They’re giving back to the populations who need it the most!
Goodr just opened up a free grocery store located in an Atlanta senior community, Newsweek reports.
Jasmine Crowe is the founder of Goodr, a waste management and hunger relief company focused on cultivating local resources to attack food insecurity in communities. For years, Crowe fed local people in Atlanta out of her own kitchen, using her own money. In 2017, she launched Goodr, utilizing technology and logistics to track surplus food within organizations and repurpose that food to give to communities in need. To date, the company has provided food to millions of people across the country, recently opening a free grocery store in an Atlanta middle school in partnership with rapper Gunna. Now, they have expanded their free grocers, opening the newest one in an Atlanta senior community.
“When we opened a free grocery store at the rapper Gunna’s old middle school in September 2021, we already had the goal of opening more…We knew from my work with seniors that a lot are experiencing food insecurity…We reached out to our network in the fall and started talking about how we could get the funding and where we could open a free grocery store for seniors. We chose Lutheran Towers in Atlanta because there was a perfect harmony there. They had some funding, my company Goodr had partners, and they had a space available,” Crowe explained.
Initially the goal was to open the store before the Christmas holiday, but the space was previously being used as storage and took some time to clean out. Eventually, Crowe and her team were able to clear the space, transforming it into a small market and sending seniors a reusable bag with some products and a flier about the grand opening on January 19.
Complete with rolling baskets to make shopping easier for the patrons and stocked senior-specific items like sugar-free products and adult diapers, Goodr opened their doors to the Lutheran Towers residents. The Goodr Grocery operates Monday through Friday from 11am-4pm, with talks to expand to open on the second Saturday of the month.
“Today, we opened our first FREE Goodr Grocery Store in a senior community at Lutheran Towers in Midtown Atlanta! The store is full of produce, meat, beverages, shelf-stable items, household goods and more…About 10% of all people over 60 will experience hunger at some point in their life. We are proud to offer a solution for these seniors right inside their building,” Goodr shared via social media.
So far, the reviews from residents have been great, many seniors taking advantage of the free recipes and variety of items. Funding is a joint partnership between the residence and Goodr, the organization securing vendors and food delivery, using Monday to restock and Fridays to conduct inventory. Currently, there is a Lutheran Towers staff member who also works at the store.
“We had 50-75 seniors shop in the store in the four days after we opened on January 19 and 25 of those shopped on the very first day. That’s really positive. Seniors have said they’re really excited by the assortment of items and that they weren’t expecting that. The sad thing is that we have now received hundreds of emails from other seniors asking how they can come to the store…My goal is to open as many of these as possible because the need is there, it’s really about trying to find the funding,” said Crowe.
Goodr is working to solve hunger on the grassroots level, Crowe noting that while billions of dollars are allocated to fighting hunger globally, the problem still persists because most of the money goes to the same big food programs. By taking the food to direct communities, and attacking smaller regions at a time, Goodr ensures that the food gets directly in the hands of the people. While their free grocery stores so far have been based in the Atlanta area, they have been doing pop up stores across the country as well as surplus food recovery work. It is their goal to expand their free grocery store models to more schools and need based communities soon, Crowe working overtime to find funding that will allow her to make an even larger impact.
To learn more about the work of Goodr, visit their website here.
Photo Courtesy of GoodrCo/Instagram