By Kate Stockrahm
The North Flint Food Market, a long-anticipated co-op grocery store near the corner of Clio and Pierson roads, opened for business on November 12, 2025.
“We thank you right now, Lord, 11 years in the making – plus!” Pastor Ruth Moore exclaimed during her opening invocation.
A room full of co-op members and supporters in North Flint Food Market logo t-shirts – “We Own It!” proudly lettered across the backs – offered cheers of “amen” and “yes!” as Moore continued. “We want to thank you right now, Lord, for this grand occasion!”
The market’s opening yesterday, as noted by Pastor Moore, was over a decade in the making.
It began as an idea of Rev. Dr. Reginald Flynn of the North Flint Reinvestment Corporation, who spent years fundraising to bring the new grocery to Flint’s north side after multiple supermarkets left the area in the wake of the water crisis.
Flynn shed a few tears and embraced his parents, who traveled up from Dallas, Texas for the occasion, while Pastor Moore spoke.
When he took to the podium himself, Flynn thanked the many funders of the market’s development – which include the C.S. Mott Foundation, the Ruth Mott Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, the Michigan Strategic Fund, among many more – before acknowledging all it had taken to get to that day.
“For over a decade, we wandered in the wilderness hoping for what many communities take for granted: access to healthy food, job and career opportunities, and business ownership and control of one’s destiny,” Flynn said. “For over a decade wandering, over a decade wondering.”
The reverend continued, delivering a different type of sermon, not from his usual pulpit but a black podium framed by red, green and yellow balloons.
“For over a decade questioning, doubting, dreaming, believing, disbelieving, organizing, mobilizing, planning,” he said. “For over a decade struggling, appealing, crusading, fighting, quarreling, inspiring and vision-casting, and proclaiming what I call the ‘gospel of groceries.’”
The room responded with laughter and a palpable delight at Flynn’s analogy.
“In a land of famine,” he continued, “amidst of a forgotten people and a disinvested North Flint corridor. Today, today, I see —” to which someone shouted “We see!” before Flynn corrected himself: ” — we see victory in the valley.”
The North Flint Food Market (NFFM) operates under the principle of cooperative economics, Brigitte Brown Jackson, Board Chair of the new grocery, explained to East Village Magazine after the ribbon cutting.
“It’s a co-op, so that means people buy a membership into it,” she said, noting that membership is a one-time $250 fee for individuals, but there are also options for churches and businesses to become members as well.
Brown Jackson said that the fee will allow members “some things down the road,” which the group is still developing.
“It may be dividends, it may not,” she said. “We might take the monies that we made and put those back into the co-op. That’s the great thing about the co-op: the people will make that decision.”
It was an extra emotional day for the board chair, who acknowledged that some of the market’s now roughly 1,000 members were no longer living to see the opening of their investment – including her son, Jesse – given the years it took to get NFFM finished.
“He would be so excited about today,” the board chair said, smiling through tears. “He loved food.”
When asked why she believed NFFM would succeed where other chain grocers, like Kroger and Meijer, had failed in the past, Brown Jackson cited the store’s co-op model.
“Having a traditional model grocery store presents problems because you have your organization, you have a CEO, and then you have all of the trickle down [to customers],” she said. “For a co-op, it’s by the people. It will only fail if the people fail.”
She paused as one of the grocery’s first hundred or so customers stopped to drop off a cart, congratulating Brown Jackson and the team in the process.
“So if we let ourselves down, then it will [fail],” she said. “But I don’t think we’re gonna let ourselves down.”
The North Flint Food Market is open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. There is no requirement to be a member in order to shop at the co-op. Brown Jackson said the co-op’s first annual meeting will take place in December 2025, and a full “grand opening” event for the market is scheduled for January 17, 2026.
You must be logged in to post a comment.