At 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, Laverne Carter sprung from bed and darted for West Pratt Street, fueled by fantasies of a kitchen brimming with ripe tomatoes.

She’s one of thousands in the seven neighborhoods that make up South Baltimore’s Sowebo community to be left without a grocery store in walking distance following the 2022 shuttering of Price Rite in Mount Clare Junction. The city’s classified most of the region as a food desert: 1 in 3 households do not own a car and their median income is significantly below the federal poverty line, stifling access to fresh groceries.

For over a year and a half, Carter leaned on packaged goods at corner stores and staggered access to grocers located over a mile away for food.

But Wednesday would be different.

The 65-year-old joined a crowd of people waiting outside the former Price Rite building to shop at a new grocery store within walking distance of her Pigtown home. The opening of Jumbo Fresh, a small, independent grocer, was over a year in the making, including nine months of construction to build out a butcher’s station, seafood counter, bakery shop and aisles of spices from West Africa to Eastern Europe — offering a premium selection of services to a community that’s grown used to seeing their requests for basic needs denied.

Over the years, experts seeing fewer full-service grocers in majority Black neighborhoods compared predominantly non-Black areas have tied the disparity to a broader pattern of disinvestment and devaluation across the country, according to Manann Donoghoe, a senior associate with the Brookings Institute.

A new grocery store is a signal that there’s value in a neighborhood, at least enough to make business profitable, Donoghoe said.

Jumbo Fresh went above and beyond what you would expect from a grocer in this area, according to Jai Kim, a real estate agent who worked alongside grocery owner Roberto Collado to bring the store to Baltimore.

“This is not a glorified Family Dollar,” Kim said.

Collado sorted through 400 job applications from area residents and hired between 40 to 50 by Wednesday’s opening, Kim said. The owner surveyed neighbors, knocking on doors to ask what foods they wanted to see in their local grocery. He added a bar for chili peppers and tamarind for the growing number of people from Asia and South and Central America moving to the area.

The goal is to have the whole neighborhood feeling represented, according to Biff Browning, a Union Square resident who is also working as a business consultant for the Jumbo Fresh team. That’s where Price Rite went wrong — the store wasn’t attempting to understand the community needs, he said, so not enough people were shopping. A spokeswoman for the grocery chain previously told the Baltimore Business Journal that efforts to “build sales to a sustainable level” were not viable. At the time, the store was the largest retailer within the Mount Clare shopping center.

Grocery stores are operating under very slim margins, Browning said.

Four grocers turned down the opportunity to take over the space before Jumbo Fresh, according to Councilwoman Phylicia Porter, who said she had to travel 25 miles outside the city to find the vacant building’s latest tenant.

At a site visit in Bladensburg, Porter grew enamored with the grocer’s services, from a butchery to a pharmacy, and drafted plans to help subsidize their entry into the Baltimore market. She described the new store at 1205 W. Pratt St. as a “test case” to reimagine how the city brings in grocers.

To attract a store, Porter helped raise a $1.5 million incentive. The money is a mix of local and state grants, including $200,000 from the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership. The Mount Clare Junction shopping center also pitched in financially to help Jumbo Fresh build the venue, Browning said.

Still, some are skeptical. Brian Zubek, executive director of Sowebo Community Church down the street from the grocer, is wary of how long the store will last. “We fight for so much in this neighborhood,” he said. “Every time we ask for help on something it doesn’t happen.”

A partnership set up with CareFirst’s Food is Medicine program is providing guidance to Jumbo Fresh in an effort to keep the store “holistically aligned” with the community and its health challenges, according to Destiny-Simone Ramjohn, vice president of community health and social impact at CareFirst.

Such health challenges arose in Sowebo as neighbors watched the number of local grocers dwindle, said Angelo Chatman, who now lives down the street from Jumbo Fresh. He does not have the money for a car, so he and his wife have leaned on corner stores to sustain themselves since Price Rite’s shuttering.

“I just can’t get the kind of food that I need,” he said, since the items available to him range from popcorn and potato chips to prepackaged candies. His body has changed as a result: In the last year and a half, he’s developed hypertension — a consequence of buying “all this junk,” he said.

Like Carter, Chatman arrived at Jumbo Fresh before the sunrise to grab his first meal. Then he waited. As morning faded to afternoon, the store remained closed to customers despite plans to open at 8 a.m. Carter sounded optimistic. She tries not to think about the lost grocers — the Edmondson Village Giant shuttered in May, and the Hollins Market closed last year.

Shortly after noon, staff began inviting the sea of neighbors into the store. Carter wandered inside, awestruck by the sanctuary of food tucked into at least a dozen pristine white aisles. A red, white and green-striped Chevy sat parked in the entryway, with pallets of broccoli, onions and tomatoes in the trunk.

An employee spoke to the crowd: “You can look but you cannot buy anything. … We are not ready for you yet.”

Owner Collado explained that more documents needed to be filed with the health inspector before any transactions could take place. They would open for business later that afternoon and for normal hours, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., starting Thursday.

The parade of people trickled out of the store holding water bottles after a morning spent in the heat. Chatman rested against the storefront, patiently waiting for his cue to reenter. But Carter and a group of others decided to leave. They marched through the parking lot and into the Family Dollar store across the street — tired of waiting for fresh tomatoes.