Prosperity Market: Bringing the Farmers Market to You

Photos, Prosperity Market. Pictured are Kara Still and Carmen Dianne

What if your farmers market was mobile? What if it could roll into neighborhoods, unpack its tents and sell beautiful produce from Black-owned farms and products from Black food entrepreneurs? Prosperity Market has done just that. Already it’s had 19 popup and 21 virtual markets, supported more than 60 businesses, and fed 8000 people, and that’s just the beginning. Co-founders Kara Still and Carmen Dianne have big plans.

The two women used to work in completely different businesses—try fashion design and makeup for movies—before they came together around Black Lives Matter in 2020.

“Right after George Floyd was murdered,” Carmen says. “I wasn’t thinking about makeup anymore… everything shifted so drastically in that instant…all I could think of was ‘we need Black-owned grocery stores.’ I texted Kara so I wouldn’t forget, and then we ended up talking about it a lot on hikes and things like that—until it became a mobile farmers market.”

It was the numbers that really got to them. Prior to the pandemic, 2.2% of U.S. employer businesses were Black-owned, and 41% of them closed in the pandemic. That, and the fact that there are still a lot of food deserts in underserved areas of Los Angeles with little access to fresh food.

“From the first it was really important to us to support Black farmers and food entrepreneurs, “ Kara says. “Expanding their access and audience, and also to provide food access and go directly into communities that don’t have it.”

“It just really made sense (to found Prosperity Market) because we got to see how everything was exacerbated and more exposed (after and during the pandemic),” Carmen says. “Communities that didn’t have, had less…so it was really just down to what is the most essential thing we need? Food.”

Both in their 30s, both Carmen and Kara became the committed and passionate creators of Prosperity Market, a roving marketplace that stars Black-owned farms and Black food entrepreneurs. A brilliant circus of a production, it rolls up to places like the California African American Museum with a bunch of tents, vendors, gorgeous produce and delicious products.

“Seeing the growth of our vendors has been very fulfilling,” Carmen says. “One of our farmers had a very small plot of land in East LA, and now he has over an acre of land… He was already doing incredible work and really growing a lot, but he got to expand. And then one of our vendors, Gloria Allorbi, makes this really delicious hot sauce from Ghana and she has a co-packer now.”

“I think one of the things I remember most is Carmen and me stopping in the very middle of our very first market,” Kara adds. “We had just talked with someone who said that he wanted his daughter to able to look up to women like us.” She grins into our Zoom.

“Yep,” Carmen agrees. “And in that first one, we looked at each other and said, ‘We’re doing this now,’ because for the first six months it was nothing but research.”

Carmen and Kara cold-called everyone they could think of in farming, agriculture and food.

“We had no idea how difficult it would be to locate Black farmers,” Kara says. “And that dug us into the plight and history and red-lining and how it had been so difficult. We wanted to circulate dollars in the Black community, because there was this pre-pandemic statistic floating around—a dollar stays in our community for just six hours—and for us the solution was, okay, we have to own more businesses, and they have to be essential businesses because this is the pandemic and everything was closed but the grocery store.”

They also learned the gaps Black entrepreneurs face in terms of support. It’s always been hard for them to qualify for loans or get funding, and often no one else in their circle had come before them with success. Another challenging factor was that, with many Black-owned businesses, it was usually one person and their immediate family wearing all the hats.

“So you’re doing everything from running the business,” Kara says. “to making the product, to figuring out how to support it, your own bookkeeping, your own marketing, and people, they’re just like ‘Where do I go? How do I do all this?’”

At the top of 2022, Carmen and Kara launched an official crowdfunding campaign on the Fund Black Founders platform, and raised over $111,000 for their dream, a farmer’s-market-on-wheels.

“In the movie industry,” Carmen says. “I just loved the crafty trailer.”

A real mothership for Prosperity Market, the trailer will launch in the second half of 2023 and both women have been heavily involved in the design. It sounds fantastic, a 48-foot trailer that you can enter from the back with produce and product shelves on the walls. They’ve also added a food truck kitchen right behind the cab. Their plan is to rent it to chefs and food entrepreneurs who don’t have a space yet and want to expand to the food truck experience. In the beginning, they plan to visit different locations a few days a week before they grow it to every day. You’ll be able to shop in the back of the trailer, and then order in front from a window onto the street.

“We went to LA Stainless Kings without knowing anything about the industry,” Kara says. “We just had this idea.”

Prosperity Market has a virtual marketplace activating on their website next week, February 20th-24th. You’ll be able to place your order online, and then pick it up at their next market, Saturday, February 25th at the California African American Museum at Exposition Park 11am-3pm. Pickup is also available in Inglewood at the Social Justice and Learning Institute and G Train Fitness in Noho, as well as local delivery.

For a great list of Black-owned farmers and entrepreneurs, also check out the vendor list on their website here.