Grocery Stores
All neighborhoods need permanent, affordable solutions to access groceries year-round.
Through our continued efforts in providing food access since 2013, StarkFresh knows that hunger isn’t seasonal.
Hunger solutions through change
Over the past 50 years, urban residential neighborhoods have seen constant decline, creating areas without access to affordable groceries.
Reasons for this are complex, but have one similarity, for a traditional for-profit grocer which relies on volume to compensate for slim profit margins, there isn’t enough viable food traffic.
Our neighborhood grocery store model is inherently different.
Instead of extracting money from a neighborhood to generate money for corporate profits, our goal is providing affordable food access while covering direct costs.
We’ve developed a model that doesn’t require millions of dollars to open a grocery store and prioritizes redirecting existing community resources, discounts, vouchers, and incentives to keep food costs low.
Mission over Profits
Being a nonprofit allows us to keep prices fair & prioritize mission over profit. This works having a strong partnership with an organization leveraging an existing space that they own, covering most of the leasing costs.
This successful strategy of shouldering most ongoing monthly costs as part of long-term philanthropy allows the store to maximize community impact without the full financial burden of operating costs.
We opened our first brick-and mortar location inside our Food Justice Campus in October 2020, without major financial support from local foundations, simply because we knew, from having boots on the ground, that what the community needed was somewhere to shop within walking distance to where they lived, not a hand-out.
Each Grocery Store location is designed to meet the immediate needs of the community in which it is located.
The establishment of these stores has created several pathways for members of our community to transform their lives -- the most important of which is simply the access it provides to affordable food within a short walking distance to where they live, a life-altering opportunity for transformative change.
Offering a path to greater financial stability.
StarkFresh recognizes that coupling a standard employment training program with education and training in financial literacy, healthy eating, cooking, cash handling, sales, and a number of other retail business skills can help facilitate employees’ personal growth and development.
And that’s what we offer the full- and part-time employees of StarkFresh Grocery Stores: the opportunity to develop financial stability while transforming their lives
Our grocery stores also provide other economic opportunities through collaborative programs undertaken in our shared kitchen space within our Food Justice Campus.
For example, by utilizing meals created for other StarkFresh programs, and stocking produce from nearby farms tended by area residents, StarkFresh Grocery Stores complete a mini closed-loop food system.
The Stores
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Canton Grocery Store
321 Cherry Ave NE, Canton, OH 44702
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Alliance Grocery Store
405 S Linden Ave, Alliance, OH 44601
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Online Grocery Store
Serving all of Stark County, Ohio
We work with many individuals and groups to offer vouchers and incentives for groceries.
Our most common voucher amount is $5
We currently work with nearly two dozen agencies to distribute vouchers of various amounts. Some are produce and vegetables only, others are food only and most are good on all items in the stores.
Most vouchers have no expiration dates on them, meaning customers can hold onto them for when they might truly be needed.
We also work with state and federal agencies from time to time to sign up and distribute vouchers of different types to specific people. To find out information on which program we currently are participating in, follow the links below. These programs are quite popular and tend to be given away quickly, as supplies are limited.
TANF Fruit and Vegetable vouchers $140 every six months (click to view requirements)
Ohio Healthy Aging vouchers $50 one-time (Click on image to view a pdf)
You must meet these requirements to obtain your voucher
You can only obtain vouchers once
You must be aged 60 or older
You must live in Stark County
Fruits and vegetables are always 50% inside our Grocery Stores when using SNAP/EBT
In Alliance, when using SNAP EBT, all groceries are 50% off up to $10 (meaning $5 worth of groceries can be free each visit!)
STARTING 5/1/24
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