How Black-Owned Grocery Stores Are Filling Industry Gaps

In Houston, Texas, Robert Thomas is now serving wheatgrass juice in his club-converted grocery store. After the pandemic forced him to close his club of five years, he used his savings and unemployment benefits to transform the former site into "District Market Green Grocer"—a grocery store and juice bar focused on natural and organic products.

Since opening last November, the store has gradually become known for supporting Black-owned brands and local sourcing. "Many people are still surprised... 'He has so many different Black suppliers here,' and that's what leaves the deepest impression," Thomas said.

District Market Green Grocer is one of many Black-owned grocery stores across the United States—most of them independent small shops or small chains—that are dedicated to meeting community needs and pushing the boundaries of innovation in the grocery industry. Some Black-owned grocery stores focus on areas such as cashierless checkout and ethnic food markets, while others are committed to providing nutritious and affordable food. Some stores have opened or plan to open in areas where supermarkets are scarce or major chains have withdrawn.

Liz Abunaw, founder of Forty Acres Fresh Market in Chicago, noted that although the grocery industry is not lacking in family supermarkets passed down through generations, the same is not true for Black-owned grocery stores. She said that the number of Black-owned grocery stores has been shrinking since the 1970s; between the 1940s and 2000s, Black farmers lost vast amounts of land, leading to a continuous decline in their equity in food processing, transportation, and wholesale. Walmart's expansion into suburbs and rural areas further squeezed small businesses, and after World War II, many white residents moved to the suburbs, taking their purchasing power with them. Black entrepreneurs, lacking intergenerational experience, now have to start from "micro-enterprises" and gradually build industry skills.

"Now people are saying 'we've had enough.' We need food in our communities because we see the connection between food and health, and we want to have some ownership. We're tired of waiting for corporate giants to acknowledge our value as consumers and serve us where we live," Abunaw said. She added, "This is more like a renaissance. It's like we're rediscovering—'Look, we had these things before. We can have them again.'"

Focusing on quality food

Many entrepreneurs of color in the grocery sector are trying to address the lack of healthy and affordable food options—a problem that numerous studies show disproportionately affects low-income and high-minority communities.

Thomas said he hopes to bring the concept of District Market Green Grocer—which is currently not located in a "food desert"—to food desert areas, with a vision of opening a store "the size of a CVS or Walgreens" with a rich selection of organic options. The Houston store focuses on health and wellness, selling natural and organic products such as "all-natural" seaweed juice in various flavors with no added sugar, and offers a "Wellness Friday" juice bar drink discount.

Olympia Auset, founder of Süprmarkt, an organic grocery pop-up in Los Angeles, said the inspiration to open the store came from personal need. The store is about to open a permanent location in the South Central neighborhood. "Every time I wanted to buy fresh food, I had to take a two-hour bus ride. I wanted my friends and family to eat healthier, but what they complained about was always the price and the distance," Auset told Create & Cultivate.

However, providing quality food in areas lacking options is not always enough. Auset and Abunaw pointed out that residents may have a deeply ingrained belief that they have to go to other neighborhoods to buy groceries. Abunaw said that in Chicago's West Side Austin neighborhood, as in other predominantly Black communities, local food spending is flowing to wealthier areas with better stores because local stores often fail to meet quality or cleanliness standards.

"Don't underestimate the value of these consumers, these residents of underserved areas," Abunaw said she would tell grocery industry executives. She continued, "I think Black working-class communities are severely overlooked in this industry because there's a perception that there's no profit to be made here, and I disagree with that."

Abunaw previously worked at General Mills for ten years. When she moved to Chicago to pursue an MBA, she did not plan to return to the food industry. After discovering the grocery "gap" in the Austin neighborhood, she founded Forty Acres in 2018, bringing quality food options to the neighborhood's commercial corridor in the form of a mobile pop-up market. Now, she is preparing to open a permanent grocery store, but the process has taken longer than expected.

After a nearby Save A Lot closed, Abunaw began hosting pop-up events at the site of her upcoming store, which not only helped people recognize the location—a former Salvation Army building—as a food destination, but also helped change the perception that "there's no quality food in the community." Because the building's HVAC system was unusable, Abunaw moved the pop-up events when the weather turned hot, and shoppers can now find Forty Acres as an anchor tenant at the weekly Austin Town Hall city market.

