Low-cost grocery store to be built inside Huffman Middle School

The Birmingham City Council approved a measure to address food insecurity by building a grocery store inside a middle school.

The measure, which was approved by the Birmingham Board of Education on Tuesday night, will allocate $277,500 to fund a two-year pilot program for a grocery store inside Huffman Middle School. The store will offer low-cost produce and packaged foods which will be available for free to students in need of assistance.

The measure was put forth by District One council member Clinton Woods, who said he was inspired by a similar initiative he saw in Atlanta. After learning more about the program, Woods sought to find a way to implement a similar plan in areas of the city where food insecurity was a concern.

“One of the things we learned was the sense of independence that the students would take from it, just being able to participate and bring home some of the snacks and things that they like. It’s also a really good opportunity to make an impact in areas where we see some potential concerns around our students getting three meals a day, and just trying to close some gaps.”

– Clinton Woods, City Council Member

A familiar vendor will operate the new store

The company Goodr, which already operates another free and low-cost grocery location in Birmingham, was chosen as the vendor to operate the Huffman Middle School grocery store.

The company, which opened a store at Daniel Payne Plaza earlier this year, is a company focused on sustainable food waste management and hunger relief. The company provides logistics connecting non-profit organizations to businesses with surplus food products.

The Atlanta-based company has served nearly 32 million meals to those in need and redirected over 28 million pounds of food and organic material away from landfills.

Woods says the program could expand to other areas depending on how the two-year pilot program performs at Huffman Middle School.

“We wanted to bring a pilot program here to Birmingham and do it on a small scale so we could see it firsthand and really see, does this make an impact? Do we see the results that we think we will? Going forward, based on the pilot, we can determine whether we need to try to expand this across more schools.”

– Clinton Woods, City Council Member

Learn more about Goodr and its other Birmingham location from Bham Now’s previous coverage.