Central Brooklyn Food Coop (CBFC) is one of the only urban Black-led food cooperatives in the nation – and the only one in New York City. After six years of surveying and planning, we are ready to take root and open our doors in Summer 2020. Help us take the critical step of raising funds for our inaugural down payment so we can secure our home.
We hit our $25k goal! Thank you for the support and momentum – let’s keep going!
Every dollar raised in this campaign will be transformative. We now have an incredible opportunity to unlock stretch goals that will make a huge difference for our launch team and for our coop. Whether you joined us at $0 or at $37,352, backing the campaign means so much. Thank you for being here – and for spreading the word!
Food is power. It can gather us, nurture us, fuel us; it’s a celebration of culture, an act of care, a chance to connect. It’s presence – or absence – has a massive impact on our humanity.
For the last several decades, food in Central Brooklyn became an experience of absence; as supermarkets left for the suburbs, access to quality food became so scarce that our neighborhood was deemed a “food desert.”
Fast forward to today and Central Brooklyn is experiencing rapid gentrification; high-priced storefronts and corporate chains are making their way back into the neighborhood – but for who?
CBFC is here to center the long-term residents and communities of BedStuy/Crown Heights and collectively improve local food options. Our commitment to Food Sovereignty affirms and reclaims the power of food by providing access that is affordable, fresh, welcoming, and community-owned.
We are here to sow the seeds of our own solution and build the food-driven future we want for Central Brooklyn. Here’s what CBFC is all about:
For the past six years, a dedicated team of CBFC members has been listening to the community, surveying food access in the neighborhood, establishing relationships with local growers and food suppliers, and building a blueprint for how CBFC can help the community thrive.
Ultimately, we want CBFC to be a place for the community to gather, learn, and organize together.
We’ve been working on this coop for six years. SIX YEARS!
That’s to say – we’ve done a lot of the legwork. Now it’s time to take the final step and invest in our physical home. Through this campaign, you will help us secure that home by covering our inaugural down payment. Our goal of $25,000 ensures that we can lease a space with realistic expectations of the neighborhood’s market rate.
By taking this big chunk of change off our plate, you’re not just supporting a much needed expense, you’re also alleviating a major mental load: covering rent can be stressful, especially in the changing real estate market of Central Brooklyn. By enabling us to move quickly if the right storefront opportunity arises, you’re helping us remove a major stressor so we can focus on other critical elements of coop like member outreach, program development, growing our local farmer network, and more.
Help us build a culture of healthy, sustainable food, and make Food Sovereignty in Central Brooklyn a reality
Our faces are all over this campaign: from food access bike tours to tabling at local events to surveying local streets for ideal storefront locations, CBFC has been built by its members and supporters… and that includes this Kickstarter!
You met a handful of us in the video, but we wanted to give a quick shoutout to all our teammates who worked tirelessly for the past eight months to help make this all happen: Bianca, Lindsay, Taisy, Chris, Talia, Murray, Raina, Gabrielle, Ashleigh, Alexis, Ms. Cheryl, Mark, Rae, Ina, Alex, Joe, D, Karen, Steph, Farmer Yon, Courtney, Ena — thank you for your time, your energy, and for showing us the power of community.
We’re proud to have already invested six years of planning into the launch of CBFC, mitigating a lot of the risk associated with early stage development. That said, building out a physical space always comes with the risk of delay: permits, contractors, coordinating the supply chain of perishables — these are all variables that could impact timelines. We are committed to opening in 2020 and will stay in close communication with the community about our progress.