About Us
Listening to the neighborhood
It all began with conversations with our neighbors, families, and local store owners. What we heard was simple but urgent: people wanted access to fresh, affordable food, and they wanted to get it close to home. Yet despite the presence of corner stores throughout the neighborhood, many shelves were empty of nutritious options or priced out of reach.
We realized that the problem wasn’t a lack of stores—it was a lack of support. These small, community-based shops were trying to meet local needs but didn’t have access to the systems, tools, or resources to make healthy food sustainable or affordable.
The deeper we looked, the clearer it became: this was a symptom of something bigger. Food justice wasn’t reaching our communities not because people didn’t care, but because the infrastructure to support them didn’t exist. That’s when we made the commitment—to center our efforts around what already exists and strengthen it. Because when the businesses in our community thrive, our people thrive too.
A Network of Support
La Fresca was created to fill a critical gap — a community-rooted support system that meets local businesses where they are and helps them grow in ways that strengthen the entire neighborhood.
By providing shared learning opportunities, access to funding, coordinated marketing, and deeper connections between local producers and corner stores, La Fresca fosters a powerful network of economic resilience. We’re not here to “fix” local businesses — we’re here to uplift and equip them with the tools, visibility, and community backing they’ve long been denied.
Innovating Local Economies
La Fresca was created with one purpose in mind: to find innovative ways to grow our local economy by building a connected, community-powered network of businesses.
We believe real change happens when local businesses aren’t just surviving, but collaborating—sharing resources, uplifting one another, and becoming visible anchors of community wellbeing. This networked approach not only strengthens individual businesses, but creates ripple effects that benefit the entire neighborhood.
La Fresca reimagines the neighborhood food economy as a locally driven economic strategy—one that centers relationships, equity, and ownership. By connecting small shops, local producers, and corner stores through shared tools, education, and coordinated support, La Fresca partners with neighborhood businesses to becomes engines of innovation, resilience, and opportunity. This isn’t just a food program—it’s a new way of investing in people, in place, and in the power of networks.
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