At a small market in Waco, Texas, David Daniels checks the peppers and tomatoes for bruises. The produce manager knows his customers won’t buy them if they don’t look perfect.
But, that’s OK. He takes the few he finds, cuts them up and puts them in small individual containers in the refrigerated section to sell as fruit cups or vegetable cups.
There’s no waste at Jubilee Market.
The one-of-a-kind, non-profit grocery store, just 10 minutes away from Baylor University in North Waco, has attracted the attention of city leaders from across the state looking for innovative ways to provide affordable and nutritious foods in low-income neighborhoods.
However, Jubilee may be a unicorn, because it relies on a leader who lives in the neighborhood, a strong base of supporters and a financial safety net. And, even then, experts say it is only part of the solution when it comes to alleviating food insecurity.
Daniels, 73, grew up in this low-income neighborhood, and Jubilee, which opened in 2016, is the first “real” grocery store for this community, he said.
Before Jubilee, the nearest supermarket was two miles away. Without a car, a trip to the grocery store by bus would take Daniels a few hours roundtrip. So, he often paid family members to drive him.
Now he can walk to the store, and he has worked there since it opened four years ago.
Anga Sanders, a community advocate, met Daniels a few years ago when she was visiting Jubilee Market. She remembers Daniels as being shy and reserved. The changes she has seen in him and this community have been remarkable.
“Jubilee is kind of the model for community-based grocery stores,” she said. “It has had a transformative impact on the community.”
Sanders leads FEED Oak Cliff, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing healthy food to Southern Dallas.
She has spent the last four years, she said, trying to recruit a corporate grocery store to south Oak Cliff but hasn’t had any luck. So, she decided FEED Oak Cliff would “build our own,” replicating Waco’s Jubilee Market model.
Recently, she took her team to Waco, where they met Jimmy Dorrell, a well-known figure in the community who started the Church Under the Bridge, a ministry for people experiencing homelessness, more than 25 years ago.
With a background in grant writing and program development, Dorrell, a Baylor graduate, and his wife founded nonprofit Mission Waco, which now funds 18 different programs inspired by the needs in the community — everything from an alcohol and drug rehabilitation program to a homeless shelter. The organization has an annual budget of $4.2 million.
“Everything that we’ve done in these last 43 years has happened a step at a time based on the needs of the community,” Dorrell said. “What they think is important becomes important to us.”
Over the years, residents have repeatedly asked for a grocery store.
Safeway left the neighborhood in the ’60s. When the building came up for sale in 2015, Mission Waco purchased the property for around $130,000 with the hopes of converting it back to a grocery store.
Dorrell knew it was going to be challenging. Grocery stores are not very profitable. His research showed the profit margin for corporate grocery stores around this size was around 2 percent. Also, he didn’t have a model to follow. His team searched nationwide but couldn’t find a similarly sized non-profit grocery store to replicate.
“Just the very idea of taking on a huge liability with such a small possibility of making it was really frightening,” he said.
It cost around $900,000 just to get the 6,400-square-foot building ready to go. They received some small grants from PepsiCo and Walmart, but the majority of their money came from individuals who bought “stock” in the neighborhood.
“Shareholders” get quarterly reports on how the market is doing, invitations to annual meetings, and a discount card. Dorrell said it was important that community members felt like stakeholders and that their voices are heard.
Once the building was ready, the next challenge was meeting financial expectations. The market would have to sell $60,000 in goods a week to break even. For those numbers to work, it meant people from the wider community would have to shop there, too. So, he created a public awareness campaign encouraging the greater Waco community to shop at Jubilee Market.
The first week the store was open, it sold $24,000 in goods. By the third year, Jubilee was routinely selling about $50,000 a week. Over time, Jubilee was able to negotiate better prices with grocery store suppliers so that their costs were comparable to big chain stores.
Dorrell said they also cater to their diverse customers — a third of the neighborhood is Black, another third is Latino, and a third is white.
The pandemic temporarily increased sales, but even with a very lean, targeted approach, Jubilee falls financially short. Mission Waco makes up the 10% to 15% difference for the store to break even.
Dorrell said Mission Waco’s board of directors hopes that Jubilee will be self-sustaining, but they will continue to cover the gap because they believe the supermarket is improving the health of the community.
“After living in this neighborhood for the last 43 years,” he said, “this project has brought me the most joy because it has met a basic human need.”
Epidemiologist Kelly Ylitalo, a professor of public health at Baylor University, has been studying Jubilee Market customers since 2017. Having a grocery store in the community, she said, is only part of the solution to combat food insecurity.
After surveying nearly 400 customers who live near the store, Ylitalo learned that almost 80% of them reported that the food they bought at the store did not last for the month – and they didn’t have money to buy more.
Ylitalo said that to have a healthy, productive society, there are a number of economic, social and physical factors. This can include a grocery store that offers affordable and nutritious food, but it also includes safe and affordable housing, job opportunities that have a living wage, and safe neighborhoods with sidewalks for walking and access to public transportation.
Daniels said he believes his neighborhood is changing with the addition of the grocery store. He points to the new pedestrian crosswalk and lights that weren’t there a few years ago.
Cornerstone Baptist Church in Dallas hopes to create a similar environment in their neighborhood. Cornerstone’s Southpoint Market, a small neighborhood grocer, is scheduled to open in the next few months.
Dorrell says he’s had community leaders from Houston, Austin and San Antonio visit in hopes of replicating his store.
But so far, no one has done it.
Sujata Dand writes for The Dallas Free Press. This story is part of the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous reporting about responses to social problems. It also appeared online here.
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