The produce section of Forty Acres Fresh Market, featuring bananas, tomatoes, apples, and more.

Alum’s Black-Owned Grocery Thrives in a Former Chicago Food Desert

Named for an infamous unmet promise of the post-Civil War era, Forty Acres Fresh Market carries a variety of produce and more

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By Melissa Newcomb

A decade ago, Elizabeth Abunaw ’02 was running an errand in an unfamiliar Chicago neighborhood when she needed cash and realized there was no bank nearby.

She searched for a grocery store or pharmacy to find an ATM—with no luck.

Making a closer scan of the streets, she noticed the number of run-down buildings and vacant storefronts in the area, the historic Austin neighborhood on the city’s Far West Side.

Elizabeth Abunaw smiles while wearing a Forty Acres Fresh Market shirt, a red blazer, and gold hood earrings.

“I’m looking at my surroundings and noticing that I’m in a predominantly Black community, and the amenities and services I was used to finding in other areas I’d lived in were missing,” Abunaw recalls.

“I had heard the ‘tale of two cities’ in Chicago, but this was the first time I actually saw it. The whole time I’ve lived here, I’d never thought twice about where I was going to get groceries, go to the bank, or find a pharmacy.”

In the months that followed, Abunaw couldn’t stop thinking about how someone should open a grocery store in the neighborhood—until that “someone” became her.

I’m looking at my surroundings and noticing that I’m in a predominantly Black community, and the amenities and services I was used to finding in other areas I’d lived in were missing.

In January 2018, she began running pop-up markets in Austin selling high-quality, low-cost produce she sourced from wholesalers; she even drove to Michigan to purchase shopping baskets from a liquidator.

“I brought in as many varieties of produce as I could,” recalls Abunaw, who majored in policy analysis and management in Human Ecology.

“I carried like seven different kinds of apple, because if people wanted to buy apples in the neighborhood their one choice was a Red Delicious—and Red Delicious apples are an abomination.”

Elizabeth Abunaw smiles and shakes hands with a man who is buying a pineapple from her at her first pop-up market.
Abunaw’s first sale at her inaugural pop-up …
Dozens of customers scan tables of produce at a pop-up market.
… which grew into a series of bustling produce markets.

She got some help in promoting the pop-ups from fellow alum Kelechukwu Mpamaugo ’20, who designed a logo and marketing materials.

Although Abunaw admits that those first pop-ups “were more of a moral victory than a financial victory,” they continued to grow year after year.

And in September 2025, Abunaw opened a permanent storefront, Forty Acres Fresh Market—which, she notes, is Chicago’s only Black-owned grocery store.

Abunaw couldn’t stop thinking about how someone should open a grocery store in the neighborhood—until that “someone” became her.

The business’s name references the unfulfilled post-Civil War promise that formerly enslaved African Americans would receive “40 acres and a mule” from the federal government to grow food and build a livelihood.

Forty Acres—which has been featured on “CBS News,” among other media outlets—offers produce, shelf-stable groceries, and a meat counter, as well as prepared meals and a hot food bar with options like rice bowls, chili, house-baked cookies, and soups.

It also home-delivers curated produce boxes, which comprise a variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and aromatics.

An aisle inside Forty Acres Fresh Market that has canned books, pastas, and rice stacked in the shelves.
The deli counter at Forty Acres Fresh Market.
The back of the store at Forty Acres Fresh Market, featuring a deli counter with people in line, frozen foods, and aisles of other foods.

Abunaw and her staff of 30 stock most products using a three-tier pricing system so shoppers can choose among premium, mid-range, and value options.

“A customer recently compared Forty Acres to Trader Joe’s in size, energy, and organization,” a story in the Chicago Tribune observes. “She joked it was the happiest day of her life.”

Abunaw worked in sales for General Mills for a decade after graduation before earning an MBA at the University of Chicago.

A customer recently compared Forty Acres to Trader Joe’s in size, energy, and organization.

The Chicago Tribune

She spent two years at Microsoft—and when her position was eliminated, it seemed the right moment to pursue the vision of an Austin grocery store that had been sparked by her first visit to the neighborhood.

With the success of Forty Acres, Abunaw has added two more lines to her résumé: public speaker and food justice advocate.

“I used to think about how cool it would be to expand—that bigger was the way I wanted to go,” she says. “But what matters the most to me is this one sustainable grocery store that we made from scratch.”

(All photos provided.)

Published April 9, 2026

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