(subdued music) (grand music) - The opening of a new grocery store may not seem like a big deal, but it is when it's opening in a food desert.

Peoria's South Side hasn't had a grocery store in years, but that is about to change.

Pastor Chuck Brown is the owner of the, hopefully soon to be open, CJ Harvest.

Thanks for coming in, Pastor.

- Well, thanks for having me.

- Tell us about your experience in Peoria.

We know you're with Victory Church and you've done other things throughout our area, but tell us about how long you've lived here and kind of your interaction with the community.

- Well, you'd have to go all the way back to Main Street.

You know, someone asked me what's my, one of my greatest memories from the past and I would say Main Street, cruising Main Street.

So if you can remember that you've been around a few years.

But I grew up partially here.

I was born in Chicago, Illinois, but we came here earlier in my life and even went to McKinley and then we relocated out to Pembroke, Illinois and Kankakee County.

And I grew up most of my childhood up to high school.

Then we returned back through Caterpillar here to Peoria.

So I wind up graduating from Manuel High School.

The South Side I remember was a bustling community, just a great environment.

Definitely growing up as a teenager, we had a lot of fun things we used to do.

We had restaurants, we had businesses, we had supermarkets.

We had a lot of things to look forward to, real friends, not social media friends, but people you actually would see, fight, and be right back together the next day.

Basketball at Proctor Center and Carver.

So it was just a great experience growing up on the South Side.

- Well, for whatever reason, and I'm sure there are reasons that has changed.

So much so that the South Side hasn't had its own grocery store in years.

Let's, first of all, talk about the food desert term.

That's a term that people use.

Of course the South Side has gas stations, convenience stores, but you're not obviously getting a good quality of food there, fruits, vegetables, things that are actually nutritious for you.

For someone living on the South Side in a food desert, what does life look like for them as far as just doing something as simple as grocery shopping?

- Well, you know, the South Side has changed over the years.

Unfortunately, a lot of the changes has not been for the good.

A food desert, USDA classifies a food desert, it's an area in an urban community where there is more than a mile, the majority of the community from fresh nutritional and affordable food.

In rural areas, which there are several food deserts as well, there's 10 miles.

And so what you'll see when you don't have those stores in those areas, you'll have more dollar stores and convenience stores and different locations that will serve some type of food products, but unfortunately, those do not have the nutritional value as fresh produce.

And then on top of that, to add insult to injury, when you're in a community where most of the people are living a little bit beneath the poverty line, you're getting food from the dollar stores or from convenience stores, you're paying more money.

So it leads to obesity, health challenges such as diabetes, cancer, hyperextension.

And so it carries with it a great deal of damage.

As a matter of fact, most of your death as a result of diabetes, 50% more mortality rate in food desert communities.

So it really does speak volumes.

- We mentioned that the South Side obviously had multiple grocery stores in the past.

There's a Kroger there, an Aldi, why do you think the South Side, I mean obviously needs a grocery store, but that hasn't worked out?

- Well, there's over a 3 million people in the state of Illinois living in food desert communities, Peoria is just no stranger, you know, in this particular area, we're looking at the South Side as well as the East Bluff and the North Side, that area, we're also looking at, it's a challenge getting these major stores to stick around, quite frankly, in these particular areas of population, the stores suffer a great deal of loss.

First of all, there's thin margins in the supermarket industry.

You're talking one to 3% net profit at the end of the day.

If you are getting a one to 3% net profit, normally, in food desert communities, they're normally losing 4 cents on the dollar.

And in the past they were able to count on private and government funding to kinda help mitigate at least half of that gap.

And so when that is not available, those stores have to pull out.

I mean, it is a business, supermarket industry is a business, and the CVSs and the Walgreens and different chains, they pull out because they're losing money.

So it's just that simple.

- So at what point do you say "Not only does something have to be done to solve this problem, I'm gonna do it"?

Was there one particular moment that one light bulb that went off in your brain that said, "I'm the man to do this"?

- Yeah, I mean, I'm a man of faith.

You know, God gives us wisdom, but he also gives us visions and witty ideals.

But I'm also an entrepreneur, so you have to go at it from a business perspective.

And I have what I feel is a good business model that I think could not only work for the South Side of Peoria, but you know, if it plays in Peoria, maybe it could help other communities.

And so it's an inspiration of mine.

I hate to drive through the South Side of Peoria and look at the things that we see.

