Part of a five-year effort to bring healthy food to a Cincinnati neighborhood without easy access to a grocery store is coming to an end.
Organizers of Meisers Fresh Grocery and Deli announced the store on Lower Price Hill's State Ave. was closing permanently March 18.
Meiser's will offer meal kits following an event called Kindred Table: Feed Your Mind March 24 at 6 pm, the store said on social media. Anything left over from the store after that will be donated to other local nonprofits.
Nonprofit Your Store of the Queen City ran the market. In a statement, the organization said it made the decision to close the store after consulting with partner organizations.
"Over the past five years, our YSQC team has learned valuable lessons about what it takes to sustain this work: strong community leadership, clear collaboration, and diversified financial support are all essential," the statement reads. "At the same time, we have continued to face the same systemic challenges that created food deserts in the first place, such as supply chain barriers and income instability."
Your Store Interim Executive Director Alyson Gerwe says Meiser's struggled with the ability to meet large order minimums required by many wholesalers and to be able to buy at the lowest prices larger stores can access. She said Meiser's isn't the only small store to struggle with that.
"Talking to all of our partners and some of the smaller grocers in the area, they're also experiencing those things," she said. "How can you get food at lower cost to compete with the buying power of Kroger and Walmart and those kinds of things."
Another big factor in the decision to shutter Meisers, Gerwe said, came from recent instability around food benefits via the SNAP and WIC programs.
SNAP benefits were paused during the government shutdown in November last year. In December, Ohio instituted work requirements for SNAP recipients that cut into who qualifies for them. And the federal government last November also limited eligibility for immigrants seeking federal food assistance to those who have lived in the U.S. for five years or more and hold a green card.
"We really started to see it affect us in December," Gerwe said of the federal changes. "Previously qualified groups were refugees, asylees, victims of domestic violence and trafficking victims, who are now ineligible for federal food aid."
WVXU featured Meiser's in a series about food access last year.
The original Meiser’s Market was family owned and operated for five decades. Carl Meiser ran the store until he retired in 2017, when Meiser's closed.
Nonprofits Community Matters, Price Hill Will and the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition partnered to form Your Store of the Queen City in 2021 and reopen Meiser's as a food hub.
In addition to a deli and staple items like bread and pasta lined up along grocery store aisles, the rebooted Meiser's also featured no-cost fresh produce provided by places like the Freestore Foodbank, prepared meals donated by LaSoupe and a weekly community dinner prepared by staff.
Managers at the market said the closure of the original Meiser's left a hole in the community because the nearest grocery store was a half-hour walk away up a challenging hill.
Data from the USDA shows more than half of the residents of Lower Price Hill have experienced food insecurity in the last few years.
Your Store says it will continue its broader work toward addressing that issue.
"In the coming months, our key partner, Community Matters will lead engagement with neighbors to steward the space and explore future food access opportunities in Lower Price Hill," the group's statement reads. "The food pantry and community gardens at Community Matters will continue to provide food access."
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