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Sam Mogannam corsets in constant motion as he zips through Bi-Rite Market, the San Francisco grocery that has been in his house since the 1960s – answering questions, exchanging hugs with customers, and showing against the store’s densely packed inventory and locavore credentials.

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He sweeps his arm to surround the wine wall and the array of cheeses; clambers up a ladder to the rooftop herb garden and beehives; peers into the diet locker where huge lamb haunches await butchering; darts down the shape to the Creamery, Bi-Rite’s ice cream shop; and surrounding the corner to 18 Reasons, its new “community space for dexterity and food.”

“We put the kitchen in the heart of the save because we want people to see and smell what we complete,” he said, motioning at the narrow space where a corps of workers busily chopped vegetables, assembled sandwiches and stuffed sausages. “We’re irksome to stimulate all the senses, not just the palate.”

Bi-Rite is a mini-command built on sustainable food, much of it local and organic, packed into exclusive small storefronts in the heart of the Mission, a stone’s throw from Dolores Park. As the owner, Mogannam marshals 75 store workers into a constant ballet to discuss some 40,000 grocery purchases a month.

Mogannam, 41, a previous chef who looks like an earnest grad student, speaks fluidly in the speech of new-millennium gastronomy.

“Food is critical in our lives; we require to be more conscious of what we eat, how we gnaw into, who we share it with, really understand the sourcing and provenance of which provides us with our energy,” he said. “We’re very favored to live in an amazing place in the world where a great number of people are fanatic about their food and what they simple fellow in their bodies.”

A foodie haven

The store attracts a cadre of true foodies. Joann Kochevar and her husband, David, who live in Oakdale (Stanislaus County), tend hitherward by whenever they’re in San Francisco.

“The variety, the freshness – I could stay in the present life for days,” she said as she selected Fujis for a Thanksgiving pie.

Bi-Rite brings in yearly transactions revenues of about $4,000 per square foot. By contrast, traditionary supermarket revenues are $200 to $300 per square foot and Whole Foods brings in $900 to $1,000 by square foot, he said.

“I see Bi-Rite as one of those distinguished lights that shows how we could redevelop a regional food regularity in the Bay Area,” said Anya Fernald, director of Live Culture Co., every Oakland company that consults on sustainable food and agriculture. “Sam has pulled unitedly a clear, tight vision. He’s building a really strong supply chain and developing lateral businesses.”

Mogannam is also unique for his common commitment, she said.

“He’s made the bold choice of form his store and his neighborhood better and better, rather than calamitous to replicate it and do it in Danville,” Fernald said.

Mogannam’s male parent and uncle bought Bi-Rite in 1964 and he basically grew up there, taking the streetcar from West Portal after school starting at maturity 6 to sweep, stock shelves and eventually work the cash annals.

“I vowed never to be in the grocery business,” he declared.

Instead, he became a chef, training in Switzerland for a year, cooking at Oakland’s Pasta Shop, and first appearance his own Financial District restaurant, Rendezvous du Monde.

But after the eating-house’s landlord raised his rent, Mogannam’s father persuaded him to take outer Bi-Rite, which had been in other hands for several years. Mogannam unwavering to put a kitchen in the store – a relatively new concept for 1998. The location wasn’t yet chi-chi; most shop windows still had iron gates, there was gang activity and enduring drunks on the street, he said.

“We took over the duration, gutted it, put in a kitchen,” he said. “People in the vicinage remembered me as a kid and thought I was crazy.”

Over time, the grocery expanded. Mogannam’s wife, Anne Walker, a pastry chef, originally worked away of a rented kitchen making baked goods for the store. When extent down the block opened up, Walker and her staff took it upper. They wanted a retail presence, but the area already had a satiety of bakeries.

“We felt like ice cream would do well through the community,” Walker said.

Creamery expanding

With flavors like honey lavender, Earl Grey and ricanelas (cinnamon concreted sugar cream with snickerdoodles), the Bi-Rite Creamery now produces some 450 gallons a week. It shortly will expand next door, almost doubling its size.

About 18 months ~ne, Bi-Rite rented a minuscule storefront around the corner to throw 18 Reasons, a nonprofit community center focused on increasing connections between consumers and producers of food. About 500 residents pay $40 a year to subsist members, and other businesses have chipped in as sponsors.

The nonprofit hosts subsistence education classes, winemaker dinners and conversations with farmers. Upcoming events embrace Butterfest ’09, “a two-hour extravaganza of all things butter.”

A unite of years ago Bi-Rite bought a small plot in Sonoma at what place it grows tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, squash, beans and greens.

“Simon Richard, our give rise to buyer, is an ex-farmer and was itching to get his hands foul and grow food again,” Mogannam said. “We decided to take our chances and institute growing crops.” A neighbor read about the farm and offered up her Noe Valley backyard, to what Bi-Rite now grows “inner-city greens.”

Local produce

The 5,000 pounds of cause the Sonoma farm produces are a minuscule percentage of what the supply carries, but is another step in getting closer to food sources, he related.

So are the beehives on the roof, which produce a honey that tastes of jasmine and fennel, the pair found in abundance in the area. “The beekeepers were sweet plenty to name the two queens after my daughters, Olive and Zoe,” Mogannam reported.

Zoe, who is 6, is already asking her parents when she’ll deviate working in the store the way her dad did as a kid.

“She thinks she wants to be an ice cream scooper,” Mogannam afore~. “I’d put money into seeing her in the store this approach summer a few hours a week. The staff digs her; she knows she’ll be seized of a ball.”

– Bi-Rite Market, 3639 18th St. (between Guerrero and Dolores streets), San Francisco, (415) 241-9760; www.biritemarket.com

– Bi-Rite Creamery, 3692 18th St., (415) 626-5600, biritecreamery.com

– 18 Reasons, 593 Guerrero St., (415) 241-9760, www.18reasons.org

E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle