Plan for the Detroit Food Commons
Make the vision a reality...
The Detroit Food Commons is a community development complex spearheaded by DBCFSN. The complex will include an incubator kitchen where culinary artist and food entrepreneurs will be able to prepare foods in a licensed environment for retail and wholesale customers. The Detroit Food Commons will also include the Detroit People's Food Co-Op, a healthy foods cafe, and a space for community meetings, lectures, films, performances and other events.
Detroit Food Commons and the Detroit People’s Food Co-op and the are significant community development projects for DBCFSN. They will require multiple funding streams including grants, loans from members, bank loans and the purchase of individual member/owner shares. Member/owners are the anchor of a true Food Co-op. Member/owners ensure that the values and integrity of the Co-op are intentional and maintained. The Detroit People’s Food Co-op’s goal is to have 2,000 member/owners by its projected opening date in 2023.
The 3,000 sq. ft community meeting space in the Detroit Food Commons will be named Mama Imani Humphrey Hall. Mama Imani was a legendary, Detroit-based, African-centered educator and institution builder upon whose shoulders so many of us stand! We give thanks for her presence among us and her enduring example!
Food Co-ops continue to be developed throughout the world as a way of increasing access to healthy, sustainably grown food while building community ownership and empowerment. In the United States, many of those food co-ops are located in college towns or affluent communities. The Detroit People’s Food Co-op, which will be located in Detroit’s historic North End, will be a unique model, serving and urban, predominately African American, low and moderate-income community.
The Detroit People’s Co-op will be a full-service grocery store, open to the general public, and cooperatively-owned by member/owners. Those member/owners elect six of the nine members of the Co-op’s Board of Directors. The other three board members will be appointed by the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), the non-profit organization leading the formation of the Co-op. That nine-person board will set policy and hire and experienced general manager. The Detroit People’s Food Co-op will create more than 20 jobs for community residents.
