The east side of Detroit is welcoming the launch of an exciting new business — a Black-owned grocery store.
The Neighborhood Grocery is owned by Detroit native Raphael Wright and is located in the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood.
The grocery store celebrated its soft launch on October 8.
Wright launched the grocery to help address the needs of the east side community when it comes food options that are healthy.
“This neighborhood is classed as a desert because there’s no immediate grocery store in it,” Wright told CBS Detroit. “I’m on this mission of rebuilding the neighborhoods that I grew up in and that starts with food.”
The Neighborhood Grocery is the first Black-owned grocery store to open in Detroit in almost a decade. The last Black-owned grocery store in the city closed back in 2014.
Wright received $85,000 from Motor City Match in February 2023 for the business. He also used a profit-sharing model to help raise the additional funds he needed to complete the project, Hour Detroit reports.
Those funds went toward the work Wright did to renovate the space he purchased for the grocery store.
“The No. 1 goal for the profit-sharing model is avoiding the bank as much as possible,” Wright said. “Instead of paying back a loan, I would rather pay people back. The profit-sharing is my attempt to hedge poverty. You don’t really get a lot doing it this way, but I can attempt to get people a liveable wage, while also hedging poverty. This makes people want to invest into their community, not just with projects like my project but others.”
Photo by The Neighborhood Grocery