USDA Grant Will Help Chicory Market’s Expansion; Community Outreach

Chicory Market is bringing community grocery back into the heart of Oxford with the help of a $200,000 grant from the Healthy Food Financing Initiative.

The grant will help fund construction costs for Chicory Market’s new location in Midtown Shopping Center, inventory expansion, and community outreach.

Funded by the USDA, authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill, the HFFI grant supports the expansion of independent grocery retailers and other food enterprises to improve access to healthy local food in areas that struggle with food insecurity.

The Chicory Market expansion is one of 134 projects that received financial assistance totaling $22.6 million, which the Reinvestment Fund administered.

“What we love about this grant is it helps to build community in several ways,” says Kate Bishop, who co-founded Chicory Market with her husband, John Martin. “Not only does it boost our mission to improve local food access for people of all income levels, but it circulates federal funds back into the community to stay by paying local construction labor and fees to local service providers.”

The HFFI grant has already helped Chicory Market leverage financing and additional funding to move and expand its operations in the former Sears appliance store at Midtown. The market opened in the summer of 2017 in the old Farmer’s Market store, a community food space in Lafayette County, for over 30 years. 

“We’re excited to bring community grocery back into the heart of Oxford,” Bishop said. “While moving away from our original home was a bittersweet decision, we think the central location will connect more people to local farmers and food makers and all the exciting things happening in the Oxford food community.”

As it prepares to move this fall, the Chicory team has already launched its community outreach program in Oxford and Lafayette County.

In June, it hired Britnee Barnes as a part-time Community Outreach Coordinator and participated in the Oxford Juneteenth Festival.

“We hope to reach people who may feel left out of the local food movement because of income level, limited awareness, and shopping habits,” said Barnes, who also serves on the board of the affordable housing non-profit LOU Home and works in admissions at the University of Mississippi.

Barnes has also organized a back-to-school event at the Belle Rivers community, which LOU Home partly developed. She and Martin will meet with Doors of Hope clients in August. 

Along with the outreach program, Chicory Market is taking several steps to make natural and local foods more accessible to people of all income levels, including offering a regular 10 percent discount for SNAP and EBT purchases.

In June, the market became a member of the Independent Natural Food Retailers Association. a buying cooperative and trade group of other independent grocers across the county. Membership in INFRA gives the market access to lower grocery prices, monthly promotions, and INFRA’s Everyday Low Prices program for organic staple foods.

In the more prominent location designed by Howorth & Associates Architects, Chicory Market will be transformed into a collaborative food space, providing a platform for other small local food businesses to share retail space, operations, marketing opportunities, and other resources. Martin says the concept intends to help local food thrive as Oxford grows. 

“We’re excited to join forces with friends in the local food movement,” he said. “For years, we’ve all been operating in separate locations across town and competing for attention. The local food movement thrives on collaboration. Our philosophy has always been that the best way to support local food is by offering our guests the convenience of a one-stop shop, and we believe that the community we’ve built over the past six years will help our partner businesses grow.”

Staff report