Downtown grocery store to benefit farmers, students

Walking through the open market on McKinley Street and Central Avenue, the senses come alive with smells of organic chocolate, crisp apples, harvest granola and home-roasted coffee from down the alley way.

The air is filled with sounds of live music of local Phoenix artists and friendly conversation between vendors and customers. This is exactly the sort of experience the public market director, Cindy Gentry, wanted to create for Phoenix’s new indoor public market.

“One of the things [the vendors] really wanted to do was create a gathering space around good food,” Gentry said. “There is so much creative energy around here. It really opens up your senses and wakes you up. You come alive.”

This month Phoenix is welcoming the Public Market grocery store. The grocery store and wine bar will feature many of the products the outdoor market offers but will be more accessible to patrons and be open every day.

The store will be home to many of the same vendors and farmers that participate in the outdoor market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Gentry said.

It will also give opportunities to other interested vendors to join in on the idea of coming together as a community around good food, she said.

The market will not carry commercialized products or brands, but it will still provide foods that the local farmers may not necessarily grow.

“As long as it is not competing with our farmers, then I am not opposed to carrying it,” Gentry said.

Gentry has a very specific vision for ASU students to be a part of.

“ASU will make Downtown a real laboratory. They have a chance to study the people that are here, living what they study,” she said. “They can develop leadership for the next generation to develop sustainability and awareness through their studies and endeavors and careers.”

Freshman nursing student Katie Powell said students don’t currently have a grocery store or a location to get healthy food, but the market will offer that.

“I think [the market] is a great opportunity for students to get in touch with local farmers and allow them to be healthy and make healthy choices,” she said.

The store will also create a symbiotic relationship because it helps farmers make their living and the students to make healthy choices for their body, she said.

“It allows them to interact with their community, which is the purpose of why students are Downtown,” Powell said. “We are here to liven up Phoenix and have students move outside of the campus into the greater Downtown area.”

Gentry sees the market as a place to come, live, eat and discover what it is like to be part of a community.

“Phoenix is a community that is young and new, but the people who are a part of it see it as a place to harvest growth and innovation,” she said.

The market is just one of many big steps the community is taking to help it’s inhabitants, she said.

It gives the farmers a place to go to sell their food every day, on top of still being able to participate in the outdoor market on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

One of Gentry’s goals is to reach out to students.

“We will be here every day. It is affordable. My hope is that it will be inviting to the students,” she said. “We will provide fresh food for the students to utilize, and that is something that has not been available to them in the past.”