A Black-owned urban farm cooperative has brought a grocery store back to a Birmingham, Alabama, neighborhood that has gone without one for nearly 70 years. Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative opened We All Eat Market Nov. 7 inside Heart of the Farm, its new market and community kitchen in the historic Fountain Heights neighborhood.
The cooperative has grown from a single garden into 16 farm plots, and much of what the market sells is grown just down the street. Its We All Eat community supported agriculture program was the first in Alabama to accept EBT and participate in the Double Up Food Bucks program, which gives SNAP participants the ability to buy twice as many fresh fruits and vegetables with the same dollars.
“For almost 70 years, families in Fountain Heights have had to leave their own neighborhood just to buy groceries, and every dollar they spent left with them,” said M. Dominique Villanueva, co-founder of Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative. “The We All Eat Market changes that. Our communities don’t have to wait for someone else to decide what we eat or where we can buy it. We can grow it, sell it and own it, and this market is proof of that.”
Serves 3K+ residents
Heart of the Farm was designed to serve more than 3,000 residents in an area with limited access to fresh, affordable food, at a time when rising grocery prices and SNAP interruptions have made food access less certain.
In 2025, the Birmingham City Council unanimously approved a $150,000 agreement with the cooperative to support the project. The cooperative is hiring neighbors to run the store, and the facility’s community kitchen offers local food entrepreneurs affordable commercial kitchen space.
“Access to fresh, healthy food shouldn’t depend on your ZIP code,” said Birmingham Mayor Randall L. Woodfin. “We All Eat Market is more than a new grocery store; it’s an investment in Fountain Heights residents, neighborhood revitalization and the kind of community we want to build.”
Founded in 2016 by Villanueva and Christopher Gooden, Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative also operates the We All Eat Delivery program and the Freedom Harvest Apprenticeship.
