ATLANTA’S WESTSIDE COMMUNITY MARKET PREPARES TO LAUNCH A NEW KIND OF COMMUNITY MARKET

ATLANTA (July 20th , 2018) ​- ​Residents are in for a treat, Atlanta’s Westside Community Market, LLC is open for business and giving “farm-to-fork eating” a new meaning. Atlanta’s Westside Community Market is disrupting the regional food system by providing farmers and food producers direct services in it’s 65,000-square-foot one-stop shop market for fresh food and food production. The Market provides cold storage, warehousing, packing, and distribution.

Atlanta’s Westside Community Market was designed with community and local food systems in mind, giving consumers and southeast food business access to locally-grown foods. Latron Price, President of Atlanta’s Westside Community Market, conceptualized the market to establish the needed infrastructure that revitalizes in-town food systems, drives quality foods from local farmers production and sold straight from the farm to retailers & consumers.

“​We cultivate close relationships with our farmers who owns their products through the distribution system, and provide them with sustainable practices that ultimately result in the direct distribution of fresh, high-quality food to institutions, retailers, restaurants, and schools,” said Latron Price, president of Atlanta’s Westside Community Market, LLC. The purpose of the development is to help alleviate food deserts and reinforce small farm viability while creating opportunities for larger companies to implement the Harvard Business Review “Shares Value” by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer in local communities.

As farmers continue to register to join the market, providing consumers with a more extensive variety of locally grown foods, Atlanta’s Westside Community Market, LLC is hard at work expanding its catalog. Atlanta’s Westside Community Market is looking to build community partnerships that promote knowledge and access to local food where it is needed most.​ ​“Our dedication to service-first allows us to handle storage and distribution at optimum levels for temperature requirements and operational excellence, ensuring timely delivery of products,” said Price.

In efforts to stimulate local agricultural growth Atlanta’s Westside Community Market, LLC partners with Georgia Department of Agriculture’s commissioner Gary Black’s Georgia Grown program initiatives providing additional services to Georgia Grown farmers, regional farmers, food producers and agricultural businesses. These services also include aggregation, fulfillment, storage, co-packing, repacking, and logistics services.

“I believe the Atlanta’s Westside Community Market is a positive initiative to grow everyday Georgians’ knowledge of locally grown foods and to connect them directly with Georgia farmers. Georgia’s leading industry is agriculture, which contributes nearly $75 billion annually to Georgia’s economy and employs one in seven Georgians’ in agriculture, forestry or related fields,” said Georgia Congressman David Scott, a Senior Member of the House Agriculture Committee. “This project is setting an example for our community and young entrepreneurs by opening doors to agribusiness and agritourism – all while emphasizing the importance of buying locally grown products.”

Atlanta’s Westside community market is advantageously located just off of Howell Mill Road. Truck drivers have quick access to I-285 (a significant transport highway that diverts around the city of Atlanta) as well as Interstates 20 and 75. The Market is less than 4 miles from CSX railway, and less than 250 miles from the Port of Savannah, one of the fastest growing seaports in the United States as well as the largest single container terminal in the United States. The Port of Savannah additionally manages nearly 40% of the US containerized poultry exports.

Atlanta’s Westside Community Market, LLC has established a much-needed infrastructure in Atlanta by providing cold storage for regional farmers as well as food processing and distribution to communities in the southeast and revitalizing in-town local production. With 2600 frozen and 1000 cooler pallet storage spaces, two blast freezers, Atlanta’s Westside Community Market offers a smarter, healthier alternative to traditional agribusiness models by reinvigorating small farms as the food source for the community.

The market is a USDA, and Georgia Department of Agriculture registered industrial-scale production/fulfillment space ensures the delicate balance between farmers and local & federal agencies. As Atlanta’s Westside Community Market continues to expand, it plans to open shared workspace suites, a wellness center, and shared kitchen space for startup food businesses.