Turn Food Deserts Into Fresh-Food Zones

Access to healthy, affordable food should not depend on where you live. Today, families in many low-income communities must travel long distances for groceries or rely on corner stores that have few options and overpriced goods.

Fresh and healthy food strengthens immune systems and helps prevent diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. It allows children to focus better in school and enables adults to work with more energy and stability. A lack of affordable, fresh food leads to the opposite. The fastest way to eliminate food deserts is to bring fresh options back to the neighborhoods that need them most. 

To Get Started:

• Find where access is missing: Map neighborhoods without affordable grocery options. Talk with residents to understand where they shop, what foods are hardest to find, and what would make healthy options easier to access.

• Bring all potential partners together: Invite local grocers, small business owners, hospitals, schools, and major grocery chains to join the effort. Ask city and state agencies about tax incentives and other funding opportunities for food providers.

• Choose the model that fits: Decide what makes the most sense for your community. This could be a supermarket, a smaller grocery store, a farmer's market, or a mobile food program. Look for existing spaces or vacant properties that can be quickly turned into active food sites.

• Create local jobs and community ownership: Hire residents to help build, stock, and operate the store or market. Pair these jobs with training in business management, food handling, or logistics.

• Open and measure progress: Track how many people are shopping at the new site, how prices compare to previous options, and how access improves over time. Share the results publicly to attract new partners and expand to other communities.

Best Practices / Innovative Programs:

• Government

  • Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative was created by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and managed by The Food Trust and Reinvestment Fund. This program financed more than 88 grocery and fresh-food projects statewide, improving access in both rural and urban communities.

  • USDA Healthy Food Financing Initiative is a national partnership led by the USDA and Reinvestment Fund that provides grants and loans to expand grocery access in underserved areas across the United States.

  • Massachusetts Healthy Incentives Program is a statewide initiative that provides SNAP participants with extra funds to purchase local fruits and vegetables directly from farmers' markets, farm stands, and community-supported agriculture sites.

• Business

  • Brown’s Super Stores / ShopRite is a family-owned grocery business in Philadelphia that opens full-service supermarkets in underserved neighborhoods, often including health clinics and credit unions on-site.

  • Mandela Grocery Cooperative A worker-owned store in West Oakland that sells locally sourced produce and keeps profits in the neighborhood.

  • 4P Foods is a mission-driven food company in the Mid-Atlantic region that connects local farmers to households and institutions, delivering fresh produce to communities with limited access.

  • Dorchester Food Co-op is a worker- and community-owned grocery store that opened in 2023 to provide affordable, healthy food and jobs in one of Boston’s long-underserved neighborhoods.

• Philanthropic Organization

  • The Rockefeller Foundation: Food Systems Transformation Program is headquartered in New York and supports food-system innovation that expands access to nutritious, affordable food and reduces waste.

  • Conagra Brands Foundation funds food-access programs, nutrition education, and urban agriculture projects across the United States to increase the availability of healthy food.

  • Capital Impact Partners: Healthy Food Financing Program is a mission-driven finance organization that provides loans and expertise to help build grocery stores, cooperatives, and food hubs in food deserts.

  • The California Endowment: Building Healthy Communities is a statewide philanthropy that funds local food hubs, urban gardens, and markets, linking food access to health and economic opportunity.

• Nonprofit Organization

  • Appetite for Change is located in North Minneapolis, and runs cafés, urban farms, and youth training programs that use food to build health, wealth, and community leadership.

  • Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona runs mobile produce markets, community gardens, and nutrition education programs across five southern Arizona counties.

  • DC Central Kitchen trains residents for culinary careers and supplies affordable produce to more than 80 corner stores through its Healthy Corners network.

  • Second Harvest Heartland is one of the largest food banks in the country. Second Harvest distributes fresh produce through farm partnerships and its Minnesota Central Kitchen program.

  • The Food Trust is based in Philadelphia and operates farmers’ markets, corner-store conversions, and healthy food financing programs that bring affordable groceries to low-income communities.

  • Society of St. Andrew is a faith-based nonprofit that gleans surplus produce from farms and redistributes it to families and food pantries nationwide.

• Faith Community

  • The Black Church Food Security Network is a community network that works through churches to establish church-based gardens, farms, and food cooperatives that keep food local and affordable.

  • Catholic Charities USA operates food pantries, meal programs, and nutrition education that reduce hunger and improve family stability.

  • Food Bank of Northeast Georgia is based in Athens, Georgia, and works with farms and pantries across 14 counties to bring fresh food to rural areas that lack grocery stores.