Milwaukee restaurateur joins nonprofits and Marquette University to fight the city’s pervasive food insecurity

One Milwaukee-area restaurateur is joining several nonprofits and Marquette University in an effort to fight pervasive food insecurity.

Michael Feker — chef/owner of restaurants Il Mito Trattoria e Enoteca in Wauwatosa and Zesti in Hartland — wants to give back to the community by establishing an enterprise that addresses both the food insecurity and service training needs of city residents.

Feker announced in March his plans to redevelop a historically significant commercial and residential property at 3064-74 N. 27th St. The building — currently owned by the city of Milwaukee and home to multiple street-level storefronts and second and third-floor apartments — had long been shuttered due to fire damage and general neglect.

Feker’s initiative, known as the 3 Story Project, will redevelop the 13,000-square-foot structure into a multi-use enterprise that will include a community-supported restaurant, grocery store and indoor urban agricultural facility.

It also will create space for community meetings and for training residents from the Park West and Amani neighborhoods — south and east of the facility — who want to work in restaurants.

The enterprise, still in its formative stages, will operate as part of Feker’s Culinary and Hospitality Education Foundation or CHEF, a nonprofit he founded several years ago to educate and employ youth and veterans in the food service industry.

The initial budget of the 3 Story Project is around $500,000, Feker says.

The property is located in one of Milwaukee’s “food deserts,” areas in which fresh and nutritious food is hard to come by for residents with limited transportation options. Feker hopes his project will help turn the tide on the neighborhoods’ nutritional needs.

“This is my personal mission and dream,” says Feker, who was born in Iran, trained at the California Culinary Academy, and worked in numerous upscale California restaurants before arriving in Milwaukee in 1997. “I have reached a time in my life when leaving a positive mark on my community is a priority.”

Availability and affordability of nutritious food are key barriers for many central-city residents — and one without the other can result in limited options or even an empty plate.

Nutritional education also is critical in pursuing the health benefits that result from better eating for area residents. Feker says he will add that to his service mix.

“My life has been enhanced by my passion for food, and now I want to bring it to others who have so many life challenges,” he says.

‘Food deserts’

Noble as Feker’s mission may be, the 3 Story Project faces a daunting task in addressing what social service agencies know to be the thorny economic, social and geo-political issues involved in the “food desert” phenomenon.

The phrase “food desert” was first used in the United Kingdom to describe areas that lacked easy access to healthy food.

Despite the phrase being evocative and seemingly clear, the concept’s definition is not universally agreed upon, according to Renee Walker, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health.

And that’s part of the problem.

“Some define a ‘food desert’ as a geographic area without access to healthy and nutritious food, while others add in the affordability factor,” says Walker. “The lack of a clear definition too often results in a lack of buy-in, which affects organizations’ abilities to address the issue.”

Walker defines healthy food as being “available” if an adult with average mobility can walk from home to a well-stocked store and return carrying bags of groceries — a distance of one-half mile or less. Increase the distance of homes from affordable and healthy food and a food desert begins to form.

Food deserts are fueled by more than distance, however.

Many food providers are dissuaded by poverty and crime. Milwaukee’s food deserts are mostly found in the city’s neighborhoods of color, where buying power is significantly less than in other areas.

“When you take a racial and ethnic map of Milwaukee and overlay that on an income map, it’s easy to see that the city is highly segregated,” Walker says. “Store owners mention the challenges of moving into these areas, which include customer purchasing power, crime and overall safety for local and family-owned businesses.”

Most of Milwaukee County’s food deserts are found in central-city ZIP code areas, with high numbers of residents living below the federal poverty line, according to research by the Hunger Task Force — a public policy organization that works to improve food access for low-income people. Neighborhoods hardest hit by poverty include ZIP codes 53204, 53205, 53206, 53208 and 53233.

Put another way, more than 212,000 Milwaukee County residents live in food deserts, according to task force statistics. This includes more than 70,000 children under the age of 18 and 20,000 seniors age 65 or older.

Desert into oasis?

Quality, affordability and access are all criteria that can help turn food deserts into oases of availability. According to Sherrie Tussler — executive director of the Hunger Task Force — the best and perhaps only permanent solution to food deserts are large grocery stores with ample selection and low prices. An enterprise like Feker’s proposed 3 Story Project may or may not have a significant impact on the community it seeks to serve, she says.

“The food at small neighborhood stores often isn’t affordable and the selection is limited,” Tussler says. “Success will depend on where (Feker) gets his food and how much he charges.”

The same holds true of any restaurant he might establish as part of the new project, Tussler says. In addition to being nutritious, the meals must be affordable and familiar to residents.

