Introducing Raphael Wright, 34, the founder and CEO of Neighborhood Grocery, Detroit, Michigan’s first Black-owned grocery store and the first to operate in the city in almost a decade. Raphael has worked assiduously for six years to realize this vision, which puts a new emphasis on community and health.
Grocery shops are the best place to start if you want to create a community because they provide good food and healthy access, as Wright told WXYZ.
In 2017, Wright—a farmer also—began his quest to establish a food shop in the underprivileged neighborhood. He formally started an equity crowdfunding effort three years later. Then, in Detroit’s Jefferson-Chalmers area, he managed to take over a former liquor shop and transform it into a grocery store.
As promised, the neighborhood community chooses what goes on the shelves at Neighborhood Grocery, and their names are prominently included in the store’s design. The three main pillars of Wright’s mission are education, health, and inclusion.
“I want to improve the communities where I work since I’m from there. “I want to restore that glory because they were good once,” he stated.
In addition, Neighborhood Grocery is an equity crowdfunding-funded supermarket. To assist with their launch expenditures, money was obtained through their GoFundMe website and other regional crowd-investing initiatives.
