Baltimore's newest grocery store tries a fresh approach to food. Is it a model worth trying elsewhere?

More than one in five people in Baltimore live in a food desert, which the city calls “Healthy Food Priority Areas.” More than 30% of people who live a quarter-mile from an affordable grocery store in the city are African American. A quick trip to a full-service grocery store, or a trip for a week's worth of food, is made harder when supermarkets are farther away. Convenience stores and small corner markets fill in the gap, but they rarely offer produce or affordable prices. The residents in neighborhoods near the B&O Railroad Museum were part of that grim statistic until recently. A new store in the Mount Clare Junction shopping plaza, JumboFresh Supermarket, features a wide variety of foods and products catering to the culturally-diverse clientele of nearby neighborhoods. Improving food access is crucial for the health and wellbeing of city residents. Today, a discussion about how this new store came to open in Southwest Baltimore, its unique business model and what it means to the residents of the surrounding areas. Are there lessons other neighborhoods can replicate? We begin with Bif Browning, the President of the Union Square Association, and Jonathan Tejada, a JumboFresh staff member. Later in the program, we talk to Baltimore City 10th District Councilwoman Phylicia Porter, and Carrie Baniszewski, the Executive Director of the neighborhood development nonprofit Pigtown Main Street.Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.