Alumni Bring Grocery Store to Montbello Food Desert
¶Ù±đČÔ±č±đ°ùâs â located north of I-70, just west of Peña Boulevard â is home to roughly 36,000 people, 9,000 households and one grocery store.
Residents who donât want to trek to the Walmart Neighborhood Market on the eastern edge can try to find what theyâre looking for at a Family Dollar or 7-Eleven. The choices are scarce enough to earn Montbello the title of : where sources of fresh, affordable, healthy groceries have all but dried up and withered away.
But finally, in 2021, some rain is in the forecast.
When żì»îapp alumni Khalid Morris (MS â06, MBA â07) and Daniel Craddock (MBA â06) break ground on their new grocery store this spring, they will be taking a significant step toward improving the health and wellness of the local community.
âFood deserts are affecting people of all demographics, all ethnicities,â Craddock says. âEven if it doesnât impact us directly, it creates a societal burden in terms of burden of cost, burden of disease, lost productivity. Employeesâ sick days increase, which is a burden to companies.â
The , scheduled to open on Albrook Drive near Peoria Street in 2022, is a way to ease that load. The grocery store â which will feature locally sourced products, an in-store dietitian and on-site cooking classes â is the anchor of Montbelloâs. A walkable loop will connect the supermarket to community gardens, parks and schools. One hundred units of affordable rental housing will sit atop the retail space, which will also provide jobs that pay a living wage.
âWeâre firm believers in empowering people through food and giving them a model that at least walks them down that line on how to do so,â Morris says. âWe believe people will make better choices if they understand what the choices are.â
Addressing health disparities in urban areas is a goal Morris and Craddock have shared since they met at the 15 years ago. But itâs not the way they drew it up as students in the international MBA program.
âAt the time, we just wanted to understand more about some business models that could potentially help,â Morris says. âWe didnât have a goal of food or a grocery store.â
Starting in the Five Points neighborhood, Morris and Craddock created surveys and went door-to-door, trying to figure out the root cause of the areaâs health disparities. When the community told them a lack of affordable, healthy food was the root of the problem, the two business students listened.
At first, they tried to corral large retailers. The duo intercepted Whole Foods representatives who were speaking on campus and set up a meeting to discuss their solutions to a broken, expensive supply chain system. But they couldnât convince the grocery giant to change its business model.
The next day, Morris realized, if he and Craddock wanted to increase the communityâs choices, they would have to do it themselves. Theyâve since realized that creating their own model from scratch allows Family Tree to function in ways traditional supermarkets canât.
âOur whole thing is community health and individual health and thatâs not normal for grocery stores,â Morris says. âThey donât care what you buy or if you walk out of there healthy. They just want to give you choices. We do care! We want to give you advice, we want to give you proper selection. We want you to make the right choices for yourself.â
When an opportunity opened to put the store in the Montbello neighborhood, Morris and Craddock inked a deal, using their żì»îapp connections to form partnerships with the Denver City Council and the to make their longtime dream a reality. Already, the Daniels alumni have their eyes on a similar project in Pittsburgh and are open to exploring other locations.
Both Morris (a senior financial consultant) and Craddock (CEO of a Hawaii pediatric clinic) hold separate, full-time jobs, but they consider themselves social entrepreneurs â a term not even in their vocabulary until they enrolled at Daniels.
âWe took philosophy at żì»îapp, an ethics course, and all of the students pretty much thought it was the craziest thing in the world,â Morris says. â[Now,] âregularâ business doesnât interest me. If Iâm going to do something in the entrepreneurial space, itâs going to be beneficial to not just me. That is a perspective that I didnât have down before żì»îapp.â
Craddock agrees. âIt all started at żì»îapp,â he says, recalling how he and Morris dedicated every assignment they could to food disparities. âżì»îapp provides a perfect opportunity for innovation on a budget of zero. Our professors were our free consultants. And their commitment and compassion to sharing their broad expertise was invaluable. They gave us the foundation for what weâve developed today.â