CANTON — At the end of the day, StarkFresh’s heart and mission were tied to the people who needed the biggest helping hand.
That’s how Executive Director Tom Phillips, who led the Canton-based nonprofit fighting hunger across Stark County, described the organization’s work to Farm and Dairy. After more than a decade combating food insecurity, StarkFresh, the Canton-based nonprofit known for bringing dignity and equity to food access, is closing its doors.
The shuttering, announced July 1, comes after what the StarkFresh’s Board of Directors called a difficult choice brought on by a combination of financial and operational challenges that ultimately made the organization unsustainable.
“This is not a decision we came to lightly,” the Board of Directors wrote in a message to supporters posted on its website. “We’ve worked together to challenge the status quo and build something bold: affordable, dignified access to healthy food in places where it didn’t exist.”
Value and vulnerability
Founded 12 years ago, StarkFresh operated with a powerful guiding belief that access to healthy, affordable food is a right, not a privilege. Under the leadership of Phillips, the organization grew into a lifeline for thousands of Stark County residents.
“We built spaces where people could shop affordably and with dignity,” Phillips said in an interview. “We created systems that respected our customers, not judged them.”
From its nonprofit grocery stores in Canton and Alliance to its shared-use commercial kitchen and its massive Free Seed Library, StarkFresh designed programs around people’s real needs. Its efforts, according to the board’s message, reached over 64,000 residents through retail alone, distributed more than 2 million pounds of food and provided over 647,000 seed packets to families looking to grow their own produce.
But sustaining that impact became increasingly difficult.
“Like many community-based nonprofits, we relied on a mix of grants, donations and earned income to operate,” Phillips said. “Funding for basic needs like food access is often short-term, highly restricted and increasingly competitive.”
And just as funding streams tightened, costs continued to rise — from staffing and insurance to food inventory — while the political landscape shifted in ways that threatened the bedrock of their services.
“We have seen growing instability in public support for programs that address food insecurity. This includes cuts or delays in funding for nutrition incentives and federal programs that many of our customers relied on,” Phillips said. “That kind of uncertainty made it difficult to plan long-term or grow our programs in a way that could endure.”
Phillips said he hopes the organization’s closure will make leaders realize just how much they had come to rely on StarkFresh, often without fully recognizing its value or vulnerability until it was too late.
“You know, so many times we go into a discussion, a public health discussion, and they’re like, ‘Oh, food insecurity issues. StarkFresh will handle that,’” he said. “Now, maybe people are going to actually have to step up and do some stuff.”
“For 12 years, we did it.”
StarkFresh’s mission was driven by six core observations rooted in the realities of Stark County: That hunger was widespread, access to healthy food was blocked by structural barriers like racial segregation and many residents lacked the basic skills and tools to feed themselves well. The organization set out to scale Everest-sized obstacles by addressing the root causes of food insecurity, including systemic poverty, food literacy and the inextricable connection between health and income.
But StarkFresh ultimately could not withstand the mounting pressures against it. As of June 30, the organization’s Canton location, including its grocery store, warehouse, kitchen and offices, is permanently closed. The Alliance store, located within Alliance Commons at 405 S. Linden Ave., will remain open until Aug. 15 to allow customers to redeem outstanding food vouchers. The organization will fully cease operations by Sept. 1.
For Phillips, StarkFresh’s legacy isn’t just measured in numbers. It lies in the shift that the organization helped create. It proved, he said, that equitable, community-led food access wasn’t just an idealistic vision, but a model that could work, even amid doubt and limited resources.
“When we launched a nonprofit grocery store in a food desert, many people told us it wouldn’t work,” he said. “They said the margins were too thin, the need was too great and the model was unsustainable… For me, the most meaningful impact of StarkFresh has been proving that something people said could not be done actually could be. And for 12 years, we did it.”
While the organization may not have reached the long-term future it envisioned, its influence is far from over. Conversations are already underway with local groups interested in continuing the Seed Library, and there’s hope that grocery operations in Alliance may continue under new leadership. StarkFresh is also providing toolkits, guides and documentation to help others carry the mission forward however they can.
“If our work showed anything, it is that transformation is possible,” Phillips said. “We just need more people willing to invest in that possibility — consistently and collaboratively.”
Filling the gaps
The closure announcement comes at a time when hunger relief advocates are sounding the alarm over new federal legislation that could deepen food insecurity for Ohio families.
In a July 1 statement, Joree Novotny, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, responded to the U.S. Senate’s passage of H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, warning that it would slash federal support for SNAP and Medicaid, shifting the burden onto already overstretched state governments and local partners.
“This bill forces Ohio to either identify hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue, eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars in other critical public services or risk reduction or elimination of SNAP benefits for every vulnerable Ohioan,” Novotny said.
The Ohio-based nonpartisan think tank Center for Community Solutions echoed those concerns, estimating the legislation could leave Ohio on the hook for at least $645 million per year just to preserve current SNAP benefit levels. Stricter work requirements proposed in the bill could also affect more than 300,000 Ohioans, including children and older adults.
Local policymakers and frontline organizations, like those that operate in the shrinking landscape StarkFresh once did, have long been leaned on to fill the gaps. But their resources are limited.
“We continue to work harder every day to prevent hunger for Ohioans in need,” Novotny said. “But though we do a whole lot with a little every day, we are not equipped to fill the gaps that these fundamental, structural changes and cuts would create for children, seniors, veterans, disabled Ohioans and working families.”
The bill was passed by Congress and was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4.
