Downtown Eau Claire, Inc. (DECI) has awarded Just Local Food Cooperative with a $2,000 Downtown Enhancement Grant to assist in their planned addition of an outdoor walk-in freezer for their store at 1117 S. Farwell Street.
With limited space, and a growing clientele, Just Local Food has been facing the challenge of finding enough space for their back-stock storage. The addition of the freezer will help the cooperative sell more meat, seafood, and frozen grocery items and allow expansion to new vendors.
“The COVID-19 pandemic brought many challenges to the food industry as a whole, but local food has remained reliable and resilient throughout, our farmers and producers made many emergency deliveries in the first months as we ran out of products,” said Becca Schoenborn, from Just Local’s Marketing Team. “Adding a walk-in freezer for our back-stock frozen foods will allow us to order more from our current vendors and add even more local vendors to our mix. Having funds to put toward this project means that we can continue working toward expanding our store and becoming the local food hub of Downtown Eau Claire, and we are grateful for that.”
