By: Jordan Anderson | Pittsburgh Post Gazette | May 27, 2024 | Read the full article

Abdullah Salem doesn’t see Salem’s Market as just another grocery store. It’s a place to build community.

That’s been his family’s mission with their farm-to-table markets over the past 40 years, and that felt especially true when opening their newest location in the Hill District.

“We’ve been very blessed with the opportunity to join a community that’s working very hard to revitalize itself and become one of the premier areas in Pittsburgh,” Mr. Salem said. “We’re excited to add value to all the hard work that’s already happening.”

The arrival of Salem’s Market marked the end of a five-year long grocery store drought in the Hill District, following the closure of Shop ‘n Save on Centre Avenue in 2019.

Neighborhood Allies is working to ensure the new store is here to stay. The Pittsburgh-based community development organization has announced that Salem’s Market will receive $250,000 through its Neighborhood Capital Fund.

The fund aims to provide flexible capital to projects like Salem’s Market, ensuring that minority-led real estate developments in underinvested communities receive the support they need, said Presley Gillespie, the president and chief executive officer of Neighborhood Allies.

“There are too many under-resourced neighborhoods,” Mr. Gillespie said. “This is how we can help our communities quite frankly, live longer, healthier lives. A big part of that is you’ve got to have access to certain types of quality of life amenities, and a grocery store is really at the top of the list.”

Salem’s Market was created after Mr. Salem’s father, Mussaud Salem, saw the gap in access to fresh, healthy foods for international students in the Oakland area in the early 1980s. A University of Pittsburgh student at the time, he set out to meet the need in his own way and created a grocery store, just as “a side project.”

Four decades later, the business has grown to two locations in Oakland and in the Strip — the city’s largest and longest-running halal food operation.

Salem’s Market beat out three other finalists in 2021 for the right to operate the Hill District store, which encompasses more than 2.5 acres of property and a 30,000-square-foot building. The project garnered substantial community support, getting the green light from a public vote.

The real challenge, Mr. Salem said, was securing enough financial backing, considering the last few operators of the building, including the Shop ‘n Save, were not successful.

“That put us in a sort of risk category, so it was hard to get enough funding,” Mr. Salem said.

The injection of capital from Neighborhood Allies enables Salem’s Market to not only maintain a solid financial footing in its early years, but also to expand its services, particularly in the opening of a prepared foods section. The store has provided 60 jobs for local Hill District residents, and another 20 to 30 more will be added when the kitchen fully opens.

Kenny Strother, head chef and manager at Salem’s Market, lives just about three minutes away from the grocer. He was eager to join Mr. Salem’s team, not just because he has roots in the neighborhood. Mr. Strother said he tried just about every menu item at the Penn Avenue location, coming back for the food and “genuine” customer service. Nothing has changed with the new location.

“[Mr. Salem] has a beautiful heart,” he said. “In 53 years, I haven’t seen a grocery store that is so open to the community since day one. He has hired individuals that are from the community, because that helps us as well.”

Mr. Salem has focused on building relationships from the beginning, whether it’s reaching out to local churches or seniors. More recently, the store invited people to taste test sample menus for the prepared food section.

“Abdullah is really open to people coming in and being, ‘What do you think about this?’” Mr. Strother said.

On its face, Salem’s Market may look like any other grocery store. But here, the focus is on locally sourced food, from the fresh meat packaged in house to the cakes made by the local bakery Darnella Darling Delights.

Mr. Salem also wanted to offer a selection of culturally relevant foods that people may struggle to find elsewhere. Customers can pick up ready-to-eat goods like freshly baked Turkish bread or the building blocks of other well-loved international dishes, like Tandoori seasoning or Hungarian paprika.

“It doesn’t matter whether you moved here from New York, or came from Jamaica or Kenya,” Mr. Salem said. “You want to find a place that feels welcoming and feels like it’s your family store. We’ve continued that in the Hill District.”

But Mr. Salem wants to make sure that access is affordable, too, pointing to the bright yellow tags attached to baby food, cereal and other grocery staples. Those are temporary price reductions.

“We have more than 2,500 of these throughout the store,” Mr. Salem said. “We’ve basically taken every price reduction to ensure that we’re providing the best price possible.”

In the future, Mr. Salem looks forward to “growing with” the community. He says the store can feed a lot of people, even more than the 10,000 residents who call the Hill District home. He invites the larger Pittsburgh community to try it for themselves.

“Every community deserves to be able to buy affordable groceries,” Mr. Salem said. “Shopping here is more than just shopping in a grocery store. This is making sure that the community has a resource for years to come.”