It just does my heart, you know, no good in that point just to watch what's going on and I wanna make a difference.

And I think by starting with giving the community the essential service products that they need, it's the right thing to do.

So CJ Harvest is something that's going to do a great job in the community.

- Before we get into the specifics about what people will eventually see there, this wasn't an idea you just came up with a few months ago.

This has been going on for a while.

What are some of the trials and tribulations and maybe some roadblocks and speed bumps that you've encountered here?

- Well, you know, I got the keys back in 2021 to start the project.

I initially was going to put the food court in first and then some grocery items.

We have 12,400 square feet.

And so we were just gonna kinda wall it off about 3000 square feet and then just kind of grow into the building.

That was the initial plan.

Didn't plan on losing my former wife to cancer probably three or four months after I got the keys.

And so I think I kind wigged out in '22.

It's just- - Understandable.

- You know, it was a really, really difficult time for me.

I had lost my mother and my father and my wife and three brothers.

And so, you know, just had to find that value again in life.

You find out what's really important when it comes to business and anything else we do in the community.

You know, I live by a model now, God first, family second.

And so you just never know when those type of things is gonna happen.

But it did cause a great deal of setback.

Picked myself back up in '23, was able to pull it back together and get back focused on the store again.

I think the store project really helped me bridge the gap and get back in the thick of things.

It's difficult getting financing in urban communities.

It's very challenging for developers to get the support from, you have to come in with so much, there's an expectation as an entrepreneur, as a developer.

Me personally, I never expect the government to put me in business.

But I believe because of the nature of the food desert and what the damage that it does to a community, I believe the governor saw the importance and the need.

And I appreciate the fact that he stepped in and helped us.

And this grant has given us obviously 75%.

So long story short, we've been at it for three years, which is normal.

It's a very difficult, daunting process.

But I think the time has also given me the chance to get a degree in supermarketology.

So it's been good.

The time has been helpful, so I will say that much.

- Sure.

Well, you mentioned the grant almost $1.7 million from the state.

Sounds like a game changer.

What does that mean for your market?

- Well, the whole project is 2.2 million.

So we had to raise 555,000 and that was our 25% match to the grant.

And I was really blessed.

We were able to meet with the Peoria County and they had some funds available through some ARPA funding as well as Keystone, which is a part of that would be a loan.

And then I was able to do a private investment of 165,000.

And so we were able to put that together and make it work.

We still have an appointment with the city, but by the time we'll have to see where that's going.

But right now, the county stepped up really big and so they see the importance of that area of town.

And it's one thing to say what you're going to do, it's another thing to do it.

And so through that partnership, we were able to do what we're doing now.

- I'm sure you learned quite a bit about business in general, supermarkets, things like that.

You know, it's one of those things, you talked about the margins.

You're not gonna get rich doing this, but you obviously are more concerned about the impact it's gonna have on the community.

- Absolutely.

And even with those margins, if we're able to profit, we're gonna pour a great deal of that net profit back into the community.

We have other goals that we feel can help revitalize the community.

We're even looking at the possibility with the success of this location, and that is putting another one near the North and East Bluff, maybe a smaller version of this, but we want to try to help two areas of our community.

- And besides having all these items available for people in that area, you're gonna need people to work.

Tell us about job opportunities at the supermarket and are you gonna make a concerted effort to try and get folks in that area to work at your store?

- Absolutely.

That is one thing we're very excited about.

I've been blessed for the last 11 years.

I started a nonprofit called Job and Resource Fair.

So I've been working with over 100 local partners, Caterpillar, Keystone, OSF, Amran, you name it.

And we've been able to bridge the gap between job seekers and companies looking to hire.

And it just does my heart so good to know that our business will be able to hire at least 30 or 40 people and we are definitely looking for people in that area close enough to even walk to work.

So yeah, we feel it's not only gonna help provide the service, but it will improve someone's bottom line at home.

- Sure.

Where is the nearest grocery store to that area?

- Wow.

Right now the residents are going all the way over to East Peoria, either Walmart or Kroger's.

- Oh, wow.

- Or they're going out to Sterling Kroger's or Walmart on University or Aldi's.

- That's a way to go, especially if you don't have a car.

- No it was so amazing.

We partnered with Peoria Police a year ago and we did a school, you know, supply giveaway.

They were doing supplies and backpacks and it was an incredible day.

We had bounce houses and you know, Raver's was there giving away hot dogs.

It was just really neat.

