Whenever we initially tell people about With Love Community Market and Cafe, their reaction is usually positive; it seems like most people recognize the need for more development in the inner-city and find value in business as missions. The longer we talk however, the question inevitably emerges,

“So, have you found a place yet?” or “Where is the market located?”

This question is totally natural. For those who have just heard about this project, and who haven’t spent the last year thinking and working on it day after day, With Love is still just a vague idea. They need to tether down that idea to something concrete, like a physical location.

When this happens, we have to be honest with them and say that while there are properties that we are strongly considering, owners with whom we have entered into talks with, we do not have a location yet. We have to share that if we were to lease a location immediately, way before we are ready to open, we will have to pay a great deal of money in rent without the prospect of making any money in the near future. Timing in this aspect of a new brick and mortar business is critical, as you don’t want to start out a business in any more debt than you have to. When we give this answer, it’s not what most people want to hear. Real estate is one of the many things we wish were easier in the whole process.

Specifically, in this part of the process, our search has been guided by three major criterion. The future space for With Love Community Market and Cafe must have:

– Appropriate size and layout for food retail

– Adequate parking for customers

– Active/helpful/responsive management

Unfortunately, in our neighborhood, the properties we find typically only fulfill one of these criterion: a property is the right size but doesn’t have any good parking. A property has parking, but is only a fraction of the size we wanted. A property that we find has promise, but the owner is either impossible to reach or content to let it remain a vacant eyesore. This can be incredibly frustrating.

Under these circumstances, it’s tempting just to settle for the least worst option and reimagine the vision of the business to fit the practical realities on the ground. However, we feel a strong conviction to preserve the original vision, and that means saying no to many options. We want to create a new thing: we want to bring healthy foods into a food desert. It’s like pouring water onto dry ground, the ground has no way of holding it. That does not mean the water is unwelcome, it just means you have to work harder to contain it so that you can create a river to benefit the entire area and not just create a pile of mud. We want to put in the work to help transform our neighborhood.

And so, that means saying no to many options that are merely “acceptable”. It also means doing a lot more pick-and-shovel work: instead of looking up listed properties online, we have had to hit the streets ourselves, going block by block to find the properties with “for lease” or “for sale” signs that may not appear on the internet. It means figuring out if the run-down looking store on the corner is actually vacant, and then figuring out ways to find out who the owner is. It means digging through property records and submitting public inquiry forms and handing out business cards in person. In short, it means a lot of work.

But we do it all with a conviction that, despite seemingly insurmountable problems, God is still present/involved. We may not see it yet, but there is a way forward in this part of the process. There is a place for water in the desert, and we simply have to, in faith, press on.