Marion Barry Avenue Market and Cafe started with a vision. Chris Bradshaw was looking across the street at a closed restaurant in 2012, when he thought: “That could be a grocery store one day.” He didn’t turn that restaurant into a grocery store, but the dream never left him.
Bradshaw is the founder and executive director of Dreaming Out Loud, a food justice nonprofit he began in 2008 to increase food equity east of the Anacostia River. The organization serves as a food access hub for local farmers, an incubator for food entrepreneurs, and a source of fresh and cooked food for the community through their farms and farmer’s markets.
On September 27, Dreaming Out Loud opened the Marion Barry Avenue Market and Cafe (1303 Marion Barry Ave., SE), a welcome addition to Ward 8, which, until now, had only one full-service grocery store to service its population of about 86,000 residents. A 2024 report by DC Hunger Solutions shows that, in comparison, Ward 2 has 13 full-service grocery stores for over 82,000 people. According to DC Policy Center, Ward 8 contains the majority of DC’s food deserts due to historical factors, including racism and discrimination, a situation compounded by poverty and lack of transportation.
Rather than simply lobbying for another corporate grocery store, Bradshaw, who is a Howard alum, wanted DC residents to feel empowered to bring their own solutions to the table to address food insecurity. He estimates up to 60 percent of his staff hail from DC.
“We can be the producers on the food production side, from the farmer, from the other elements that you might find in [a grocery store]. We can be the distributors. We can have a more sovereign and more independent food system and food environment that serves us in our community,” he said.
This belief would help Dreaming Out Loud defy the odds.
“Food for nutrition, and the community that comes together, is so good for the soul.”
When I stopped by the store to chat with Bradshaw a few days before the store’s grand opening, a painter was still hand-lettering a purple sign on the building. Beneath the market’s name, black lettering reads “By Dreaming Out Loud.”
But Bradshaw makes it clear that the market, like all of his organization’s initiatives, is a project for and by the broader community.
Dreaming Out Loud has gone through “many, many attempts, many unseen failures” on the road to establishing a market, Bradshaw said. They began with running the garden space at Culture House DC (the painted church in Southwest formerly known as Blind Whino) to learn how a scaled-up farm space might look. Using the land behind Kelly Miller Middle School in Northeast, they established the Farm at Kelly Miller in 2015.
Dreaming Out Loud cut the ribbon on a second farm behind Fort Stanton Recreation Center last year in conjunction with youth garden nonprofit City Blossoms. Their programs work to get the community more involved in local food systems.
Support from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan and other government and nonprofit partnerships helped turn Marion Barry Avenue Market and Cafe from a dream into a reality. One grant came from DC’s Food Access Fund, a program that aims to “increase equitable access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food by securing grocery stores, and restaurants,” especially in underserved wards. In 2024, Dreaming Out Loud began renovating a former auto body shop that is now the shop’s home.
Besides housing the market and cafe, the 4,770-square-foot building and outdoor patio will provide a gathering space for events; a training kitchen for Dreaming Out Loud’s food entrepreneurship program; an industrial kitchen and cold storage available for farmers and food businesses to book; and a hub to facilitate Dreaming Out Loud’s own community-supported agriculture, farmer’s market, food access, and youth-centered agricultural programs.
Satchel Kaplan-Allen, the chief of staff at chef José Andrés’s Longer Tables Fund, a granting partner for the project, points to sustainable efforts like Dreaming Out Loud’s as a force for ending food apartheid and hunger. “The solutions that we need to have both access to healthy food, but also business in our communities, they’re going to come locally,” he told me.
To this end, Dreaming Out Loud sought public input on the market, teaming up with Nyame Kua Farm Collective in DC to produce an online community survey, asking potential visitors what kinds of products, events, and services would benefit them the most. Another Southeast business, Grounded, provided and installed greenery in the interior.
Capital Area Food Bank is also a partnering organization in support of the market. President and CEO Radha Muthiah says that the excitement over the market has been palpable because “the access that comes from food and community, that comes from gathering in places like these, it’s just as important. Food for nutrition, and the community that comes together, is so good for the soul.”
“Wow, they are doing big things in here.”
On market opening day, around noon, a crowd of more than 50 people milled about under a set of large white tents erected to shield against the forecasted rain. DJ Pae Me spun tunes off to the side, scratching deftly from Gil Scott-Heron’s “Winter in America” to Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love.” Jaren Hill Lockridge, who is both the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Dreaming Out Loud and the chair of the Ward 8 Health Council, welcomed newcomers and twirled in a red-black-and-green Pan-African flag tied around her shoulders like a cape.
Bradshaw addressed the community over the speakers. “This market is more than just a fresh food access point. It’s a place for gathering and coming together, for building a brighter and better future, a healthier future, one that exemplifies what people said couldn’t be done,” he said. He and his funding partners hope that Marion Barry Avenue Market and Cafe will become a pilot for other organizations.
Instead of cutting a ribbon to commemorate the market opening, the staff of Dreaming Out Loud literally broke bread with the community, passing around chunks of breadsticks baked by one of their food entrepreneurs.
As the market doors opened, some visitors gasped as they entered.
“Wow, they are doing big things in here,” one neighbor said to herself. There was a sense of pride, not only because of the market’s location, but because of the local roots of the many hands that brought it to fruition.
Marion Barry Avenue Market and Cafe has high, white ceilings accented with dark gray walls and gray-and-white tiles resembling flowers. All around the room, photographs and paintings of DC Mayor Marion Barry, who was a staunch advocate for food security, sit propped up on wooden shelves.
The aisles are stocked with dry goods and supplies. Impressive stacks of seasonal produce catch the eye right away: pumpkins, butternut and acorn squashes, corn, potatoes, peppers, kale, Valencia oranges, and other fresh food. Much of the produce in the market, Bradshaw said, is locally grown at Dreaming Out Loud’s DC farmland, as well as at other farms as far south as North Carolina. A refrigerated case in the back offers fresh meats and grab-and-go food items prepared on site. The market also stocks its own housemade, branded granola, and jams, mambo sauce, and specialty teas made by local food entrepreneurs.
The other half of the open space is dedicated to the cafe, which runs out of a visible kitchen area that will also be used for cooking demonstrations. The cafe, led by Food Hub Culinary Director and chef Devonte Howard, serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with affordable soul food or farm-fresh options including a chicken and sweet potato waffle, and the Kelly Miller Farm Salad.
Access to locally sourced items is a selling point. “I have two children, they’re Washingtonians,” said one visitor, Danielle Bright, “and I wanted them to be proud of where they live.”
Tamika Hall, who came with her two daughters, lives five minutes away and sends her youngest child to a daycare around the corner from the market. “I’m excited because we finally have something that’s close by that we can shop. I normally go to Maryland or Virginia to shop, but since I have something more local, and it’s Black-owned, it makes a huge difference,” she said.