And I watched as a lady, when we were getting ready to get it started, there was a lady pushing a stroller and she had about four kids behind her.

And it was like, she was the first person, she started walking across the parking lot.

And before you know it, within an hour there was the sea of people from the neighborhood.

There was some cars parked around the store.

But what really struck me was the majority of the people walked there and there was over 500 to nearly 1000 people on the parking lot.

White, Black, Latino, just a diverse population.

And it made me, helped me to see the importance of what this means to this neighborhood and what we can do to make a difference.

- When is your projected opening?

- I can't say.

I've been getting beat up on that one over the years.

"We will open in six months" and we're not open yet.

I'm thinking possibly six months and we're figuring the spring of '25, at this point, now it's just a matter of ordering in refrigerators, freezers, condensers, the construction inside.

We have to build out a food court, which is gonna have 30 seats, which we're really excited about.

So that's really the time right now.

So it's not funding, thank God, but it's actually building out and doing what we gotta do.

- Sure.

Well, tell us a little bit about the store itself.

Some of the features it's gonna have.

You mentioned the food court, so is it gonna have like a, you know, at other stores we see a deli where you can order a sandwich and a drink and eat there.

Is it gonna be that type of thing?

- Man, I am so excited about Smoke Stack 309.

- Oh, hey now!

- That is our food court.

We are going to specialize.

We'll have ribs, we'll have fried chicken of course, and jerk chicken, but we are gonna have smoked turkey legs.

Some of the people in the community have already tasted and tried our stuffed, smoked turkey legs.

And this is something we feel will help bring people from all around our region.

These are Texas style.

They taste like ham fall off the bone, you can eat 'em with a fork, you get it stuffed with dirty rice, shrimp Alfredo.

See I'm doing a commercial now, right?

- Making me hungry.

- And so it is a feature we feel will attract people from other parts of our community and it'll increase the foot traffic in our supermarket, in addition to coffee shop, we'll have a little kiosk in there where you can get some great barista, some gourmet coffee.

In addition, we will carry the essentials.

Kroger's will carry maybe 33,000 items.

You might get a choice of 25 different ketchups.

Well, we're kind of following the same model as Aldi's.

We'll have a couple of choices.

And what that does for us is we can buy in bulk through our suppliers and then we can cut our costs by not having so many different items.

And then we can pass that savings on to our customer.

You can expect an extensive produce department.

You can expect culturally sound products on the shelves because we do have a growing Latino, we have African, we have different cultures in our community that we're really proud of.

And we're actually gonna canvas and hold some community forums because we wanna find out what's important to the community, what would they like to see on the shelves in addition to our 1200 essential items.

And so it gives us a chance to tie our consumers into what we do as a store.

'Cause at the end of the day, it really is their store and we want them to feel like they're a part of it.

- Have you had any kind of pushback or feedback from other grocery stores in the area concerning what you wanna do?

- They don't know where I live yet.

(both laugh) No, I hadn't heard anything negative.

I mean, you know, obviously you look at the Facebook wall, there's a lot of people who have made some negative comments and to me it's directed more toward the residents of the community, and I just feel like we are going to prove 'em wrong.

And this is as it relates to shrink and different things like that.

But as far as stores and businesses so far, I think they're excited.

They understand if small independent stores don't come into these communities, it's just not gonna happen.

- You mentioned having not as huge of a selection, but enough of a selection.

Have you learned any other lessons from say, former grocers or people in the area who said, "Yeah, maybe if the grocery store would've done this differently or gad that they would've survived," have you heard any tips or advice?

- Yes, Save A Lot didn't last six months.

You know, they made a lot of fundamental mistakes.

First of all, you gotta look at your community.

You have to look at your main customer base from your geographic research.

And there is a great deal of residents in our area that depend on SNAP benefits.

And during the first part of the month, you're gonna have a spike in sales, but then the 15th and the end of the month, those sales are gonna kinda taper off.

You have to be ready for that adjustment, according, you have to adjust your payroll, you have to adjust your expenses, you have to do some different things during that latter part of the month to kinda keep you stronger.

And so it takes a good business strategy by having the 1200 essential items.

We're also gonna carry at least 100 local products such as Lovingood barbecue sauce.

I've got a young man, he does what's called, it's called greens, basically, micro greens.

You can get these in a container and you can put 'em in your protein shakes, but it's another form of nutrition.

And so there are farmers that around our area, we're gonna work with local community farmers.

