Market with a mission: non-profit grocery stores help heal ‘food deserts’
When Mickey Henry wants bread or ice-cream, aspirin or even a cut of meat, he rolls up to Jubilee Market, nine blocks away from his house. For the 70-year-old retired truck driver, who survives on social security and disability benefits, the store has been a godsend.
This low-income, predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood in north Waco, Texas, has long been known as a “food desert”, with only meager offerings of fresh fruits and vegetables available at convenience stores and Dollar Generals.
That changed five years ago, when the non-profit Mission Waco took over a convenience store that had fallen into disrepair, creating Jubilee Market. Today, it stocks convenience store staples such as chips and snacks, dry goods and household supplies but it also carries a wide variety of fresh produce, as well as speciality foods favored by its diverse range of customers – everything from oxtail to nopales – and locally made goods like honey and soaps.
Before Jubilee opened, the closest supermarket to Henry’s house was the Texas chain HEB three miles away. But it was essentially “out of bounds”, he says. The bus ride was not so bad, but Henry would struggle to get his wheelchair on to the bus with bags of groceries. “If I get my sisters to take me, I’ve got to pay them $20 – plus I got to feed them,” he jokes.
Henry also finds the groceries more affordable at Jubilee – customers can sign up for a rewards card that gives them $1 back for every $10 that they spend at the store.
Jubilee is one of a handful of small, non-profit grocery stores in America that have sprouted in food deserts, defined as low-income areas where most of the population lives more than a mile from a grocery store.
Unlike food pantries, non-profit markets aren’t
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