On Saturday, Aveneu will officially open its doors at 1017 Mt. Vernon Avenue, bringing a much-needed grocery store amenity to the King-Lincoln/Bronzeville neighborhood. The small shop may be sized more in line with corner convenience stores, but owner Azubuike Akunne wants to offer healthier options for the community.
“We’re starting to get the shelves stocked up, and we’ve already got some of our bulk items in place,” said Akunne earlier this week. “We have some international items from a couple of my trips over the past seven months to India, Nigeria and China. I brought stuff back that I think might be able to attract people in the neighborhood to purchase, and then a section for produce too. We’re going to see what people want first and foremost before we start getting too excited about all the different varieties of fruits and vegetables that we could offer. I think it’s important for us to kind of gauge the neighborhood and see what exactly are they purchasing.”
Originally slated to open in the summer of 2025, Akunne said that the year-long delay largely had to do with the federal authorization to accept SNAP/EBT.
“When the Trump administration shut down SNAP benefits, that caused a big backlog and a lot of issues, so it caused us to have a delay,” he explained. “I knew the statistics on this neighborhood being very EBT-focused, and I knew that if I open up and told people we don’t take EBT yet, then they’re not coming back. I had to look at it from an economic standpoint. So that caused me to slow down a little bit and open when we had the resources to communicate with the neighborhood — that’s what’s important for me.”
Akunne established the business as a nonprofit, which has allowed him to tap into grant programs that aim to solve issues related to food insecurity and food deserts in Central Ohio. Despite the nonprofit designation, Akunne said the focus is to create long-term sustainability, rather than relying on donors to keep operations afloat.
“The Columbus Foundation gave us a really great grant about a year ago of about $50,000 and that really helped us do a lot of the work in the space internally,” said Akunne. “I did some of the work in here myself, but I also had a handyman come help me out. We had a few interns in here from the Ohio State University Urban Arts Space program who really helped us. And currently, I have about four interns from Columbus State Community College. Two of them are helping with marketing, and two of them are helping with what I like to call ‘The Internet of Things’, which includes this kiosk app that can help customers discover new recipes.”
Aveneu will host a grand opening party on Saturday, June 20th from 11am to 4pm, which will coincide with the “Juneteenth on the Avenue” celebrations hosted in the neighborhood by the King Arts Complex, Maroon Arts Group and other organizations. And while the shelves will be stocked and ready for business, Akunne has plans to roll out new products and services in the months to come.
“We’re still working to get our alcohol license, so we’ll have a cool little nook for that without it being a main focus,” he said. “We’re also working with our great friends and neighbors at Yawning Bear Bread to see if maybe we can release some limited edition products.”
For more information, visit theaveneu.com.
Photos by Walker Evans.
Dining and Cooking