When Liz Abunaw, MBA’14, stepped off the No. 66 bus in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood six years ago, she wasn’t looking to change her life. She was looking for a bank.
“I was running an errand and didn’t realize that the address for my errand was in Austin,” said the Upstate New York native and alum of The Polsky Center’s Small Business Growth Program. “I needed to get cash and I didn’t see a bank or a drugstore where I could make a small purchase and get cash back.
“As I continued to look around, I quickly realized that the amenities I was used to finding in neighborhoods like the South Loop, Wicker Park and Lincoln Park were not readily accessible in this area. I started wondering, ‘Where do the people in this neighborhood shop? Where do they work? Where do they bank?’”
That observation stayed with her over the years and crystallized into a business idea that became Forty Acres Fresh Market while she was shopping at a popular produce market.
“I was in Stanley’s buying strawberries for a ridiculously low price and it dawned on me that something like this should exist in Austin,” said Abunaw, a food industry veteran who had worked at General Mills for ten years before pursuing her MBA at the University of Chicago. “People say the barrier to healthier eating is that healthy food is more expensive, but this stuff was cheap. I knew a store like this would go gangbusters over there and started talking about how somebody should open a Stanley’s on the West Side. Eventually, somebody became, ‘Oh, maybe I want to try that.’”
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This story was first published by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