Driving innovation forward

Some Black-owned grocery stores are pushing boundaries in areas where the industry has been slow to progress.

Nourish + Bloom Market is committed to combining healthy food with a tech-savvy shopping experience. The store the brand opened in January in Fayetteville, Georgia, uses a system from frictionless checkout technology provider UST, operating a self-checkout concept store similar to Amazon's Just Walk Out. Customers can also receive orders via temperature-controlled delivery robots.

Founders Jamie and Jilea Hemmings are no strangers to entrepreneurship and cutting-edge trends. They previously started Greenie Tots, a now-defunct brand of frozen meatless kids' meals, originally intended to provide convenient and healthy meals for their son, who was diagnosed with autism. Greenie Tots launched in the late 2000s, well before the massive consumer demand for plant-based products in recent years.

In Chicago, two entrepreneurs are using technology and e-commerce to help immigrant and ethnic communities address the challenge of accessing culturally relevant food.

Fola Dada and Boyede Sobitan, first- and second-generation immigrants from Nigeria, previously worked as a fintech engineer and a healthcare administrator, respectively. The two co-founded OjaExpress in 2015. Through this online marketplace, customers can purchase ethnic foods from local stores, browsing a diverse range of cuisines including African, Caribbean, Hispanic, Asian, and European.

Although e-commerce and online marketplaces focused on ethnic foods are now relatively common—such as Weee and Umamicart—the rise of these players is a recent phenomenon. OjaExpress has also experienced what its founders describe as racial disparities in tech funding. "There is a huge gap in funding between Black tech founders and their non-Black counterparts. Many Black founders face the challenge of accessing networks that provide product-building guidance and capital. Only 1% of venture-capital-backed founders are Black," Sobitan told Forbes.

Seeking community support

Black grocery store owners not only rely on community support to weather the low-margin grocery business, but also strive to create spaces that go beyond shopping, making food education, local events, and more an integral part of their identity.

Prosperity Market in Los Angeles describes itself as "a combination of a mobile farmers market and food truck," providing a platform for Black farmers and long-marginalized food producers. Its pop-up markets aim to create a space where people feel comfortable, safe, and joyful. Founders Carmen Dianne and Kara Still wrote in a letter to Los Angeles Times readers: "We have farmers, food producers, packaged foods, hot food. We always have music, we have a DJ. I'd say we're about 70% food and 30% artists. Sometimes we host kids' activities, do raffles, and invite community partners."

In the same city, Süprmarkt offers scholarships for its juice cleanse program. On its website, people can find educational resources under the "Learn Food" section, including recipes, Netflix recommendations, books, and research. Its nonprofit branch, Süprseed, provides workshops, events, and giveaways of natural products.

"People learn from each other how to eat. If we're going to re-teach people how to eat, we have to do it through each other," Auset told Create & Cultivate, adding that in areas with limited food options, people can learn to move away from processed foods and regain healthy eating in a "culturally relevant way."

For help, Süprmarkt has called on social media for people to assist with painting and tiling work at its upcoming store, and its website states it is looking for volunteers in several areas, including driving, accounting, and event organization.

Community support can also take the form of supporting local Black suppliers. Thomas said two different experiences led him to focus on Black suppliers: one was discovering high-end products from Black businesses at local pop-ups and farmers markets; the other was seeing people line up to enter grocery stores that did not highlight Black products.

A monthly "open house" allows potential suppliers to bring their products to District Market Green Grocer for evaluation. Thomas finds suppliers by handing out business cards and flyers at pop-up markets: "It started to spread among suppliers. One supplier brings another."

For Forty Acres, Abunaw is working with community leaders to move from pop-up markets to a brick-and-mortar store. She collaborates with local elected officials, who promote Forty Acres in their newsletters and on their websites. The executive director of the Austin African American Business Network Association alerted Abunaw in June 2020 that the Salvation Army building site was for sale; Forty Acres' partner Westside Health Authority helped her purchase the property.

"This community deserves something that says, 'We spent money on you. We think you're special enough to deserve grand, beautiful buildings, spacious open areas, and windows,'" she said.

Conscious community building is a recurring theme among Black grocery store owners. In a recent post on District Market Green Grocer's Facebook page, Thomas summed it up: "For me, this is not just a Black business or a grocery store. For me, we are building a community together. This is more than just a store."