Over 18 percent of St. Louis-area residents live in a food desert, according to the USDA. A new initiative hopes to change that.
Food City, an initiative by the family that founded Nature’s Bakery, will work to create a more inclusive, sustainable food ecosystem in the St. Louis area by supporting a diverse range of non-profits and stakeholders including farmers, youth and workers who want to build a career in food.
It’s part of the Serving Our Communities Foundation launched by the Marson family, the former owners of Nature’s Bakery who sold the snack brand sold to KIND in 2020. Since then, the Marsons have geared more toward improving the communities where their former brand operates, including St. Louis.
Food City will officially launch August 1 with a rallying cry of “food for all,” Jan Marson says. A grant competition will kick off the initiative with up to $150,000 available to packaged food brands owned by underrepresented founders. Awardees will participate in an accelerator program with mentorship and receive access to manufacturing facilities and equipment.
But first and foremost, the leaders behind Food City just want to listen to the St. Louis community to discover what the most dire food equity needs are, according to Darren Jackson, executive operations director of Serving Our Communities.
The initiative plans to survey St. Louis-area residents and underrepresented food entrepreneurs on what barriers they face in finding the food they need or what hampers their paths to success. What Food City does in the future will depend on the result of that survey.
“We really look at this as a regional opportunity for St. Louis where we can step in and start to serve and meet the needs of those working in the food industry — from education and farming and gardening, all the way up to entrepreneurship,” Jackson says.
Jackson came to know the Marsons through his work with Mission: St. Louis where he helped people transition out of prison. A huge piece of his work involved workforce development, and he heard positive reviews about working at Nature's Bakery's facility in Hazelwood. He eventually met Marson and her husband, Dave Marson, and they started working together.
"It's been really cool to find the right partners to bring not just beauty to the community but to serve alongside and develop leaders," Jackson says.
Jan Marson had to learn business the hard way. She was an occupational scientist before she and her family started Nature’s Bakery and knew much more about the inner workings of the human brain than how to manufacture packaged snacks.
It wasn’t smooth sailing in the beginning. Marson recalls that she didn’t know the “very basic concept” of what CPG, or consumer packaged goods, were at her first board meeting. “I had to look it up on my phone real quick,” she says. “I really came in not knowing what I didn’t know. I have the greatest respect now for food and how it’s made.”
But Marson “learned by doing,” she says. Nature’s Bakery sells baked fig bars and sold for a reported $400 million to KIND, a Mars company, while Marson was chairwoman and CEO.
People came into Marson’s life who put her in the right direction, she says. Food City aims to provide the same mentorship that Marson found in her own career.
St. Louis is ripe with potential, Marson, a Nevada native, says. It’s her adopted city that she fell in love with because of its “can-do-it” attitude and where she hopes to start a “food manufacturing revolution.”
“Who knows once we start having these conversations where that can go,” Marson says.
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