Food For All Euclid Beach is a grassroots initiative that is building power around fresh, quality food at the epicenter of our neighborhood’s food desert, Lakeshore Boulevard and E. 159th Street.

• Grow: Sow some extra plants if you have room. Let us buy from you and sell your produce to our neighbors. Here's our shopping list.
• Sell: Home bakers and cooks, come on down. There is no cost to set up.
• Shop: Vendors accept apps, credit cards, SNAP/EBT and cash—small bills are welcome.
• Demo: Try some new ways to use seasonal produce and share with market patrons.

There are as many ways to help as there are ways to prep potatoes, so share your ideas and contact info to get involved or just stay up to date, here.

You can also contact market manager Liz Stiles at 216-307-1822.

Project Background

Food For All grew out of numerous community conversations and has consistently responded to the ongoing food justice crisis in the Euclid Beach area. The crisis began in April, 2022 with the closing of the full-service grocery store in the center of Cleveland’s oldest per-capita census tract, and deepened last year with the closure of the nearby dollar stores.

FFA volunteers come from the affected community and have been innovative in their approach to meet the need for high quality fresh food. Listening sessions were held in summer 2022 in partnership with Food Access Raises Everyone, and each year for the last three years (2023-2025), volunteers have run an evening market offering fresh produce once a week for 18 weeks along with a weekly farm box subscription program.

They’ve been joined by local vendors selling eggs, preserves, desserts, fruit juices and culinary staples. The effort grew in 2025 by accepting SNAP/EBT and Produce Perks, and was commended for outstanding record keeping by OSU extension.

While city leaders meet with developers to revision the lakeshore district as a whole, residents are working together to do what they can where they are, with what they have. And you're invited, too.

Thanks to Mayor Juston Bibb and his office of capital projects, the 2026 market will be back on the grass north of the Euclid Beach Arch, just as seen here in 2024.

It's not about us, but it can be up to us.

The empty midcentury store at Euclid Beach is not about us. It's a symptom of the same systemic pressures that have closed community food shops from Kalamazoo to Zambia. The grocery/packaged foods industry has seen declining profit margins for decades, and the pandemic only increased pressure. Research shows that retail chains have pulled out of low income areas around the world, and built bigger stores with more profitable product lines in higher income areas, often alongside several competitors, while leaving empty buildings and poor food access in their wake. That's business; they have shareholders to answer to.

Meanwhile, food system advocates are exploring models that put people ahead of profit and seelocal growers and producers as the vanguard. What would it look like if we took profit out of the food retail equation, and focused on meeting our nutrition needs together?

That part. That's up to us.