ABOVE: Linwood Fresh Market Opening Day, owner Sonya Greene speaking.

As a child growing up in the city of Detroit, my neighborhood was my world. Most of my extended family lived on the same block, and everything we needed was a short drive away or within walking distance. I would spend summers passing out flyers for the Block Club and growing food in my mother’s garden. But of the many places we visited in the neighborhood, the local grocery store was not one of them. The floors at our neighborhood grocery were visibly dirty and sticky, and the smell of the seafood and meat counters would hit you when you walked in the door. If you wanted fresh produce, you had to take the time to sift through bruised and sometimes moldy food. To pick up produce to fit our meals, my family would travel outside of the Detroit city limits. 

As I grew up and began my studies in food systems, I finally had the language to express my lived experience with food apartheid. My career in food-focused policy and urban farming has also stood to hone in my attention to the movement of fresh food in my community. Today, I stand inside the old neighborhood grocery I haven’t been to in over 20 years, and thanks to a list of improvements made in 2011, the store is nearly unrecognizable.

Amanda B and siblings in front of their childhood home in Detroit.The neighborhood grocery was a quick errand’s run away, but the offerings left the family wanting better. Now those better offerings have arrived.

The Green Grocer Project

The program that helped to improve my neighborhood grocery store, and those like it around the city, was called The Green Grocer Project. Between 2010 and 2017, the City of Detroit, Kresge Foundation, and the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation implemented The Green Grocer Project (GGP) in an attempt to improve fresh food access and strengthen the grocery economy in Detroit. The GGP was undertaken by the City of Detroit, and was supported with funding for technical assistance, façade improvements, and small business loans through the Detroit Economic Development Corporation.

The project supported independent full-service grocery stores already operating in Detroit and also attracted new national and regional grocery stores. After the project’s completion in 2017, evaluation studies showed that the Green Grocery Project improved Detroit’s grocery sector in several ways:  

• Investment in excess of $50 Million for GGP-assisted stores’ new construction, expansions, and renovations. 

• 27 secured deals for grocery project financing.

• Over $1 million in façade improvement grants and technical assistance grants for more than 35 Detroit grocery stores. 

• Fourteen newly renovated Green Grocer sites, which created 115 new jobs.

• $6.3M in alternative model projects (co-ops, specialty markets, corner/liquor store conversions). 

• Attracting Whole Foods Market and Meijer Supermarkets to Detroit sites through the Grocer Clearinghouse. 

In 2011, during the first iteration of the Green Grocer Project, my neighborhood store was one that received $7,500 toward marketing materials, including launching and managing a loyalty card and a healthy eating campaign, and another $22,500 to match other eligible costs for additional store improvements. 

In the spring of 2024, the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation announced a new iteration of the The Green Grocer Project, and the overall vision remains unchanged: The plan is to increase the number of quality grocery options in the city. 

Project guidelines highlight that activities must “enhance the consumer experience, increase access to fresh food, make a positive impact for the neighborhood and for the consumer, and inspire business innovation and new neighborhood partnerships.” The 2024 version also emphasizes efforts to create walkable neighborhood grocery shopping options through new small-scale neighborhood grocery stores and existing convenience stores willing to include grocery essentials and fresh food options.

Grocery Store Conversion and Food Apartheid

Driving through the city using the popular thoroughfare, Woodward Avenue, you pass several grocery stores, including one full-service Meijer, an Aldi, The Detroit People’s Food Co-op, a Whole Foods, and a small-scale Plum Market. Down by the river, you will also find Meijer Rivertown, which is one of the grocery chain’s small format stores that sells local products. While these grocery store additions and improvements are welcomed, they highlight how most improvements have been made to parts of the city that see the most development and are close to wealthy neighborhoods, leaving pockets of food scarcity in areas that don’t see the same investment. 

According to a comprehensive study done in 2024, the availability of supermarkets and full-line grocery stores in Detroit is multifaceted. For one, researchers did find that where the percentage of Black residents is 40% or lower there is greater access to supermarkets and full-line grocery stores. What researchers also found though, is that access is more commonly related to economic status. I would also say that just because a grocery story may be in close proximity to a diverse neighborhood, does not necessarily mean that the store supplies fresh, high quality, or culturally relevant food to residents. When a store does not meet the needs of the community it resides in, it is not addressing food scarcity issues. 

