SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Martin Luther King Jr. Academic Middle School in San Francisco unveiled its new, on campus grocery store on Monday that will help hundreds of students and their families stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, meat and pantry goods.
About 100 students, teachers and community leaders gathered in the school’s library to celebrate the opening of Goodr’s first free grocery store on the West Coast. Goodr is an Atlanta-based startup that aims to reduce hunger and food waste.
YMCA of San Francisco, San Francisco Unified School District and city’s Department of Children, Youth and their Families partnered with Goodr and Amazon to set up the in-school grocery store. It’s the fourth free grocery store in the nation that Goodr and Amazon have created as a team.
It’s available to Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School students and their families. The school is located in the Portola neighborhood next to the Bayview Hunters Point District of San Francisco.
The YMCA of Bayview Hunters Point serves many students from the school through its Beacon program, which provides academic development and afterschool resources to MLK Jr. students.
The region of Bayview Hunters Point is considered a “food desert,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Food deserts are low-income areas with limited access to nutritious food.
“All 400 students here at MLK will have access to this amazing grocery store,” said Maria Su, executive director of the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and their Families. “That means 400 families in this amazing community will have access to fresh produce and shelf-stable food. It’s one more thing off their mind.”
While students are already provided with free breakfast and lunch through the school, school staff and leaders of Goodr said it’s not sufficient to offset hunger when they leave for the day.
“It’s not enough that we give our kids free breakfast and lunch at school if they go home and don’t eat dinner,” said Goodr CEO Jasmine Crowe. “They wake up the next morning, come into class and that breakfast replaces the dinner that they didn’t get the night before and then lunch replaces breakfast. When that occurs, you have students that are sitting in class wondering where their next meal is coming from.”
Erin Wheeler, a teaching assistant who helps coach instructors at the school, said that some students talk a lot about being hungry.
The school’s free breakfast and lunch programs only “support students in the moment,” she said.
“But in terms of our families having access, this is a huge step.”
Gabriella Hernandez, the mother of a student at the school, exited the store with three bags of groceries and a smile on her face.
“I feel very happy and grateful for this free grocery store,” she said.
Students and their families will each be able to access the store twice a month as a resource to help put food on the table. In addition to groceries, the shelves are also stocked with toiletries, feminine products and household items such as toilet paper, laundry detergent, dish soap and trash bags.
“It doesn’t matter how great of a teacher you are,” Crowe said. “No teacher can ever teach through hunger.”
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