The Urban Food Project

REV Birmingham’s Urban Food Project is an initiative striving to create an equitable, regionally prosperous local food system that is a catalyst for economic development.  After identifying food deserts, or areas negatively impacted by inadequate healthy food access, REV Birmingham is collaborating with the City of Birmingham, the Jefferson County Department of Health, United Way of Central Alabama, the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham and other partners to address community needs while building profitable business enterprises.

REV Birmingham’s Urban Food Project seeks to increase access, availability, and affordability of healthy foods throughout the city through full service grocery stores, farmers markets, small store initiatives, and mobile markets.

The Birmingham Market Alliance

The Birmingham Market Alliance will be a central hub for resources and collective communication for public market operators, farmers, retailers, restaurants and other vendors.  Additionally, this Alliance will support the creation new markets to meet community needs.  These market models range from a peddler system where “teams” take food to established locations, to small roadside stands to large “Main Street”  markets that are regular community events with several vendors present as well as health education programs.

Urban Food Project Priorities Include:

Public Market Development: creating a system of public markets to provide a short and long-term solution that demonstrates viability of healthy food retail while providing a platform for community-wide nutrition education. This solution, which is unique to each community, supports local businesses and creates new entrepreneurial opportunities in the process.

Increased Production: Supporting producers to build capacity to meet increased market demand through technical assistance.

Purchasing: Encouraging local distributors, retailers, restaurants and consumers to purchase regionally produced food.

Processing and Distribution: Establishing Birmingham as a food hub for processing and distributing regionally produced food while identifying business opportunities for entrepreneurs and creating jobs.

Corner Store Initiative: Supporting existing businesses to create healthy food access points while generating additional revenue streams for stores, producers and distributors and creating new job opportunities.

Grocer Incentives: Working with grocers and other food retailers to address the food access issue in food desert communities

Copies of our food related reports and studies are available for free download:

Examining The Impact of Food Deserts & Food Imbalance On Public Health In Birmingham, Alabama
Examining The Impact of Food Deserts & Food Imbalance On Public Health In Birmingham, Alabama (Executive Briefing)
Birmingham Public Market Study
Birmingham Public Market Study (Executive Summary and Conclusion)

Food as a Catalyst for Change (Birmingham Alabama Case Study)

For more information on REV Birmingham’s Urban Food Project, contact Samuel Crawford at 205.595.0562 or by email.