After years without a true supermarket on this stretch of the West Side, Forty Acres Fresh Market quietly swung open its doors at 5713 W. Chicago Ave. in September 2025, instantly changing the neighborhood grocery calculus in Austin. The woman-owned store brings the full lineup many locals said they wanted close to home: produce aisles, a butcher counter and a hot-food bar, along with a floral department, customer loyalty program and a newly secured retail liquor license.
The team has clearly decided that if they are going to be the neighborhood grocery, they might as well lean into it. Shoppers are greeted with in-store sampling tables, cooking demonstrations and regular store tours meant to help people get comfortable with new ingredients and prepared dishes.
Owner Elizabeth "Liz" Abunaw traces all of this back to a series of pop-up markets she launched in 2018, followed by a produce-box delivery service that took off during the early months of the 2020 pandemic. She has said a generous exit package from a Microsoft reorganization gave her the financial runway to chase a permanent storefront. As Austin Weekly News reported, Abunaw spent years learning the ropes through pop-ups in Austin and Maywood before committing to a brick-and-mortar market. Her goal is to compete with big chains while keeping affordability and neighborhood access front and center.
The grocery now fills a renovated former Salvation Army building at a high-visibility corner on Chicago Avenue. The redevelopment pulled together New Markets Tax Credit allocation and a City Neighborhood Opportunity Fund grant, according to the Chicago Development Fund. A PNC Bank branch moved into the same building when both opened last fall, the Chicago Sun-Times noted, and project partners say the corner lot and on-site parking were deliberate choices to make it easier for nearby residents to shop close to home.
From Pop-Ups To A Storefront
Forty Acres started life in 2018 as a pop-up produce market, then grew into a subscription delivery business before Abunaw began hunting for a permanent West Side address, according to Forty Acres Fresh Market. That experimentation phase is now baked into the store’s programming.
Inside the new space, Forty Acres has teamed up with Foodsmart to open an in-store Nutrition Corner that offers telenutrition tools and connects shoppers with dietitians, a partnership detailed by Foodsmart. The hot-food bar, branded as Mabel’s Meals, along with frequent cooking demos, is designed to make unfamiliar produce and prepared foods feel approachable, not intimidating.
What This Means For The West Side
On paper, the project is meant to be more than a convenient place to grab dinner. The Chicago Development Fund’s project profile estimates the store will serve more than 40,000 low-income residents within a one-mile radius and support roughly 25 full-time-equivalent jobs. The same profile notes that Forty Acres will accept SNAP and WIC benefits and offer delivery options with EBT-friendly pricing, all aimed at lowering the barriers to fresh food.
Local coverage has also pointed out that Forty Acres is a Black woman-owned grocery on the West Side, a distinction highlighted by CBS Chicago. For a neighborhood that has watched other retailers close or move away, that ownership detail has become part of the story.
For shoppers, the experience is straightforward. Customers can walk in any day of the week, with hours listed as 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and can also enroll in home delivery and the store’s loyalty program through Forty Acres Fresh Market. As reported by Austin Weekly News, the team has layered on a floral department and a retail liquor license to round out the mix.
Managers schedule regular store tours, tasting tables and cooking demos to nudge people toward trying different produce and prepared dishes, a low-key form of food education that plays out in the middle of the grocery aisles.
“Grocery is not complicated, but it is complex,” Abunaw told CBS Chicago, explaining that she learned the business through years of pop-ups and work in packaged foods. She has described the Austin store as a starting point rather than a finish line and has said she hopes the model can be repeated in other Chicago neighborhoods. Store managers plan to build out more programming and community partnerships as operations stabilize through the rest of 2026.
