At Austin Harvest market, six high schoolers who attend By The Hand Club For Kids manage inventory, fulfill orders and provide customer service to sell fresh, affordable produce and flowers after school.
“The community, they know we’re here as a store, but they don’t understand that it’s an entrepreneurship program for teens first,” said Rodney Williams, director of entrepreneurship and economic development at By The Hand. He oversees Austin Harvest and works with the students who run it every day. “We were never trying to make a profit off of what we were doing. It’s always been building community through fresh foods.” All revenue from Austin Harvest is reinvested into market operations and student stipends.
Two years after opening a permanent Austin Harvest location at 423 N. Laramie Ave. in Aug. 2024, this year By The Hand is expanding its entrepreneurship program to junior high schoolers.
In October, By The Hand — where students are only qualified for afterschool programs if they’re failing classes in school — will start a seven-week class, one for middle schoolers and one for high schoolers. The entrepreneurship classes will teach students about LLCs versus sole proprietorships, marketing, inventory management, sales and customer service. In the final week of class, students will visit and help manage operations for Austin Harvest.
“We understand that every kid that comes through the entrepreneurship program is not going to want to start a grocery store. But we want to take whatever it is that they’re interested in and at least give them the bare bones of how to get from point A to point B to at least start a business,” Williams said.
Case in point, two college students who helped open Austin Harvest work for the market before high schoolers come in. By The Hand hired a third college student this month.
“I’ve always known, from a young age, that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. However, I don’t think I understood it as much as I do now,” said Neveah Hester, a freshman at the University of Illinois Chicago who works at Austin Harvest. She grew up in Austin, has been a part of By The Hand since second grade and helped launch Austin Harvest in high school. She also has dreams of one day being a fashion designer or stylist. “It’s 100% more than building your own business and making your own money. It’s knowing who you are, why you’re doing the things that you’re doing. It’s growing those relationships, it’s knowing how to work with multiple people.”
“It’s helped me train myself to be disciplined and also have a vision for myself and create the right plan so I can be more successful,” said Keith Tankson, a sophomore studying communications at Wilbur Wright College, of his experience at Austin Harvest. He’s also attended By The Hand programs after school since second grade and helped launch Austin Harvest as a sophomore at Steinmetz College Prep in Belmont Cragin. “It’s also given me a string and web of connections that I can always rely on, no matter what.”
Hester said one of the biggest things she’s taken from Austin Harvest is a sense of leadership.
“Taking on this kind of a mentorship or a big sister role with the students has definitely taught me a lot,” Hester said. “It taught me a lot of thorough communication, a lot of patience, and a lot of flexibility.”
Though not all participants are a part of the entrepreneurship program, between By The Hand’s site on Laramie and a second in North Austin, the nonprofit serves about 120 high schoolers and 100 middle school students.
“We know how it feels to come up and have people pouring into you and want to continue to pass down the torch,” Tankson said. “Since it is an entrepreneurship program at its core, we’re always trying to find new ways to give a new repertoire of skills to our students.”
By The Hand’s entrepreneurship program also helps kids set up bank accounts and teach about money management.
“I think almost every student, this was their first job that has come through here,” Williams said. “This also opens them up to different internships. …It’s not just about the produce. It’s about relationships and them being able to rub elbows with other people that share similar interests.”
In addition to putting young people on the track to entrepreneurship, Austin Harvest is also selling more produce than ever.
“Month by month, our transactions and the amount of traffic we’re getting has increased. We are doing 30% better this year than we were last year,” Williams said.
Williams attributes the market’s increasing sales to its permanent location and “because we are constantly looking for new ways to be here for the community.”
Austin Harvest tracks holidays like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, and stocks specifically for them. During prom season, they’ve started offering boutonnieres.
“We’re doing centerpieces for special events, and we’re making our own swag now,” Williams said. Since last year, Austin Harvest has sold T-shirts, bags and mugs at the front of the market.
Hester said that watching Austin Harvest grow has brought her a humbling sense of accomplishment.
“It’s a weird mix of humility, but also a huge thing of pride because me and my friends built this,” Hester said.
History of Austin Harvest
Students at By the Hand’s afterschool program thought up the idea for the Austin Harvest Market in 2020 as a way to lift up their neighbors during the pandemic.
“The reason I wanted to be a part of Austin Harvest was mainly to give hope back to our community,” Tankson said, “give a light where it was looking pretty dark for a time … pretty much trapped indoors with Covid going on and all the mental hurdles that we had to overcome with virtual learning or health problems in our families.”
Some of those health problems were exacerbated by Covid.
“The majority of our African American people are losing the battle against Covid because of underlying health issues,” Williams said, quoting one of the students who helped start Austin Harvest. “If they could eat better, they would have a better chance of surviving.”
But that was difficult without many grocery stores in the area.
“It’s considered food apartheid,” Hester said of Austin. “Just like my friends, just like everybody in our community, I also wanted to see how we could change that. We came up with this small idea of what needs to be changed: our fresh produce intake.”
So, By The Hand students worked with professionals who helped guide them to open a youth-led, pop-up market.
The market started under a tent at the same permanent location Austin Harvest currently inhabits and was only meant to last three months. But the community asked for it to remain open, so students started brainstorming how they could bring the market back after winter.
“I think the 12-week pop-up was, as far as the community was concerned, like a breath of fresh air. You’re already in an under-resourced community,” Williams said. “During that time, flowers were our number-one seller, so you can just really tell that the community needed that.”
By The Hand continued hosting pop-up and outdoor markets when the weather allowed.
“When we were open, we would gain trust and loyalty, and people would look forward to coming,” Williams said. “But every time you close, people have to readjust their habits and where they go, so it seemed like we were always having to rebuild or start over from scratch. And unfortunately, in communities like this, when you disappear, they sometimes don’t have an expectation that you’ll be back.”
To help fund Austin Harvest and its permanent home, in 2021, Athletes for Justice and former Chicago Bear player Sam Acho helped host a radiothon with Danny Parkins. It raised over $650,000, and organizers secured another $350,000 through city grants.
In Aug. 2024, Austin Harvest opened its year-round location at 423 N. Laramie Ave., where a liquor store used to sit.
“When we did a tour around the community, we counted 24 liquor stores or something like that, and there were only two or three grocery stores,” Williams said.
But Austin Harvest is changing that.
Austin Harvest is stocked every Monday, when Jewel-Osco delivers produce that the market buys at-cost.
“We’re just trying to do our part,” Williams said. “And we’re doing it, not just by fighting food injustice, but through the amount of kids that we’re keeping off the street, or empowering and teaching how to take advantage of what resources are in front of them, and start their own businesses, and think along the lines of entrepreneurship or beyond some of the things they’ve seen or not seen.”
Austin Harvest is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 12 to 6 p.m. During the fall and holiday season, the market is open some Saturdays. For more information, visit https://austinharvest.org/