In Roanoke's West End, Local Grocery Store Leaps into Action

Heirloom tomatoes sit next to bundles of thyme. Eggplants and oyster mushrooms share cooler space with meats, cheese and house-made soups.

Those options and more can be found at a long-awaited community grocery store in Roanoke’s West End neighborhood, which celebrates its grand opening today. 

LEAP, the nonprofit Local Environmental Agriculture Project, now operates a brick-and-mortar store at its Patterson Avenue headquarters where it hosts weekly farmers markets. 

Open noon to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, the store offers local and fresh produce — from Patrick County apples to Floyd County cabbage — and at a reduced cost for those on government assistance programs.

“Our number one target is people in this neighborhood,” Christina Nifong, a spokesperson for LEAP, said of the store’s potential customers. “If you don't have a car and you're riding the bus to buy groceries, it's a huge deal-breaker, you know, and if you're walking around, the options here are chips in a bag and beer.”

The West End neighborhood is predominantly lower-income, according to Census data. In a tract of 2,343 people that includes Hurt Park and Mountain View, one in three adults lives in poverty. The median household income is about 60 percent that of the Roanoke average. 

The store is possible thanks to $2.5 million in federal pandemic relief money that the city allocated to LEAP as a way to increase access to fresh, affordable food. 

Most of the investment went toward the purchase and renovation of a 1925 general store at 1027 Patterson Ave., a former church that had been vacant for years. LEAP bought the building in November 2021 and staff began working out of the center in January 2023.

Wednesday’s ceremony will include speakers, tastings, tours of the building, prizes, lawn games and activities for kids.

Besides offices, the building has a community room that groups can rent out for small meetings. LEAP’s processing kitchen also allows the nonprofit to make and sell soups, hummuses and sauces, which LEAP says “provide another way to make local food accessible to shoppers, who may not have the kitchen space or cooking skills to prepare meals from fresh produce.”

The store is where some residents pick up a weekly farm share. It’s next to a grassy field where LEAP hosts its West End farmers market every Tuesday. The last bit of pandemic relief funds will enable LEAP to construct a pavilion at the market, expected to be completed by the end of this year, to protect vendors and customers from the weather.  

Nifong noted that with a Saturday farmers market in Grandin Village, the store’s hours allow shoppers to buy fresh, local produce five days a week.

Danielle Wright was picking up children at the nearby West End Center for Youth recently.

“I love the LEAP market. I’m glad that they’re opening up a store,” Wright said. “That’s a great benefit to the neighborhood.” 

Ta’quan Carter lives in the Grandin Village area but visits the West End neighborhood often to visit his grandmother. He also had not heard of the new store but said it’s needed in an area that’s a food desert.

“It draws a lot of attention,” Carter said of the current farmers market. “It helps out the community a lot because a lot of people can’t get to the grocery store.”

In the store, fruits, vegetables, breads, spices and more are color-coded to show shoppers where they come from. Purple “local” labels indicate the food was grown or made within 100 miles, while green “regional” labels indicate a 300-mile radius.

Jeff Bland, LEAP’s kitchen manager, makes the soups, hummuses and sauces that LEAP sells at the store and through its mobile market. During the summer months, produce comes in nearly daily, some of which may have blemishes — “an ugly vegetable or an ugly fruit,” Bland said — but which are otherwise edible. 

“Instead of going into the landfill or compost, we’re turning these perfectly great items into what we call ‘value-added items’ be it soup, steamed vegetables, roasted vegetables, fruit jerky,” Bland said.

Last week, a group of volunteers helped shuck 120 ears of corn that were then cut off the cob, steamed and frozen. Bland comes up with his own recipes for soups and sauces that must be approved by a state agency. 

LEAP also sells some non-local items, such as pastas, rice and crackers so that shoppers can find all the ingredients they need to make a meal. The store tries to balance regionalism and affordability, so cheaper and non-local flour shares the shelves with local, higher-priced flour. 

Fruits and vegetables are half the price for shoppers on Medicaid or who use the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Nifong anticipated that in a few weeks the community store will be approved to offer that same deal to recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program. A requirement is that the store must be open first.

Some recently listed prices included $3 per pound for Floyd County tomatoes; 75 cents for an ear of sweet corn; $8 per pound of cubed beef from Moneta; and $4 for a container of frozen potato and corn chowder.

Customers of the Roanoke Co+op may recognize some bulk containers and signage in LEAP’s store. Nifong said the Co+op has donated equipment and expertise over the last year.

On a Monday afternoon, a West End resident who gave her name as Mary J., sat on a stoop outside S&S Grocery and Deli, a convenience store around the corner from LEAP.

“It’s a good place to have right there so people don’t have to go downtown” to get fresh produce, she said of the farmers market. Mary said she would probably check out the store and get others to visit. 

But she also expressed reservations about whether food could be affordable to people like herself.

“This is a low-income area. You can’t buy two tomatoes for four or five dollars,” she said, adding, “I’m just keeping it real.”