Founder of Goodr Jasmine Crowe-Houston says she is watching the price of food continue to rise as a new presidential administration is set to take office in 2025.
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Meet Jasmine Crowe-Houston
She is the founder and CEO of Goodr, a company focused on feeding those in need in Atlanta. Crowe-Houston says the idea for the company started from her kitchen when she moved to Atlanta in 2013.
“I came here, drove through downtown, just saw a lot of people experiencing homelessness,” said Crowe-Houston. “I saw a lot of kids and a lot of women, and I just said, I want to do something. So I created a pop-up restaurant series called Sunday Soul, and I started feeding and cooking out of my own apartment and going downtown and feeding people that were living and experiencing homelessness,” she continued.
Sunday Soul was the foundation for Goodr, a company that’s built several grocery stores where those in need can shop for free. We met Jasmine at one of their locations off MLK on Atlanta’s Westside, a place which serves around 25-30 families each day. Crowe-Houston tells 11Alive that the company has served about 7,000 families in the last two weeks, but she knows that the need is much greater.
“It’s sad. We are living in a time right now when people really are struggling. I get a lot of the emails and a lot of the phone calls and a lot of the ‘Hey, I need food. I don’t have access. Can someone help me?’ We get so many caseworkers that reach out to us every day. We definitely try to connect as many resources as we can, but it’s still an ever-ending cycle, sadly, of people who just don’t know where they’re going to eat next. I need to do more, and I want to do more,” she said.
How are you feeling right now heading into 2025?
“It’s really interesting, and I guess for me, I will think about food prices, you know because this is the space I live in. I work with farmers, so you’re hearing a lot about what that’s going to look like if there’s a tariff on food coming in. I do think about like, if food costs go up, if things happen. I just talked about all of the people who are calling us now. Is it going to get worse? Are we going to be able to help the need?” said Crowe-Houston.
What are you most concerned about?
“I would have to say just the school, probably right now. I have a little girl who’s going into pre-K and will be in kindergarten, and you know, I just, I don’t know what it’s going to look like if the Department of Education changes,” said Crowe-Houston. “So under the current administration, I had my first kid, so now I have two kids, and I’m going into a completely different administration. I worry about what is school gonna look like for my kids over the next few years. Just what does life look like? And, I mean, I think all of us just don’t know. From a business side, I think I’m worried about the cost of food, and if it continues to go up.. The last five or six years, I have seen the cost of goods really go up across the board,” she continued.
What are you most optimistic about?
“You know, I still am really optimistic about my business growing; I have seen that my business has grown since I started in 2016 to now like it’s grown consistently year after year. I am optimistic that it can continue to grow. I think the need for people who are experiencing food insecurity is still going to be there. I don’t think it vanishes overnight. So I know that I’m still going to have a lot of work to do over the next four years and really prove myself,” she said.
11Alive’s Voice of the Voter series features diverse viewpoints from Georgians across Metro Atlanta and airs weekly during The Georgia Vote at 11 a.m. on Sundays.
