1st & Nourish Market, a new 4,000-square-foot neighborhood grocery store, is tentatively scheduled to open in Old Town Portland in December. The market will fill most of the ground floor of the Nourish Building at 34 NW 1st Ave., and it will be led by Jacobsen Valentine, executive director of the nonprofit Feed the Mass.
The inventory will be simple: fresh produce, dairy, dry goods and frozen meals made in Feed the Mass’s own kitchen. A bulk dry-goods section, similar to WinCo’s, will let shoppers buy only as much rice or flour as they need, and Valentine plans to keep produce under $2 per pound. The store plans to hand out recipe cards to help shoppers use their ingredients, and the idea is to make it a place for a few days’ worth of groceries, not a stock-up trip. Unsold food that is about to spoil will go to the kitchen upstairs to be made into meals.
A Pay It Forward program will fund a free meal each week or $25 worth of groceries for people who can’t pay. Another report says the market will accept EBT and plans to be open Wednesday through Saturday at first, but those details haven’t been confirmed.
The store aims to be Old Town’s only traditional grocery store. Beyond a few convenience marts, the neighborhood lacks a dedicated grocer, and residents often have to travel to Northwest Portland for chains such as Fred Meyer, Safeway or Trader Joe’s, which can be too far a walk for some vulnerable residents.
Feed the Mass, founded in 2016, started with cooking classes and shifted to free meal pickups during COVID-19. It moved to its Northwest Davis Street headquarters in 2021 and now distributes more than 5,000 meals each week, with an annual budget of about $2.5 million and 23 employees. In January, it bought the historic four-story Blagen Block, a former Airbnb regional office, helped by a $150,000 grant from Oregon’s Health-Related Social Needs program, which covered about half the down payment. The price was not disclosed, at the seller’s request.
The renovated building is already in use. It has coworking space on the second floor, an education hub on the third floor with cooking classes, a photography studio and flex spaces for tasks like podcasting, and Feed the Mass’s offices on the top floor. Valentine has described the market as part of a plan to bring people back downtown, and the goal is to make fresh food, education and a welcoming place part of the neighborhood’s everyday life.
The market plans were reported by The Oregonian/OregonLive.
