UNSCRIPTED: Pontiac Street Market Ready to Serve the Needs of Our Community Daily

Unscripted By Keith Edmonds
FWIS Contributing Writer

Our city has amazing small businesses run by amazing people that contribute to this city in a myriad of ways. One of those businesses is the Pontiac Street Market located on Fort Wayne’s southeast side of town. Since its inception in 2023, this business has strived to... “Prioritize the health and well-being of its customers, by providing fresh, nutritious and affordable food options which in turn builds a stronger community.” I’ll have to admit. I’d never been to this market as a customer prior to this piece, which is why I was very curious to see the “inner workings” of the market. In today’s UNSCRIPTED, I sat down with General Manager Laqueisha Brown and listened as she shared many interesting nuggets about this anchor in our community and how the Pontiac Street Market came to be!

UNSCRIPTED: Thank you so much for being a part of this piece! Tell us how the Pontiac Market and its concepts came together?

MS. BROWN: “Thank you for having me! The city of Fort Wayne did a strategic analysis of the SE side of town in 2020 and what they found from those surveyed is that this community wanted a grocery store. Parkview Hospital came along to be a partner to make this dream happen, and this was spearheaded by former Mayor Tom Henry. Things slowly started falling into place, and on November 6th, 2023, the Pontiac St. Market opened. Not only was it something that the community wanted, but looking at the data that surrounded it we knew that with this particular part of the city being in a food desert and having lack of available resources in terms of a store meeting the essential needs of our SE community, and of having the highest infant mortality rate in the city we knew that this was something that we had to address immediately”.

UNSCRIPTED: So, was this a concept that was pushed by “larger” stores in our city and what was the “model” for this particular store?

MS BROWN: “We started looking at comparable cities the size of Fort Wayne and came across a store in the city of Toledo, Ohio (named Market on the Green) which was a “store in the community” concept that was similar to what we were doing here in Fort Wayne. What we saw was a store supported by community patrons similar to what we wanted to do, and it gave us a good indication of how it would function and support the needs of a population similar to ours here in Fort Wayne. When we got back from that trip we knew that what we definitely wanted in our store was for people to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables here in Fort Wayne though we had to start small in terms of our products being sold, those items had to be a staple in our store.”

UNSCRIPTED: “So, after the trip to Toledo, how did you decide what items would be sold in YOUR store?

MS. BROWN: “In our first year we started partnering with local vendors who had some experience in the area of store merchandizing, to make decisions on what needed to be featured in our store. What we came up with (also through our surveys) was that we could bring in “name brand” along with some lower priced store brands” initially. Now, please understand, name brand doesn’t always matter in all things, but they do in some things. What we found is that our customers wanted value items along with sales and discounted items and many of the things you’d see in the big “box stores.” So, after the first year (with all of the input that we received) we were able to revamp the items that we stocked on our shelves. Didier Meats and Dean’s Dairy are 2 of the partners that joined us, and that was huge in terms of product visibility! The thought being that “it’s not what WE want to sell, it’s what our customer WANT to buy that’s most important.”

UNSCRIPTED: So how has the community embraced your store, and what kind of feedback are you receiving from them?