Browse Tag

food market

3 mins read

Black Owned Grocery Store Receives $2.5 Million Grant

Forty Acres Fresh Market is a startup grocer founded in 2018 by Liz Abunaw in response to the lack of fresh food options on Chicago’s West Side.

Forty Acres Fresh Market
Liz Abunaw

As much as Liz loved offering fresh produce at pop-ups, farmers’ markets, and a grocery delivery service, her dream was to open a brick-and-mortar store.

It seems her dream has come true. The city of Chicago is backing the development of a Black-owned supermarket with a $2.5 million grant, funded under the Chicago Recovery Plan.

The Chicago Recovery Plan Community Development Grant program will offer small grants up to $250,000 and large grants up to $5 million. Business owners can apply online. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, with a first-round deadline on Jan. 31 and a second-round deadline on March 10.

For Forty Acres Fresh Market, the grant will fund part of the construction costs, including plumbing, mechanical and electrical work for things like refrigerators and freezers. They expect to apply for construction permits in the coming months. Construction will begin once the city approves the permits, a process that could take three to five months.

Tracy Smith has been with Forty Acres since the beginning.

“It’s very exciting,” Smith said. “I’ve never been a part of anything like this … I’ve seen Liz do everything, from the first events to finding a location where they wanted the store … Every time we go over there to get something, someone asks when it is going to open.”

The store will fill the gap in mid-sized grocery stores, allowing residents to stock up on daily food items between major shopping trips. The store will be full-service, with a range of fresh fruits, veggies, prepared foods, frozen items, a refrigerated section and dry goods.

Bringing a grocery store to the area will improve more than just food access, Abunaw said: A grocery store is part of a neighborhood’s social infrastructure that builds cohesion in a community and benefits all businesses along the corridor. The increased foot traffic and local dollars being circulated within the Austin community can “slowly start to shift the perception that there’s nothing on Chicago” Avenue, she said.

“We want people to start associating good shopping experiences with Austin,” Abunaw told Black Club Chicago. “It’s not just buying food. It’s the people, it’s the customer service. It’s the frozen food aisle and discovering new things you didn’t even know you needed.”

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6 mins read

Chicago Teens Transform Liquor Store Into Fresh Food Market

A liquor store on the West Side of Chicago is being transformed into a pop-up food market after Austin area teens were given the chance to come up with solutions to their neighborhood’s challenges.

Much of Austin is considered to be a food desert. The pop-up market will be opened at 423 N. Laramie Ave., and within a half-mile radius around that site, there are 12 liquor stores but only two markets where people can buy fresh food.

The Austin Harvest food mart pop-up was brought to life by neighborhood teens who recognized the food scarcity in the area and decided to take matters into their own hands.

The market held a soft opening Wednesday where the teens offered produce, fresh-cut flowers, and refreshments.

The market will officially launch Monday and run for 12 weeks. It will be open 3-6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the site of a former liquor store, 423 N. Laramie Ave.

The project was funded by former Chicago Bears linebacker Sam Acho and other Chicago athletes, as well as By the Hand Kids Club. But it was the teens themselves who envisioned the food mart and brought the idea to fruition.

Young West Siders had their hands in every part of development, from designing the space to crafting a business plan to managing the pop-up.

“We’ve been behind the scenes completely, as well,” said Azariah Baker, one of the teens who created Austin Harvest. “We’ve discussed how we want to show our market, where we wanted our market to be, what we sell, what we look like. This is who runs it.”

chicago
Azariah Baker

The teens started working on the pop-up after the protests for George Floyd in June. By the Hand hosted a series of listening circles to give young people a platform to voice their frustrations around the systemic racism they see in their neighborhood, and to talk about how the civil unrest had impacted them.

There, they discussed how the food scarcity in the neighborhood was part of a legacy of city neglect and racism on the West Side that worsened when some of the few grocery stores in the area had to shut their doors temporarily after being looted.

Keith Cankson

“Food is a basic necessity. But it’s also a basic necessity we don’t have access to,” Baker said.

Realizing the young people were serious about creating a plan for addressing the food desert in Austin, the Chicago athletes raised $500,000 to tear down the liquor store so the teens could develop a neighborhood food resource. Meanwhile, By the Hand worked with architects and placemaking firms to help the kids figure out what the store would look like.

The Hatchery Chicago also chipped in to give the teens entrepreneurship training so they could learn how to implement their business plans.

Baker said the Austin Harvest is giving the teens meaningful jobs where they learn about marketing, customer service and management. Their work has resulted in internship offers.

“The amount of opportunities that we are creating for ourselves is incredible,” Baker said.

Keith Cankson said creating Austin Harvest has shown him how much of an impact young people can have on improving the local economy and promoting health in the neighborhood.

“This is my first job,” Cankson said. “And also, all the trainings that we get, it’s really building us so we can be entrepreneurs later on. That means we can do so much more. We don’t have to just be bound to this one thing.”

The teens turned their idea into a reality in just two months, but they see the project as ongoing. After their 12-week pop-up fresh market, their goal is to acquire a brick-and-mortar building and develop it into a full grocery store to satisfy their neighborhood’s dire need for food throughout the year.

Baker said their model is proof that when given adequate resources, residents in under-resourced neighborhoods can create innovative solutions to address their challenges. She hopes to see similar projects across the city following their lead.

“We’re popping up with the question as to why our community doesn’t look as great as everybody else’s,” Baker said. “This took us two months to do. We are the blueprint. So think about how much you can build off of this over time.”

 

Source: Block Club Chicago