New food market in west Charlotte planned, with $3M from county
Mecklenburg County will put $3 million toward the launch of a food distribution center in west Charlotte, bringing locally-grown foods to neighborhoods with limited access to local groceries.
The Charlotte nonprofit Carolina Farm Trust hopes to open the site in the spring or summer of 2023. It would serve a dual role: a retail space — similar to a grocery — for residents to buy local groceries, and a wholesale distributor to restaurants and some local markets. It would also create a reliable funding stream for local farmers, Zack Wyatt, the trust’s president and CEO, said to county commissioners last week.
The project is still in the process of securing fundraising, but the approval of $3 million from the Mecklenburg County Board of County Commissioners on Wednesday accounts for about 20% of the total $14 million start-up cost.
The project aims to bring locally-sourced groceries to part of west Charlotte — off of Hoskins Road, near Rozzelles Ferry Road and Interstate 85 — where just 3% of homes are within a half-mile of a full-service, chain grocery store. Countywide, about 30% of homes have a full-service grocery store within that half-mile range, according to a presentation by Carolina Farm Trusts.
Shopping for local food
For people living nearby, they might expect a knock at the door.
Wyatt told commissioners last week that the project would be reaching out to residents directly, going street-by-street to tell people about what they’re offering.
That will include locally-grown groceries that they can shop for at the retail location, and the option of having that food delivered. A dollar-for-dollar match will be available for people paying with SNAP, commonly called food stamps.
About 15% of county residents live in a food deserts — meaning low-income neighborhoods lacking access to stores with ample fresh food options. While more places in Charlotte accept food stamps than they did 10 years ago, that number has declined in some of the city’s most food-insecure areas, according to a Charlotte Observer analysis of federal data last year.
The Carolina Farm Trust would help fill that gap in west Charlotte.
The site will receive both produce and meat. It will also house a test kitchen where local chefs can utilize ingredients to test new recipes, and where the nonprofit can host educational classes about cooking and the food industry.
Wyatt expects the distribution center to create 18 jobs during the initial opening, and as many as 70 as it grows. He told commissioners last week that he hopes to train employees in a variety of skills, to have a true mission of “upward mobility.”
“The main point of this whole project is to reach a population that is not really ... participating in the local food economy,” he said. “That is our number one focus, to really reach out to those folks that don’t go to farmers’ markets.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2022 at 10:45 AM.
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