious food and produce to communities that need it most — in a way that’s more punk rock than pedantic.

“People were just in this vicious cycle of buying food from bodegas, a lot of processed foods, and going back there to get medicine for health ailments,” she says. “So I wanted to create a virtuous cycle where you could be supporting local farmers, your local economy, you could access really high quality food that’s nutrient dense — nutrient packed, flavor packed — and it’s improving your health with every bite that you’re enjoying.”

While it all sounds so serious, Ying approaches community and food in a way that is also fun — and even a little DIY garage rock. Which is not a stretch to say, considering that, years ago, Ying was herself immersed in the local music scene and once received a piece of advice from Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne that set her on the path to where she is now.

As Ying tells it on this week’s episode of “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast,” she was picked to dance on stage at a Flaming Lips concert, after which she was invited to chat with Coyne backstage. She says the rock star asked her what she planned to do with her life (not typical backstage rockstar behavior) and she mentioned she was thinking about moving to New Orleans to help out in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He told her to think about what she could do closer to home to have an impact in her own city.

“I really spent a lot of time meditating on what he had told me, because if someone like Wayne is going to be giving you advice and spend time to do it, it really means a lot,” she says.

On the podcast, she discusses the early years of Local Roots and the mandate that’s guided her for the past decade-plus. We discuss the cafe as it celebrates its first year of operation, and she talks about how the pandemic was actually a boon for her mission.

“We were able to provide people food when the Amazons and the Whole Foods and all those places weren’t able to,” she says. “It was stressful and it was really hard and emotional but it was also a really good time for Local Roots and people in local food because it felt like the first time people acknowledged how important the local food system was.”

Local Roots, the cafe, leans into Ying’s Chinese heritage. The first generation American child of immigrants, she unpacks her complicated relationship to food as she was growing up.

“Food was actually a pain point for me as a kid,” she says. “Because food, when you don’t look like everyone else and your food is not like everyone else’s, it’s how people can call you out on being different.” The cafe, which uses a lot of Chinese ingredients and produce, and leans into Chinese recipes, has been a way for her to “take something that was really hurtful from my past and make it something that I’m really proud of,” she says.

Ying currently splits her time between Brooklyn and Los Angelese where she is planning out the next chapter of her Local Roots journey. But even as she expands, she says, she holds on to the advice that Coyne gave her early on: “There’s always something to be done in your home.”