The Common Market

The Common Market is a nonprofit regional wholesale food distributor that connects communities to good food grown by sustainable family farmers, improving food security, farm viability, and community and ecological health across the country. The Common Market has delivered over $185 million of food through their four chapters in the Mid-Atlantic states, Atlanta, Houston, and Chicago.

The Problem
America does not have equal access to healthy food. Fresh, wholesome, and high-quality food can and should be affordable to all communities. The high prevalence of chronic, diet-related illnesses, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, represents a public health crisis in rural and urban communities. Poor health outcomes related to unhealthy food consumption do not reflect food preferences but are tied to poor accessibility to healthy foods. Over the last several decades, healthy food has become less available, especially in low-income communities. One reason for this is the dramatic change in American agriculture: it has become industrialized, centralized, and focused on unhealthy commodity crops used for processed foods. Furthermore, the social and physical infrastructure that connects small- and mid-sized family farms that produce healthy foods and rapidly growing urban communities have broken down. If the rates of diet-related illnesses are to decline, we must increase the accessibility and consumption of healthy foods like fruits and vegetables.

The Solution
With a mission to connect all communities with food from sustainable family farms, The Common Market scales regional food systems, connecting farmers to fair and transparent markets while democratizing the accessibility of good food for all people. Through 16 years of operations and $224 million of direct community economic investment, The Common Market has modeled the potential of vibrant, values-driven, regional food systems through their role as a nonprofit aggregator and distributor. The Common Market provides transportation services for small, sustainable farms via a fleet of refrigerated trucks and then aggregates the products in their warehouses. The primary beneficiaries of their work are low-income urban communities where food access scarcity and poor health are most prevalent due to historical and ongoing structural racism in the U.S. The organization seeks to establish sustainable, mutually-beneficial relationships that improve health and wealth for children and families.

The Common Market has extended from their original geography in the Philadelphia region to serve New York City, New Jersey, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In 2016, they established a new chapter in Atlanta that serves other cities in Georgia along with the Birmingham, AL metro area. In 2018, they established a chapter in Houston, TX, that has extended to the Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas metro areas along with the Rio Grande Valley. In the summer of 2023, they launched the Great Lakes chapter in Chicago and soon after acquired the assets of another regional distributor. The Common Market team is adept at building relationships between producers and customers in new cities. These relationships build and stabilize sustainable, values-driven local food systems, helping The Common Market achieve their mission of connecting all communities with healthy food.