Millvale Market

Jen Saffron and Derek Dumont created Millvale Market as Millvale, PA's first fresh food market in decades! We believe that offering nutritious, delicious, beautiful foods with dignity lifts the health and well-being of our small town and improves fresh food access, especially for working families, children, and the elderly. Millvale Market is in a walkable community of 3700 residents, located at the town’s major intersection - the perfect location for a thriving corner market. In September 2021, we submitted a rigorous application to rent the space, competing with other businesses for this prime real estate. Through community process, Millvale Market was chosen to fulfill a beautiful vision of community vibrancy and public health.

Community support is strong - residents want a market, and we are excited to learn and listen from neighbors and to collaborate with other businesses on community programs like Millvale Days. In this small town, approximately 200 people completed our survey to share ideas for a neighborhood grocery as well as their hopes for a better community.

We plan on integrating this feedback and attracting customers in support of small, women-owned businesses and local farms. The key to this is sharing with our customers about locally-sourced products; staff will be incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about food, for example how something was grown and why that matters.

We see our customers as guests, not just people buying something. In this way, we are relational and we care. A caring orientation has been our business mindset from the beginning. A market is foremost about people, and we embrace the triple bottom line of people, profit, and planet in planning Millvale Market’s success, be it from local sourcing for a reduced carbon footprint to serving our neighbors in need to providing living wages.

We intend on utilizing our GoFundMe campaign funding to invest in our point of sale system, refrigeration, and contracting fees.