As residents of food deserts struggle to access healthy food, small farms in North Carolina are also facing their own challenges, including quickly shrinking acreage across the state. 

Wyatt, the group’s CEO, said that the Trust had long envisioned a distribution center like this one. They wanted to place it in an area where it would have high impact — a food-insecure neighborhood like the area around South Hoskins Road. 

In 2021, a contact told him the old-egg processing facility was available. It seemed like a perfect match. The team began bringing the center to life. Wyatt began to connect with local residents and eventually found Peake.

The new facility is expected to be built out in phases. The first part — the commercial kitchen — is slated to open in spring 2024. 

Phase two will feature the retail concept, teaching kitchen, butchery component and event space. Fundraising efforts are underway for that project right now. That’s on top of already sizable public funding: more than $10 million combined from the City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

For their part, Charlotte-area officials hope the Trust’s project will help address issues of food accessibility in Hoskins.

At a groundbreaking event for the project in August, Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio said officials had tried to pitch grocery businesses on the neighborhood but had been unsuccessful. From a profit perspective, some businesses felt it just didn’t make sense to invest here.

“The companies didn’t come, and they didn’t build,” Diorio said — but now the Trust’s project would bring fresh food and new employment opportunities to the community. The new facility, she said, “marks an important step in what buying local looks like in Mecklenburg County.”

After all phases are built, the project will have roughly 100 new hires. Some of those will be filled with the help of local nonprofits like Freedom Fighting Missionaries, which aims to help formerly incarcerated individuals. But the priority, Wyatt said, “will be to hire from the community within walking distance.”

The facility will aim to help meet the needs of every lifestyle — from those seeking to purchase raw ingredients to those in need of pre-made meals and everything in between.

For those without cooking experience, the teaching kitchen will provide a space for community members to learn new recipes and prep ingredients on-site. The goal is to meet residents where they’re at. “It has to be as easy and convenient as going down the street to a fast food restaurant,” Wyatt said.

Both Peake and Wyatt say building up regional food systems like this can help close the widening divide between consumers and the source of their food. 

Evidence increasingly shows that modern agricultural practices have reduced the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables. The pair says keeping food local will help better connect residents with fresher food, which contains more nutrients. “We need to create these regional food systems for all of us,” Wyatt said — adding that food access is a growing issue even outside of poorer neighborhoods. “In the years to come, your zip code is not going to be able to protect you.”

For Peake, the project will also provide benefits that are near and dear to his heart. By providing new amenities, jobs, and food options, he says the facility could inspire hope for the West Charlotte and Hoskins neighborhoods where he grew up. 

As he spoke with Courthouse News in the parking lot of Mr. Quick last week, Peake waved at passersby and called out to drivers on South Hoskins Road, who honked when they recognized him. Then he motioned to the skeleton of the egg- processing plant. Fenced off behind the store and long abandoned, this is where the Farm Trust’s new facility will be. 

To Peake’s mind, it will be much more than a place to buy groceries. “We want to treat this as a gathering place,” Peake said. With the teaching kitchen and event space, he hopes it can become a hub for a community in need of more resources.

It could be a while before Hoskins once again returns to Happy Days — but for a neighborhood that’s long struggled with a lack of healthy food options, it’s a start. “This is bigger than all of us,” Peake said. “It’s not one organization, it’s not one person. This is something that’s truly bigger than all of us.”