We will continue to have those farmers' markets in the parking lot.

So it's really about partnering with our local suppliers, making sure we keep our prices as low as possible from our major suppliers.

And just getting the residents the main things that are important to their diet.

You know, everything won't be at the highest level of nutritional value.

That's not the supermarket business, but we definitely will have those choices in the community.

- Well certainly a lot better than what you could get at a gas station.

- Oh, absolutely, yes.

- Soda and chips and you know.

- Right.

- That's not good for the body.

- Fast food.

- Yeah, fast food.

So once this gets up and running, how much of a hands-on owner are you gonna be?

Or are you gonna have somebody, you know, general manager type person taking over?

- That's the other advantage.

We are locally owned.

We are a ma and pa store and we're gonna give you that ma and pa love when you come in the door.

But we will be there.

Julie and I will be on staff.

We will eventually have a couple of assistant managers and at one point we will have a general manager that will take over.

But for the first couple of years we want to be there.

We want to touch all of our customers.

You might see me in the parking lot picking up paper.

You know, you might see me greeting you at the door.

So we want to be present.

It's very exciting for us, a chance to really connect with people and to also train our staff.

The culture that you could expect when you come in CJ Harvest would be something you would see at a, what's that nice restaurant out there by the mall, Chick-fil-A, I just think they have an amazing customer service culture and we wanna bring that same culture to the South Side of Peoria.

- And do you have any message for your potential customers?

Because obviously this is for them, but they have to use it too, or lose it.

What would you say to them?

- Someone said, "Make sure you support Harvest.

Make sure you guys support the supermarket."

And I say don't support us.

Come to CJ Harvest because the customer service is outrageously awesome.

Come to CJ Harvest because our prices are competitive.

Come to CJ Harvest because the produce is fresh and the meat is fresh.

We wanna bend over backwards to earn your business.

I don't expect any customer to come there, but we are going to work twice as hard and you will come.

- You mentioned price and you know, we talked about margins and all that good stuff, but the most important thing is what people can afford.

Is it tough to be competitive with the big chains out there?

- Well, Walmart dominates the industry.

If you go to Arkansas, all the suppliers have satellite offices around Walmart.

There's no question about it.

They tell their suppliers what they're going to pay because they're the big dog.

And so it makes it very difficult for independent stores to compete when it comes to price point, which is why we don't want to carry as many items as a Kroger's.

Aldi's is more competitive and they're probably, they're the fastest growing chain in America, simply because they only carry 12 to 1400 items as well.

In addition, we will have private labels as well as local suppliers.

And what that does is it gives us a better competitive advantage in addition to the food court where you have higher margins, it'll help increase our whole, our total overall net profit.

So we have a competitive strategy that we feel will allow us to pass on that savings to our customers.

- The new supermarket's gonna be called CJ Harvest.

Where does that name come from?

- Well, I just recently got married and- - Congratulations.

- I always say Julia, I tell her she saved my life and the C is for Chuck and the J is for Julia.

And we wanted to stand out a little bit unique and we think the name is gonna ring one day and hopefully it'll ring in different areas.

CJ Harvest.

- Very good.

And you talked about potentially, you know, if this is successful, maybe branching out a little bit, do those communities, say around the East Bluff, do they have that same need as the folks on the South Side in terms of being in a food desert?

Are they as bad off or not as bad off, you think?

- They're bad off.

There was a dollar, Family Dollar, they just lost the Family Dollar.

And so they are restricted right now to a convenience store and I guarantee you they're paying triple the price for milk and bread and different essential items that they need.

No produce.

And so that area is really suffering, not having a supermarket in the vicinity.

And I think they have to travel just as far as the South Side.

So that is something we're looking at in the future.

We want to do a great job with this store, obviously on Western, and we're under the microscope in the state of Illinois because we are number one, we'll be the first store to open under this grocery initiative.

So we want to do a superb job, but we are looking to the future to go in those areas and help that community as well.

- Well Pastor, we're excited for you.

I hope everything works out great for you because the community needs it.

Again, that's on Southwestern Avenue, it's the former Aldi, is that right?

- Yes, yes.

- Okay.

So hopefully next year you'll be open for business.

- Yes, me too.

I will call you for the ribbon cutting.

- Oh my gosh, I want some of that food.

It sounds delicious.

- I got you.

- Best of luck.

Thanks for your time.

- Thank you too now.

- All right, and that is our time for right now.

Thanks for joining us.

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