City Greens Market: Building Capacity, Community, and a More Sustainable Future
For more than 17 years, City Greens Market has been a trusted neighborhood resource in St. Louis, Missouri.
City Greens Market began humbly in 2008 in the basement of St. Cronan Catholic School in St. Louis. A group of neighborhood women who called themselves the “Midtown Mamas” had been talking about the lack of nearby grocery stores and the high cost of food that was neither fresh nor local. Many of these women had moved to the city from the rural South, carrying with them a deep culinary tradition built on fresh vegetables and home-cooked meals.
“When we looked around our neighborhood,” one recalled, “we could see that tradition slipping away. Junk food was everywhere, but fresh food was hard to come by. And we knew the health problems we were seeing were connected to that lack of access.”
Between long hours and many iterations, City Greens evolved into a storefront on Manchester Avenue by 2014, supported by a growing membership model. The community rallied behind the market when budget cuts threatened its closure in 2016, ensuring City Greens could relaunch as an independent nonprofit. That same commitment continues to guide the organization today: ‘healthy, affordable food, rooted in community power.’
Fast forward to 2022, when City Greens received a grant of $151,614 from the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI). By that time, the market had already spent more than a decade building deep relationships with the community, but the team knew they needed to take the next step: moving from survival mode into long-term sustainability.
HFFI was established to address the lack of access to healthy food in underserved communities across the nation, particularly in low-income areas. Created by the 2014 Farm Bill and reauthorized in 2018, HFFI is a public-private partnership between USDA Rural Development and Reinvestment Fund that provides grants, loans, and technical assistance to projects aimed at making healthy food more accessible and affordable.
As the National Fund Manager for HFFI, Reinvestment Fund is responsible for leveraging private capital, establishing financing and technical assistance programs, and channeling capital to fund eligible projects and partnerships.
[HFFI funding] gave us breathing room and allowed us to expand our programming.
City Greens Team Member
Expanding Capacity with HFFI Support
The HFFI grant provided a critical opportunity to strengthen City Greens’ foundation. Funds were used to purchase high-quality freezers and coolers—investments that not only reduced energy costs but also allowed the market to better preserve and display fresh food.
The HFFI Grant also enabled City Greens to hire three part-time staff members, one of whom transitioned into a full-time role. “We definitely felt the impact of that additional staffing,” the team shared. “It gave us breathing room and allowed us to expand our programming.”
Community Programs and Deeper Engagement
With new capacity came new ways to serve. City Greens expanded its store hours—including opening on Mondays for the first time—and began offering clearer, more consistent communication through printouts and outreach tools about what was in stock.
The market also launched community-building programs like Free Soup Fridays and monthly community meals. These events, open to all, combined food with workshops on cooking, nutrition, and wellness. The gatherings brought together a diverse group of neighbors and reinforced City Greens’ mission: food as both nourishment and connection.
City Greens Market is a place to buy groceries—both a community hub and a cultural anchor,
Focus groups funded through the grant provided further feedback, ensuring programming stayed rooted in the voices of residents most impacted by food access challenges.
While the HFFI investment was designed to strengthen operations, it also prompted City Greens to reexamine its overall business model. The organization realized it had been relying heavily on memberships, which limited its reach. By partnering with other local organizations working on food access, City Greens found new ways to expand its audience and amplify impact. The team also embraced ongoing and new collaborations with area farmers and food businesses, ensuring that local producers are included in emerging food access solutions.
Looking Ahead
City Greens is especially excited about its expansion into the Dutchtown neighborhood, an area of St. Louis with limited access to grocery stores and fresh, healthy food. This new location, combined with deeper organizational partnerships, represents an opportunity to scale impact while staying true to the mission of equity.
Like many small, community-driven markets, navigating the dual identity of being both a nonprofit and a business and working without traditional business backgrounds is a challenge. Yet these hurdles underscore the importance of flexible, unrestricted capital and the vital role that capacity-building investments play for community-driven markets.
Early support has been critical to City Greens’ resilience, but the journey ahead demands ongoing investment. Programs like HFFI are not only helpful—they are transformative. By providing capital and capacity at pivotal moments, HFFI helps community grocers strengthen operations, expand their reach, and build healthier food environments.
City Greens Market is more than a place to buy groceries. It is a community hub, a cultural anchor, and a living example of what happens when neighbors come together to shape their own food system. Continued investment in markets like City Greens ensures that this vision—affordable, local, healthy food for all—can thrive for generations to come.