Gem City Market 2.93

The Gem City Market will be a vibrant, community-centered full-service grocery store located along lower Salem Avenue, near downtown Dayton. The store will feature affordable, quality kitchen staples, including well-stocked fresh produce and meat departments, as well as specialty, local and organic products that make the store a unique draw. Well-trained and friendly worker-owners will ensure exceptional service, and a community space will offer healthy food and nutrition classes and programming accessible to all.

The project’s business concept started out of a community effort to address the need for a full-service grocery store to serve Northwest Dayton neighborhoods. The primary trade area for Gem City Market falls squarely within the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service’s definition of a food desert - an area where more than 40% of the population has an income less than or equal to 200% of the Federal Poverty Threshold and lives more than a mile from a supermarket or large grocery store. Additionally, according to the Food Research and Action Center’s (FRAC) most recent Food Hardship studies, Dayton has the unfortunate distinction of ranking as the second worst city in the nation for food hardship in households with children. The report tags Dayton with a “food hardship rate” of 29.4, meaning 29.4 percent of households with children surveyed by Gallup reported having trouble obtaining enough healthy food.

Gem City Market will be different from your typical neighborhood grocery store in that it will be owned both by its workers and by customers and supporters from the community. This model, known as a multi-stakeholder cooperative, provides both the workers and the consumers with a voice in how the business is run, and the opportunity to operate the business consistent with their needs. This model also provides a financial stake for the employees in the success of the business, while providing above industry standard wages and benefits. The business will strive to combine the best of a typical farmers’ market and a consumer oriented food cooperative, with that of an affordable, neighborhood-based full service grocery. Once successful, Gem City Market will work to open satellite locations in low food access areas in other parts of West Dayton.