YOUR STORE
OF THE QUEEN CITY
Neighbor-led. Trustworthy. Sustainable.
Your Store of the Queen City's mission empowers neighborhood-based entities to expand fresh food access and create community-based jobs by supporting the development and networking of resident-centered, culturally and economically inclusive enterprises in food desert areas of Cincinnati, OH.​​​
Meiser's Fresh Grocery & Deli
Meiser's is a community-led nonprofit grocery initiative spearheaded and operated by residents with deep roots in the Cincinnati, Ohio neighborhood of Lower Price Hill.
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Meiser's is a public grocery enterprise that ended the food desert status of the community. Here you can purchase affordable groceries, use food benefits like SNAP, WIC and nutrition incentives like Produce Perks. You can also access free foods and community programs.
Meiser's offers handmade grab & go deli options, as well a opportunities for business ordering of group meals.
Your choice to shop in Lower Price Hill is a choice to join our food community with the belief that every family deserves access to nutritional and economic opportunity. ​Both of our main initiatives are open to the public. In fact, we rely on building our base of shoppers like you--folks who share our values of fresh, local and ethical retail.
Your Store of the Queen City utilizes neighbor-based design and leadership to develop these grassroots initiatives.  Our model includes a hyper-local focus on growing Lower Price Hill's own small businesses and job opportunities. This includes a commitment to supporting resident, woman, and minority entrepreneurship and leadership FIRST.
Your Store of the Queen City Services
How can we help you restore the food access that your community deserves?
RESIDENT-CENTERED CO-CREATION
Supporting food apartheid neighborhood leaders with resident-centered, community asset-based ideation, organizing and co-design for food access systems change including projects such as enterprises and nonprofit programs.
Related partnerships: LPH Community Council, Community Matters, Santa Maria, LPH Neighborhood Action Team.
SUSTAINABLE INCUBATION & CAPACITY BUILDING
Co-creating capacity building strategy and incubation opportunities for pilot projects that grow from resident-centered plans. Key partners for past projects. Related
Partnerships: Price Hill Will, LPH Neighborhood Alliance of Businesses, City of Cincinnati DCED and CNBDU, Homebase, Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Feeding America Food Security Equity Impact Fund partnerships, Produce Perks of the Midwest.
PILOTING & EVALUATIONS
Helping implement pilot projects that use data-based quality improvement methodology and impact reporting as an output sharing about how communities are moving the needle on food equity.
PARTNERS: Cincinnati Children's Hospital All Children Thrive ImpactU.
COLLABORATION ACROSS NEIGHBORHOODS
Cross community networking and operational resource sharing to reduce costs, build opportunities for community based food justice groups, and cross-pollinate learnings.
PARTNERS: CEAI New Bond Hill Market (Bond Hill), Queen Mother's Market (Walnut Hills), Black Power Initiative (Avondale, Beekman Corridor).
WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
Resident-centered professional and workforce development for youth and adults, including food industry positions, food systems advocate and nonprofit professional advancement.
PARTNERS: Meiser's Fresh Grocery & Deli, Mayerson Academy, CCTST Community Leaders Institute, Xavier University.
EQUITY CONSULTING
Qualified community and equity consultant recruitment, meeting facilitation and communication across diverse groups (including food systems experts, health researchers, and civic entities) regarding equitable food systems planning.
PARTNERS: Cincinnati Children's Hospital All Children Thrive Systems to Achieve Food Equity, Green Umbrella Greater Cincinnati Regional Food Policy Council with the USDA, Hamilton County and Talbert House.
LEARNING & SPREAD
Food equity presentations, meeting facilitation, panelist presentations and networking to spread learnings based on work and collaborations forming together through groups that are co-learning together as we explore possibilities to improve equity in the food landscape of Cincinnati, Ohio.
PRESENTATIONS: 2022 Ohio Community Development Corporation Association, 2023 Ohio Food Policy Council Summit, 2024 Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit, 2024 City of Cincinnati Health Committee, 2023 Cincinnati Neighborhood Summit, 2023 Institute for Healthcare Improvement Annual Forum.
HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?
Our first initiatives are grocery related collaborations that began with the 2017 leadership, surveying, and advocacy from Lower Price Hill residents and leaders like the LPH Neighborhood Action Team, LPH Community Council, LPH Neighborhood Alliance of Businesses, ECDI Women's Business Center, LPH Arts Collective, Price Hill Will, Community Matters, Oyler School and Community Learning Center Institute, Santa Maria Cincy (and more).
“It's so exciting to be in this space and time with such cool and amazing innovators. Our planning with Your Store goes above and beyond what we had imagined when we began organizing to bring fresh food back to the neighborhood.”
Quote in loving memory of Cynthia Winston-Ford
Lower Price Hill neighbor, Community Council President, Neighborhood Action Team activist, The Collective artist, entrepreneur and grandma to many.
IN THE MEDIA
"Lower Price Hill is a food desert neighborhood with the lowest life expectancy in Cincinnati. Residents have partnered with Your Store of the Queen City to change that."
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Congratulations on winning a Fast Pitch 2020 Merit Award and an SVP Partner Pick Award!
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-Social Venture Partners Cincinnati
Together, The Collective and Your Store founded the LPH Collective Good[s] Artists + Makers Market to bring people together during a world pandemic.
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""People just don't care what happens in Lower Price Hill." ..But the beauty is clear to neighbors... "I'm selling my art today. Ain't no way, they aren't going to keep me away from my programs."
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Kachelle Davis, neighbor and co-founder of the Lower Price Hill Artists Collective
"A neighborhood is preparing to welcome a new store.
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There will be discounts for neighbors, but the store will be open to the public."
""I've been baking since I was 18 years old. "Now you have to pay $2.25 to get on the bus, go to Krogers, so now you made a 2 hour trip just for some seasoning or to get a canned good. Right now we're in process of getting our own market open."
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Marisha Davis is a local food entrepreneur and member of the Lower Price Hill Neighborhood Action Team supported by Community Matters."
"Employees with Your Store of the Queen City and many area groups are working to reverse that trend and empower families in their fight against COVID-19.
They’re adding soap, paper towels and many other items that will help people keep their homes clean and safe to meal donations that they receive."
""Lower Price Hill resident Melissa Baker said she tried having groceries delivered instead, but the store was constantly substituting more expensive items when the brands she requested weren’t available.
“They’d always try to increase your grocery bill,” Baker said.
So community organizations found ways to help their own. "
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- Melissa Baker, neighbor and founding board member.
"A new nonprofit grocery store will open soon down the street.
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“A neighborhood is like an ecosystem,” Smith said. “You need places for people to live, you also need places for people to work and play,"
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"We have the committed partners in the right places,” Hall said. “Some are farther along than others in having the dollars needed to get hammers swinging, but hopefully in the next two to three years, you’ll really see a transformation in the neighborhood"
"“I just love that we have a store [coming] here and being that it’s not for profit, that they’re not here to try to take,” she said.
“But just make sure that we have accessibility and healthy food.”"
- Tameca Ballard, neighbor & entrepreneur
" The kind of work and advocacy we see from [Your Store of the Queen City] is precisely the kind of community engagement that characterizes what the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition envisions as we promote a decent quality of life for Appalachian citizens of Greater Cincinnati. These commitments extend to all the communities that now define Lower Price Hill and Greater Cincinnati."
- UACC Voice
""The truth is, I worked for my dad from the time I was 12 years old...My dad taught me every neighbor deserves to be treated with respect."
Meiser's Parkview Market on State Avenue in Lower Price Hill is now closed. [Cincy Stories] had this conversation with Carl Meiser, the owner and manager of Meiser's Parkview Market just a few short months before he made that decision."
CONTACT YOUR STORE OF THE QUEEN CITY
U.S. Mail: 734 State Ave. Cincinnati, OH 45204
(513) 399-7648
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