At a Nov. 20 board meeting, Invest Atlanta laid out a four-part plan to bring all Atlantans within 0.5 miles of fresh and affordable food by 2030 — including a second Azalea Fresh Market location set to open that year.
The city’s economic agency has worked on the food access plan since 2022. First, it had to assess the current grocery landscape. Mapping it out showed a lack of grocers on the south and west sides of the city.
Mayor Andre Dickens set the goal of bringing Atlantans within a half mile of fresh groceries, but Invest Atlanta President and CEO Eloisa Klementich knew it would be a challenge.
“We recognize that not one solution is going to move the needle,” Klementich said. “We need everyone and every type of effort to be successful, and every community has a different approach and need.”
Invest Atlanta’s four-pillar food access strategy aims to address all those approaches. The key plans are to advance policy systems, support innovative food access models, retain and improve existing stores and attract more major supermarkets to the city.
So far, the economic development agency’s work has brought about $54 million in food access investments through a combination of grants, loans and private capital to help existing grocers and incentives for major supermarkets.
The center of Invest Atlanta’s food access efforts is the recently opened Azalea Fresh Market downtown. It is Atlanta’s first municipal grocery store and the first grocery store in downtown Atlanta since 2005.
The two-story shop offers a variety of fresh food options. Invest Atlanta and the city funded construction, while local grocer Savi Provisions owns and operates the space.
Klementich said Azalea Fresh Market is the most popular story Invest Atlanta has ever released, and it even drew attention from New York City, where Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani campaigned on city-owned grocery stores to keep prices down.
“The reason they are calling is because we are impacting the lives of people,” Klementich said.
She went on to announce the second location of Azalea Market, which will open along Campbellton Road in early 2026. Klementich said Invest Atlanta also plans to “continue to expand” the store locations.
The CEO said Invest Atlanta eventually hopes to consolidate distribution centers to lower transportation costs and keep store prices down. As the agency and city move into the so-called next phase of food access, officials say they want to keep the process transparent.
Invest Atlanta launched the Food Access Dashboard to monitor the city’s progress on it’s four pillar strategy. A group of Georgia Institute of Technology helped to build the front-facing website.
“This will be a public-facing dashboard the people around this community and then really around the nation will be able to look at to see our progress,” Mayor Andre Dickens said. “To be able to know where our successes are but also where our challenges are.”
The mayor continued, “We set a goal, we set a pathway toward that goal.”
So far, Dickens said Invest Atlanta has funded new grocery equipment, helped attract new chains, expanded tax and construction incentives and worked with the Independent Grocers Alliance to “get really deep in this problem.”
“We went from ‘uh oh, there’s a problem’ that’s been around before many of us were in leadership, to being able to try to correct that problem,” Dickens said.
This the dumbest story ever. It’s a game to get free food money from the government. Ain’t NO one gonna support this as reality.
I encourage you to go look at the prices at Azalea. I would not call it affordable
Funded by the citizens o in Atlanta and the State of Georgia via your tax $.