Black-owned grocery store in west suburbs opens doors to Black entrepreneurs
As part of Black History Month, one entrepreneur offered space in her west suburban grocery store Saturday to other Black small business owners, giving them a venue – and opportunity – to reach more potential customers.
Melody Winston, senior executive of Living Fresh Market, located in the Oak Park and Elmwood Park neighboring town of Forest Park, said her store often serves as a launching point for minority vendors looking for a foothold into the marketplace.
It’s a point of pride for her and Living Fresh Market, which she describes as one of the largest Black-owned grocery stores in the U.S. at 71,000 square feet,
“We help get products to the shelves,” Winston said. “Once they’re here, they can get to any store. It starts here.”
Michele Hoskins, of Michele Foods company, was in the store Saturday serving up samples of her syrup.
The secret to Michele Foods’ multi-million syrup business started in the kitchen of a plantation in the 1800s, when the owners asked America Washington, a freed slave, to come up with an alternative to molasses, the entrepreneur recalled.
Washington was Hoskins’ great, great, great-grandmother, who came up with the recipe that was handed down over generations in their family. Hoskins said she had been going through divorce in the 1980s, trying to figure out her life and praying about raising her three daughters, when her mother gave her the family recipe.
“I used to pray that I would sell 12 bottles a month. Now I sell 12 bottles per minute,” Hoskins said. “We started with three ingredients and now we’re at 10,000 stores nationwide.”
This year, Michele Foods, founded in 1984, celebrates its 40-year anniversary.
“We very seldom get awareness,” Hoskins said. “It feels good to stand here among our peers.”
The event at Living Fresh Market also spotlighted Black entrepreneurs like chef Dominique Leach, of Lexington Betty Smokehouse, and Stephanie Hart, owner of Brown Sugar Bakery – which Vice President Kamala Harris visited while in Chicago in 2021.
“You’re not going to see Black entrepreneurs highlighted everywhere,” Hart said at the grocery story event. “That’s why I’m here.”
For Leach, who graduated from culinary school in 2006 and has a background in fine dining, her journey into entrepreneurship started with her own food truck in 2017 after quitting her job at the Four Seasons.
“I was never going to get the respect I deserve,” she said. “So I did it for myself.”
On Saturday, grocery store customers got to sample the entrepreneurs’ goods, some licking their fingers and coming back for seconds.
Betty Farrister, 69, of Berwyn, said she comes to the market a couple of times a week. After trying Riley’s Ribz BBQ sauce, she grabbed a bottle and put it in her cart before continuing to shop. Minutes later, she sent her husband, Emmett, back for a second bottle.
“So many Black entrepreneurs I hadn’t heard of,” said Randall Armstead, 59, of Forest Park, who had stopped in the store for a salad. “It makes me proud.”
That was the point of the event, according to Winston: To raise awareness about Black businesses and connect minority entrepreneurs to customers.
It’s the vision of her father, the Rev. Bill Winston, founder and pastor of Living Word Christian Center, a Chicagoland megachurch, which acquired Living Fresh Market through its subsidiary Forest Park Plaza in 2021.
Winston said her father “really pushes entrepreneurship.”
Living Fresh Market will be hosting monthly events in its ongoing effort to support small vendors and test products and consumer response, she said. Also, the store also has a goal to promote healthy living with more vegan and plant-based foods.
On the lookout for more healthy, holistic products, Winston sampled a tea from Nature’s Tea Company at the event Saturday.
An Easter egg hunt is planned for March.
Living Fresh Market is now in the process of opening a second location in Maywood next year. But first, it will open a community marketplace inside the Forest Park grocery store at the end of this year for various pop-ups, workshops and cooking demonstrations to teach essential skills for healthy living like nutrition classes, according to Winston.
“It’s vital to my own spirit,” Winston said of the Living Fresh Market mission. “I’ve always served my community and it’s just part of who I am as a person.”
Christine Won is a freelancer.