“Michael Feker makes some fussy cool stuff, but it’s not food that the neighborhood would eat,” she says. “I think he has some challenges ahead of him.”

“I live at 34th and St. Paul and would do anything to help establish a large grocery store in the area,” Tussler adds.

There are, however, other options that can reduce food insecurity by increasing access to affordable options.

For instance, the Hunger Task Force currently partners with grocery giant Pick ‘n Save to support the Pick ‘n Save Fresh Picks mobile market that travels to specific sites within recognized food deserts with fresh produce, dairy and meats at standard Pick ‘n Save prices.

“If you offer low income people healthy foods they will buy them, but they won’t spend piles of money on unaffordable cuts of meat,” Tussler says.

The market goes out twice a day and makes 35 specific stops every month, sitting at each one for 90 minutes. Inventory usually comprises up to 40 different fresh fruits and vegetables and three cold cases of dairy products and affordable cuts of meat.

The mobile market, which operates out of a former NASCAR race-car trailer and is pulled by a pickup truck, has been making its rounds since October 2015. Fresh Picks makes between $400 and $1,400 in sales at each stop.

Empowering home gardening

Efforts also are being made to provide even fresher foods, particularly of the grow-your-own variety. The demand for home gardening knowledge and capabilities is growing rapidly, according to Gretchen Mead, executive director of the Victory Garden Initiative.

“This will be our ninth season and we anticipate helping establish some 500 raised-bed home gardens,” says Mead, who started the enterprise in 2009 with a group of friends concerned about the global depletion of resources and other health-related environmental issues. “In our first year, we sold just 40 gardening kits.”

Now in the midst of its May gardening “blitz,” VGI provides the lumber, hardware, top soil and expertise to help nascent gardeners establish a successful home garden. The raised beds help contain the high-grade topsoil, which is infinitely better for vegetable growth than any of the urban or even suburban dirt home gardeners might hoe, she says.

Gardens for sale during this year’s blitz, which ends May 27, include the materials to create a 4’ x 8’ raised garden bed and volunteers to deliver and assemble the garden and get it ready for planting. The cost per garden is $175, but subsidies are available based on income status.

“We offer gardens for as low as $25, but we want the buyers invested in the process and usually require half-and-half involvement,” Mead says. “How successful your garden is depends on how much time and effort you put into it.”

VGI has been working with a lot of immigrant populations, many of whom suffer from lack of employment skills but are very good at raising their own food. Right now, the group is helping four Syrian families on Milwaukee’s south side establish gardens.

“Milwaukee has a lot of economic disparity, and home gardens are one remedy to the food availability issue,” Mead says. “People also do this because it just feels good, and I even find it to be a spiritual thing.”

Marquette and businesses partner to address neighborhood food issues

Both Mead and Tussler note that groups in both the public and private sectors are putting significant effort into addressing food insecurity. One of the most interesting may be the “town-and-gown” effort between Marquette University and the Near West Side Partners, a consortium of large west-side businesses interested in revitalizing the neighborhood in which they’re located.

The partnership this spring created the Grocery Challenge after failed attempts to interest grocery store chains both large and small in establishing outlets in the Marquette neighborhood.

A group of Marquette students, faculty and staff — along with area residents — were tasked to design alternatives to the standard grocery store that would address the neighborhood’s food and nutrition needs. Submissions thus far have been forward thinking in their approaches, according to Kelsey Otero, Marquette’s associate director for social innovation and one of the principals driving the project.

“We’ve been trying to bring a major grocery store to this community for 15 years and not getting anywhere,” Otero says. “Our population runs the gamut from highly paid professionals to a homeless shelter, and we decided we needed multiple solutions.”

A team of two educators and one community member evaluated 18 different pitches from 339 participants. Final decisions are due by the end of May about what plans will be piloted starting in the fall, Otero says.

Contenders range from a nonprofit pay-what-you-can grocery store to a campus food pantry to ProductsU, an online purchasing system with products that can be picked up or delivered for a small fee. One group suggested a regular farmers market on the Marquette campus, another a student-run grocery store offered as an elective course through which student-workers can earn credits.

The ones deemed most likely to succeed will receive initial funding from Marquette with increases allotted to models that prove more successful.

Marquette University is located in the 53233 ZIP code —one of city’s poorest — so the challenges facing the new initiatives could be significant. But Otero and others hope whatever plans succeed will have application is other areas of the city, as well as other communities within the state and even the nation.

“Food insecurity isn’t just a Milwaukee thing,” she adds.