Imagine if someone told you to make an iPhone out of a rotary dial phone. Or better yet, imagine if someone expected you to make a Kindle out of a typewriter. Sounds insane, doesn’t it? And yet, every day that we call for the systems around us to change instead of creating new systems for a world we want to see, we are calling only to change something that is so fundamentally flawed and in ultimately in need of full replacement.

Want a new food system that rewards communities with health and wellness? It’s going to take a bit more effort than asking Walmart to make a few more shelves for organic items.

Our vision for Boxcar Grocer involves creating an entirely new model for community wellness that begins at the individual level. It involves community development, new food distribution models, partnerships with rural and urban farmers who farm sustainably, and lots of seeds.

The only systems complex enough to change so significantly that an entirely new set of parts aren’t needed are the Earth and our individual bodies. We have the ability to shift our own biology with the power of meditation, education, diet, and faith.

This is called healing.

We are at a prime moment in history when a grand healing needs to take place as we look at ourselves, our relationships to food, to each other and to the Earth. To continue to accept whatever trickles down into urban communities as the current system demands is like accepting poison and pretending it is water.

Want a different world? Change your own actions to make it better. Create the change you want to see. Stand behind the businesses and organizations that are planting healthy seeds in your community. Our plan was always to open several stores. We worked out most of the kinks with this one. But to grow it takes money that we don’t currently have. It takes people who we have not yet met.

It takes the power of the people behind us to say: “We want to help you create! We want a better world!”

Over the last two year, Boxcar Grocer purchased over $200,000 worth of local products and services from the Atlanta community. Over the last two years, we have paid over $50,000 in salaries and wages to local individuals in our community.

We have provided free space for community groups to meet, we’ve donated money and food to organizations in the community and we have helped advertise for other businesses that also need to grow.

Not bad for a store that is not even profitable yet. This is just the beginning. We are the new model. People have been asking us what can you do to help?

Put your energy into this vision of a new world that values you, and your children, and your grandchildren.