Rapper helps bring free grocery store to GA middle school

Jasmine Crowe, Goodr Founder and CEO, talks teaming up with rapper Gunna to bring a free grocery store to his former Georgia middle school.

Video transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. We got some good news to highlight here on Thursday, as Atlanta-based rapper Gunna is actually giving back to the high school that he graduated from, back there at Ronald McNair High-- teaming up with company Goodr to donate products there for kids at that school to purchase for free-- school uniforms, food, and groceries. And for more on that, I want to bring I'm Yahoo Finance's Reggie Wade who's standing by with the CEO and founder of Goodr. Reggie.

REGGIE WADE: Yes. Thank you, Zack. Jasmine, how are you? I know you've been doing big things in the fight against hunger. You started by volunteering at a local food bank in your hometown in Atlanta. How did that experience shape what you're doing today?

JASMINE CROWE: Hi, Reggie. Thanks so much for having me. You know, that experience really was formative in the work that I do today. I spoke about being in that food bank and giving lots of families items that I didn't really think they could take home and make a meal from. And so as I began to form Goodr and work on our hunger solutions, I was very, very critical of the items that I was giving to people and wanting to make sure that anything that a family received, whether that was through a Goodr grocery delivery, through one of our donations, or through one of our pop up grocery stores, they could actually go home and make meals out of it. And that has been just kind of the guiding light.

REGGIE WADE: Now, what was the process like opening a store inside of a school? We know that so many children need these resources, whether it's clothes, food-- was it difficult? Was there a lot of red tape?

JASMINE CROWE: There wasn't a lot of red tape because the need is so high. I had an opportunity to work with Gunna. We've been working together really since 2018. When the team reached out about doing something for back to school, I suggested, let's do something that is sustainable, that has lasting impact, and that can really benefit the entire school.

Luckily enough, I had the opportunity to speak with the principal. He shared with me a lot about what was going on with those middle school students there at McNair High School-- and McNair Middle School, excuse me. Previously, the school was rated F. They were failing. He came in in three years and got them up to a C.

And then when the pandemic hit and a lot of those students were going to school virtually, it really put them behind again. He shared with me that the students really are students and children only when they're in school and a lot of them are living in adult situations-- parents working two and three jobs, they're going home, cooking for their little brothers and sisters. So they had a pantry and a closet that they had put together, didn't have a lot of food in it, had lots of older, donated clothes, and we essentially gutted it and built it out from scratch in less than three weeks.

REGGIE WADE: I've seen the pictures, and it blew me away. And one of the things that I love is you even had sneakers there too. And I'm a big sneaker guy. So it's really one-stop shopping where families can get the things that they need. Now, I wanted to ask you about technology because you're a big advocate on using technology to fight hunger. How can we do that?

JASMINE CROWE: Yeah, so, you know, Goodr, we've built several apps and products. What we built specifically for this school is it allows the families to go on, request food, they could give us a little bit of data, how many children are in the household, how large the family size is, the items that they eat, if they have any food allergies, and then they just request a time.

As soon as our registration comes through, it alerts the front office staff and guidance counselors, the student gets the shopping slot, it's automatically open, so they get to go in and kind of shop really without the stigma or the embarrassment. And then once that student leaves, it closes until the next appointment slot opens back up. All the students do get a reusable grocery bag, and they're encouraged just to fill it up with as many things as they can.

We are in the beginning having a lot of the staff on-site just to make sure that the kids get balanced items and they're not getting all snacks, all tennis shoes, things of that nature. So I think technology gives you the data, it gives you a lot of insight into the inventory, how often it's being used, what the family sizes look like. And it helps us prepare as we're going to be stocking this store for many years to come. And hopefully this is our first of many, many more.