E. Warren Farmers Market provides a pathway to growth for small businesses

Every Thursday evening, in a former Pizza Hut parking lot on Detroit’s east side, neighbors gather at the E. Warren Farmers Market to shop for fresh produce, homemade food, and artsy goods made by local residents.

They arrive by bus, bicycle, car or on foot from June through September.

But it’s not just the shopping that brings 125 to 250 folks back each week, it’s the sense of community and the welcoming vibe curated by its organizer and host, E. Warren Development Corp.

Says Brie’Ann Bell, E. Warren Development Corp’s markets and activation coordinator, “Aside from our space being a place to shop, it’s also a place for fellowship and to socialize and feel comfortable and go to where people are going to welcome you. A lot of our consistent patrons are people there just to chill and hang out and grab a Stacey’s 2 Day Tea.” (Editorial note: the tea, is delicious!)

One resident, James, stopped by three years ago and asked if he could lend a hand putting up a tent. He started coming every Thursday and serves as a back-up handyman. He’s even built a food truck. “James just being there makes us feel comfortable because we know he has our back,” says Bell. “We call him the spirit of East Warren. Meeting people like that invigorates us weekly.”

Bell says that neighbors have become accustomed to the farmers market being there every Thursday during the summer, and they love engaging with the organizers and each other. They also can grab a handmade taco from Tacos Hernandez food truck, a vegan dinner from Longevity’s pop-up kitchen, or cookies from Simply Brittany Sweets. It’s testament to what many people believe: sharing food builds connection with others. 

E. Warren Development Corp., which started the market in 2020, has a mission to support the commercial corridor and surrounding neighborhoods along E. Warren Avenue between Alter Road and Mack Ave. Hosting a farmers market is one way to help to ignite retail and build community in a space that had been vacant.

Says Joe Rashid, executive director, “It’s really all about building community, engaging community, letting people know about what’s going on, giving them an opportunity to shop in their community.”

Shopping local is a major push for this farmers market, with an average of 20 hyper local vendors each week. Bell says that 80% of the vendors are hyperlocal, living or doing business within a five-mile radius of the market. Providing a revenue stream for urban farmers and small businesses is a prominent goal for the farmers market. “Black-owned, women-owned businesses,” says Bell. “We are very intentional about who’s at our market and the types of products that they sell.”

Rashid says that is what differentiates E. Warren Farmers Market from other markets: it’s a first point of entry into the community.

“For us, it’s about understanding what businesses are in our community that want to grow and scale, and how do we help them grow and scale,” says Rashid. “We say we’re an incubation market because we want you to build a clientele, we want to see that the product that you’re making, that you can have a consistent revenue with that business.”

From there, E. Warren Development Corp. provides technical assistance and connects businesses to a support network to grow beyond selling at the farmers market, if that’s a business objective.

For example, Rashid saw a need for food-based businesses to have use of a commercial kitchen to more easily scale. The organization is currently building a commercial kitchen within the former Pizza Hut that is slated to open in November. He sees this as a double win; produce vendors will be more enticed to sell at the farmers market if E. Warren can purchase from them what they don’t sell.

“With the kitchen, we’ll be able to buy and turn those vegetables into a value-added product the next day so that nothing’s going to waste,” says Rashid. “Creating a closed-loop system will offer consistency that will allow us to be able to attract and grow the number of food-based businesses that want to participate with us.”

But E. Warren Farmers Market doesn’t just provide a pathway to growth for urban farmers and food and beverage vendors.

Next Chapter Books started out at the farmers market and, with support from E. Warren Development Corp., the store popped up at The Alger Theater, notes Rashid. Next Chapter owners Sarah and Jay Williams eventually landed a brick and mortar location on E. Warren Ave., where community members can shop for new and used books in a beautiful setting.

In another situation, E. Warren Development Corp. helped a jewelry maker, LaNika Rose Fitt, who sells at the market. She is also a fitness and yoga instructor and personal trainer. Rashid connected her with the local developer of The Ribbon, a new building project on E. Warren with apartments and mixed-use space. She plans to open a yoga, fitness and retail studio in The Ribbon early next year when the space is ready.

Rashid says it’s about making sure it’s not just big box stores grabbing up viable space, “but it’s actually local residents and people who have invested in their community, and show up week after week who are getting these opportunities.”

E. Warren Development Corp. is very much about building capacity for small businesses and lowering the barrier to entry, whether it’s renting them space at the farmers’ market for just $10-$20/week (which, by the way goes back to patrons to spend at the market in the form of “market bucks”), setting them up in the future commercial kitchen, finding spaces for pop ups, connecting them to developers, assisting with negotiations that offer fair and reasonable terms, or helping them build revenue for needed build-outs.

And E. Warren Development Corp. will have yet another opportunity for retailers when it opens its four-season market toward the end of 2025; the organization is breaking ground on it now adjacent to the new commercial kitchen.

For Rashid and Bell, they want to create a commercial corridor that is so vibrant, residents could do all their shopping in their own community. “We just really want to make things like that happen,” says Rashid. “We want to create a walkable, diverse neighborhood, and in order to do that, we need to have a diverse, eclectic mix of businesses. And our space is really meant to be a permanently affordable space for local businesses to incubate at the end of the day.”

The final day of the 2024 E. Warren Farmers Market is Thursday, September 26. It is located at 16835 E. Warren Ave. in Detroit. Hours are 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. Food Truck Fridays will continue into the fall.

Resilient Neighborhoods is a reporting and engagement series examining how Detroit residents and community development organizations work together to strengthen local neighborhoods. It’s made possible with funding from The Kresge Foundation.