When the time comes for Jennifer Parks to restock her refrigerator, it’s not just food she thinks about. It’s distance.
Parks, a longtime North Omaha resident, knows that grocery stores are few and far between in the area, and says recent changes have made it more difficult for people like her to buy quality produce.
In the past year and a half, three well-known grocery stores have closed in North Omaha, exacerbating the community’s ongoing struggle with healthy, affordable food options.
Many parts of North Omaha are considered a food desert, generally defined as a low-income area with limited access to fresh food.
The closures have left residents like Parks with even fewer places to rely on.
She now leaves North Omaha to shop, driving west to a grocery store on Saddle Creek Road and to another grocery store in Benson. To offset grocery funds that she now spends on gas, she often visits food pantries to get by.
Parks was happy to hear that a nonprofit grocery store is set to open in North Omaha. She said that when it eventually opens, her drive for fresh food will be significantly shortened.
“We’re gonna wait for it when it comes,” Parks said. “… We need more market fresh-type things with fruit available for our community.”
The new grocery store, set to open near 25th and Lake streets in early 2028, will be owned and operated by the Heart Ministry Center, a nonprofit that provides services to people in poverty.
An ongoing community survey meant to determine the Heart Ministry Center’s next steps inspired the project, said Damany Rahn, CEO of the nonprofit.
Of more than 700 responses collected over five years, the No. 1 request: A new grocery store.
The nonprofit’s CEO thinks the project will help with food access – and may serve as a catalyst for more investment in North Omaha.
“For us, it’s a really, really important project to get into,” Rahn said. “It’s not about money, it is about investing in people, and people feeling like they have a say in what you’re doing … we’re going to do this with Omaha.”
The term “food desert” is familiar to many residents of North Omaha who for decades have struggled with easy access to fresh food.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture tracks food access in communities around the nation by measuring both income status and food store accessibility.
In the USDA’s latest Large Retailer Access Map that uses data from 2019, the department designated much of North Omaha as low-income and low access. Many areas, including the neighborhood where the new nonprofit grocery store is being built, are more than a half-mile from the nearest supermarket.
That distance matters far more in areas where residents don’t have a car. According to the 2019 USDA map, more than 15% of households near the upcoming grocery store had no vehicle access.
Things got worse in 2025, when a Hy-Vee Dollar Fresh Market, a Family Fare and Chubb Foods – a longtime local grocery store – all closed down. Anne Gordon, the general manager of Chubb Foods, said the store hopes to reopen this fall after a remodeling project.
Carolyn Solomon, a 79-year-old North Omaha resident, shopped at both Chubb Foods and Family Fare, which were rather nearby and affordable, she said. Now she often travels up to 15 minutes from home to find a grocery store that she likes.
Solomon owns a car, but she worries for the people in the area that don’t. The lack of fresh, affordable food has been a “hardship” for the community, she said. The Heart Ministry Center grocery store project will, she thinks, help turn things around.
“We haven’t had a grocery store in that area of Northside in years,” Solomon said. “So, this is something new … I’m anxious to go see what it’s all about.”
Rahn, CEO of the Heart Ministry Center, said the North Omaha project goes beyond that of an ordinary grocery store.
In their planning, center officials consulted both local and national partners while also involving the community through surveys, focus groups and two community vision meetings.
Amenities at the 25,000-square-foot store, which will be built in what’s now a vacant lot, will include a butcher shop with culturally specific products, a community meeting space, staffed checkout and an outdoor plaza. Plans are for the store to employ up to 40 people, some from the Heart Ministry Center’s Fresh Start job training program.
The nearest full-service grocery stores, including an Aldi, a Family Fare and a Walmart, all are more than a mile and a half away from the project. Phil’s Cash Saver, a neighborhood grocery store, is about 1.8 miles away.
Map by Hanscom Park Studio
Based on feedback from area residents, Rahn said some of the center’s key priorities for the store are affordability and instilling a sense of community. There will be no alcohol, tobacco or gambling offered at the store.
“It might feel like a small town in a big city,” Rahn said. “… I hope that people walk in that store (and) they see someone they know.”
North Omaha has struggled with food access for around 50 years, said Adam Fletcher Sasse, historian and editor of the blog North Omaha History.
He blames the scarcity of grocery stores in North Omaha on white flight, a term that describes the mass relocation of white residents from urban, mixed-race neighborhoods to predominantly white neighborhoods in suburban areas.
Much of this flight happened in the late 1960s, after the Fair Housing Act was passed and during a period of frequent civil rights demonstrations, Fletcher Sasse said.
And when they left, he said, many businesses and investors followed suit, taking the money – and grocery stores – with them.
Ansley Fellers, executive director of the Nebraska Grocery Industry Association, said grocery stores don’t typically look at income when they consider where they should open a store. Instead, she said, they look at where houses are being built.
Grocery stores function on the “tightest margin of any industry,” Fellers said, with net profits ranging from 1% to 3%.
Factors such as insurance costs, labor costs and transportation all play into stores’ ability to stay open. But competition, she said, is one of the largest factors, especially in areas like North Omaha, where many discount stores sell packaged foods and other goods.
Fellers said that if someone buys food from a grocery store and then goes to a discount store for paper towels or deodorant, it cuts into the grocery store’s already thin margins.
Operating a grocery store is “not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure,” Fellers said. “… It’s a calculation in food deserts like it’s a calculation anywhere else. You have to be able to make it make sense (financially).”
Yolanda Oliver has lived in Omaha for 15 years, mostly in North Omaha. After a brief stay in west Omaha, however, she noticed that there were more and better grocery stores that weren’t available to her in North Omaha.
When Oliver needs a handful of items from the grocery store, she typically stops at the Baker’s on North 30th Street, a 44,000-square-foot location in the Florence neighborhood that’s about a five-minute drive from her house. But for any major grocery shopping, Oliver said, she drives many miles west.
“You wanna continue to spend your money down in the community where you live,” Oliver said. “… It makes it a lot harder when you don’t have a lot of stores that can contribute to the amount of people in the area.”
The Baker’s on North 30th Street is undergoing a $1 million renovation set for completion this fall, a Kroger spokesperson said, including new signage, new equipment and new flooring.
The limited access to grocery stores in North Omaha has caused Oliver to spend more money at convenience stores, which she said are much more expensive.
“I love Omaha,” Oliver said. “But we just need a little bit more love down here in the area, kind of lift us up.”
Rahn, CEO of Heart Ministry Center, hopes the grocery store becomes a “longtime staple” in the North Omaha community.
The store’s earnings will be poured back into Heart Ministry Center’s mission, similar to the center’s other social enterprises including a laundromat and a floral shop.
Although Rahn didn’t provide the total cost of the project or specific financial contributions, he said the investment in the grocery store will be “substantial.”
“It’s not so much about the amount of money we’re going to spend on the grocery store,” Rahn said, “but the investment in the people who will be in that grocery store.”
The groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for the morning of Sept. 19. Construction is expected to take 18 months.
The project was approved by the Omaha City Council last month. While speakers at the meeting mainly advocated for the grocery store, some concerns included a possible increase in crime, traffic, noise pollution and parking difficulties.
City Council member LaVonya Goodwin, whose district includes the site of the future Heart Ministry Center store, argues that “when you light up a place” with more activity, it often brings less crime, not more.
She said the project will be a “key turning point” to revitalizing the community.
“We’re going back to the time when this community was thriving,” Goodwin said. “And when it was thriving, there were grocery stores.”
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