Prince George's County opens free grocery store inside library

Inside the Fairmount Heights Branch Library at 5904 Kolb St., Prince George’s County has opened the Fairmount Five Market, a free grocery store county leaders say is meant to help families stretch tight budgets and shop with dignity. The market is a partnership between Prince George’s County and Goodr, and officials say it is the first permanent Goodr grocery store inside a library and the first of its kind in the Washington metropolitan region.

In a June 3 update, the Prince George’s County Economic Development Corporation said the market was built to serve a community long described as a food desert. Goodr founder and CEO Jasmine Crowe-Houston said nearly 200 households had already been accepted at launch and a waiting list was forming, with the market expected to serve more than 200 families each month. The store is stocked with produce, dairy, meat and other proteins, juices and other staples, giving shoppers a choice of foods rather than a prepacked bag.

That model is at the center of Prince George’s broader food-access strategy. The county’s Food Equity Council, launched in 2013, has framed food equity as the ability to find healthy, affordable, sustainable, culturally appropriate and safe food in every neighborhood. County leaders have also tied the new market to the cost-of-living pressure that hits Fairmount Heights families far beyond the grocery aisle, because every dollar saved on food can go toward rent, transportation, childcare and school expenses.

The county’s public-health data shows why officials are treating the project as more than a symbolic opening. County figures cited in related coverage say 12 percent of residents are food insecure, and nearly 20 percent of children live in households that struggle to consistently access nutritious meals. In that context, the Fairmount Heights market is being positioned as both an emergency resource and a policy tool, aimed at reducing a measurable gap in access rather than simply distributing donations.

The county is already looking beyond the first site. Leaders said a second free grocery store is being planned in District 7, signaling that the library-based market is part of a larger effort to stabilize neighborhoods where food access remains uneven. Goodr said it has opened 34 similar stores nationwide since 2021, and Prince George’s is betting that placing one inside a familiar public library will make the service easier to use, and harder to ignore.