Bonton Farms, the nonprofit that grew out of a single beekeeping operation in a historic South Dallas food desert, is opening its first-ever location outside the neighborhood — inside Terminal A at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, near Gate A17. The store, set to open this fall, will put the organization's honey, jams and goat milk soaps in front of travelers from around the world instead of just the South Dallas community it was built to serve.
The airport shop marks a striking leap for an operation that, as reported by WFAA, began in the Bonton neighborhood of South Dallas with nothing more than a small beekeeping venture meant to create jobs and pull neighbors into community life. Bonton Farms has since grown into an organization that operates farms, markets, a coffeehouse, a preservatory and a farm-to-table cafe, according to the same report. Kendra Charisse Smith said the airport location is a front door to Bonton Farms' broader mission, and she added that the organization has spent time preparing its products for the larger scale of airport retail operations.
Travelers passing through the new store will be able to buy locally produced honey, handmade jams, goat milk soaps, grab-and-go food, apparel and gifts, per WFAA's reporting. Many of those goods are made by Bontonpreneurs, the term for entrepreneurs who come up through Bonton Farms' business development programs. According to CultureMap Dallas, the shelves won't be limited to Bonton Farms products alone — the store will also carry curated goods from other North Texas small businesses, including Fort Worth's Sons Coffee, Lettuce Cook grab-and-go meals and Pearl Honey Spreads, turning the shop into something closer to a regional showcase than a single-brand kiosk.
A Contract Two Years in the Making
The retail deal is not a new development so much as the culmination of one. DFW Airport's board and its concessions operator, Marshall Retail Group, originally awarded the travel essentials store contract to Bonton Farms back in December 2024, under then-nonprofit president Gabrielle Madison, according to the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Marshall Retail Group is a subsidiary of WHSmith North America, which operates more than 350 stores at airports, rail stations and resorts across North America, per WFAA. Bonton Farms is partnering directly with WHSmith North America on the new location, and the relationship between the two organizations isn't entirely new — Bonton Farms had already worked with DFW Airport since 2021 through a composting program that diverted terminal food waste to local urban farms, as reported by Dallas Innovates.
Huw Crwys-Williams said Bonton Farms is an organization creating lasting impact across Dallas and the wider Metroplex area, per WFAA's report. Mark Jones called the airport store opening an exciting milestone for Bonton Farms and the community it serves, WFAA noted. Bonton Farms has not announced a specific opening date beyond the fall timeframe, according to the outlet.
From a Beehive to a Global Terminal
The scale of the audience Bonton Farms is about to reach is hard to overstate. DFW Airport handled roughly 85.6 million passengers in 2025, making it the fourth-busiest airport in the world and third-busiest in the United States, according to WFAA. The airport also picked up Airports Council International's 2025 Airport Service Quality Customer Experience Award for large North American airports for the fourth consecutive year, per the DFW Airport newsroom.
The new store lands inside Terminal A as part of DFW Airport's multibillion-dollar “DFW Forward” capital program, which includes a 140,000-square-foot expansion of the terminal and five new gates, the airport's reporting shows. That construction is what freed up the retail space Bonton Farms will now occupy. According to Bonton Farms, the airport partnership is expected to generate additional support for the nonprofit's community programs, which focus on economic development, job training, access to healthy food and other services.
Roots in a Neighborhood Long Overlooked
Bonton Farms was founded in 2014 by Daron Babcock, who moved to South Dallas to start a small agricultural plot and beekeeping venture in a neighborhood long defined by scarcity, according to the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The organization now runs programs touching education, transportation, health and wellness, financial resources, economic stability and affordable housing, per WFAA. Bonton itself carries a difficult history: the neighborhood's name traces back to the moniker “Bomb Town,” which arose from the 1930s through the 1950s amid racial terrorism and bombings targeting Black residents along the Trinity River, according to the Good God Project.
That history has made Bonton Farms' civic profile in Dallas grow well beyond agriculture. According to Hoodline, Last year, the city dedicated custom watershed gate art at the organization's Market Cafe to honor the neighborhood's history and revitalization. Bonton Farms has also partnered on an organic social enterprise garden for survivors of human trafficking, a project mentioned when Tracee Ellis Ross headlined a recent Dallas luncheon addressing the issue. The DFW Airport store now adds a very different kind of platform — one built not around neighborhood healing, but around reaching whoever happens to be walking past Gate A17.