Urban farms, farmers markets, and the historic Eastern Market are centers for fresh, high quality, affordable food, but access to reliable transportation is a barrier for many Detroiters. When you can’t get to stores that sell the best quality produce, you go to what is close by, where the quality of offerings available to you is dependent on the economic status of the neighborhood you live in. The correlation between economic status, racial lines and food access in the city highlights the food apartheid city residents are subject to. 

Proximity to dollar stores and liquor stores also shapes the quality of offerings. If a retailer sells a small variety of produce, then they are considered a food outlet, according to city and state guidelines. This could look like a neighborhood corner market that serves fresh produce and local products, but it can also look like a liquor store that sells limes, bananas, and oranges. This makes it so that data collected on the availability of food outlets fails to address the quality of products within food spaces. Because of this, conversions of small corner markets to full service grocery stores with high quality options is something that could change the game for many residents. 

Making an Impact

In the new 2024 iteration of the GGP, improvements to corner markets don’t stop at indoor and outdoor improvements. They address the ability for a retailer to enhance the quality of food available in the store. When I was growing up, my neighborhood grocery store was only five minutes away from home, but the rotten produce on the shelves kept my family from shopping there. Many folks in my neighborhood simply couldn’t afford to travel for food, and instead were forced to shop at the only store within walking distance, even if the food was questionable.

For a grocery store to make a profit, they have to re-sell produce from a distributor willing to sell them food in bulk at low prices. This is an economic model that controls the quality of the products stores carry. Often, large retailers opt for the cheaper, lower quality option to generate the most profit. Meanwhile neighborhood markets simply can’t afford high wholesale prices, so they purchase food that costs less.. Urban farms, gardens, and farmers markets in Detroit have stood to combat this in the community for decades, and now make up over 6% of the city’s food outlets.

As Mayor Duggan and the Office of Urban Agriculture seek to highlight the contributions of urban farms in the city, we are seeing more attention drawn to Detroit’s deep roots in agriculture and its potential to end food apartheid within the city limits. This potential is rooted in breaking up systems in the community that funnel dollars into grocery store chains who don’t have to be concerned with addressing the needs of the community. When independent retailers have the ability to purchase from local farmers while offering them a fair price, urban small farms and partner organizations become a way to improve the quality of offerings in neighborhoods that don’t have options. This stimulates the local economy and builds relationships with growers and small business owners who are already dedicated to cultivating high quality food for their community.

Each of Detroit’s 54 neighborhoods represents a different blend of cultures, and local markets can emphasize that. Improving options in these grocery stores is one way to preserve the wide range of cultures present in the city while directly investing in the well-being of the people who already live here. 

The new version of the Green Grocer Project is already set up for success, and has the potential to make a deeper impact if focused on maintaining the local food web, and supporting neighborhood growth and development in the parts of the city that don’t attract the most tourists. Over a two-year period, the new Green Grocer Project aims to impact at least eight stores in neighborhoods throughout Detroit by offering grants of cash and/or technical assistance and help at least four stores with small business loans. By June of 2025, the project aims to have at least 12 newly renovated and operating markets within the city.

The new version of the Green Grocer Project is already set up for success, and has the potential to make a deeper impact.

The stores included in the 2024 iteration thus far are Linwood Fresh Market, Kornr Store, Bryant Park Market, Adelaide’s Superette Detroit, Klassic Mobile Gardens, District 4 Grocery, Goodpluck, and Bovvy + Cafe. Among these stores, you’ll find material upgrades and facade improvements, and some have fostered connections with local chefs, urban farmers, and the historic Eastern Market. 

Looking back, I can see that I have always been on a path to creating a food sovereign Detroit. From growing food in my mother’s garden and passing out flyers for the Block Club, to now owning my own urban farm and using grassroots advocacy to organize my community, the work was always being done. Simultaneously, Detroit has been on a decades-long journey to create better options for residents, and I am proud to support the efforts being made to keep my hometown fed.

Amanda Brezzell is Groundwork’s Policy and Engagement Specialist.
amanda.brezzell@groundworkcenter.org