As of October 8, 2026, apprentices were still awaiting improved access to counseling and education through Bonton Farms' new 4,000-square-foot resource center on Bexar Street in South Dallas. The building sits beside the organization's market cafe, near the Trinity River and the Texas Buckeye Trail, and is planned to provide a dedicated space for counseling, education services and a grocery delivery program. It will also formalize support that used to happen informally, including private conversations once held at a small gazebo across the street.
According to The Dallas Morning News, Bonton Farms President and CEO Mark Jones said the new building will give staff a dedicated space for private one-on-one conversations with apprentices, which were once held at a small gazebo across the street. The center is planned to include a podcast studio and rental workspace for nonprofits and entrepreneurs, and will serve as the home base for Grocery Connect, the organization's partnership with Kroger that offers free local grocery pickup to address limited grocery access in the area. The center will also offer 50 rental bikes at $5 per hour, per the same report.
One Apprentice's Path From Grief to Graduation
The center's opening is intertwined with the story of McKayla Mosley, a 22-year-old apprentice who joined the program in February 2026 after a period marked by grief and overnight shifts spent caring for her daughter. Mosley was 19 when her father, Michael Mosley, died in 2023, and just a month later she was leasing her own apartment for herself and her then one-year-old daughter, the Dallas Morning News reports.
Since joining Bonton Farms, Mosley has earned her high school diploma and enrolled at Dallas College, where she studies psychology, according to the same account. She has worked as a hostess and barista at the Bonton Farms cafe while also pursuing certification as a lash technician. She now lives in a Bonton Farms tiny home, and her daughter attends The King's Academy, a private Christian school with ties to the organization.
Apprenticeship Built Around Wages and Life Skills
Bonton Farms' apprenticeship program pays $15 per hour and is open to people facing workforce hardship, homelessness, drug use or a criminal history, the Dallas Morning News reports. Beyond wages, the program provides mental health support and financial literacy classes, with Operation Hope delivering financial coaching to participants. Apprentices also receive support building relationships and conflict-management skills, according to the same report.
The current cohort includes roughly a dozen apprentices who first prove punctuality before moving into skill areas such as customer service, maintenance or landscaping, per the Dallas Morning News account. Not every apprentice is expected to graduate from each cohort, but those who do typically find jobs with livable wages afterward. Mosley is on track to graduate in November, and Bonton Farms will continue providing her services for three months after that milestone. She told the Dallas Morning News that the organization helped her and her daughter with different aspects of their lives.
A Decade-Long Build-Out Beyond the Garden
Bonton Farms was founded in 2014 by former private equity executive Daron Babcock, who moved into a Habitat for Humanity house in the neighborhood and began a small urban vegetable patch beside his own home, according to the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Babcock had left a corporate job and his home in Frisco to work directly with formerly incarcerated residents in South Dallas, the publication notes. The organization now operates an extension farm in southeast Dallas as well, and Melissa Metoyer serves as senior director overseeing its health and wellness efforts, per the Dallas Morning News.
That growth has included a separate wellness center, which opened in December 2024 as an 11,000-square-foot facility on Carlton Garrett Street offering primary healthcare, dental care and financial health classes and serving more than 7,000 low-income residents, according to CandysDirt.com. That $5.5 million project was funded in part by an $850,000 City of Dallas grant along with New Markets Tax Credit investments. The wellness push matters amid longstanding health inequities and low life expectancy in Bonton, CandysDirt.com reports.
Grocery Access and a State Law Born From Bonton
Grocery Connect, now headquartered inside the new resource center, launched in early 2024 as a partnership between Bonton Farms and Kroger Delivery, using Kroger's Southern Dallas fulfillment center to provide fee-free online grocery delivery and pickup with in-store pricing and SNAP/EBT acceptance, according to Retail Dive. The program addresses a stark transportation gap: almost two-thirds of residents lack personal transportation to reach a grocery store, and grocery trips can take up to three hours. Nationally, roughly 36% of Dallas residents live in food deserts, and the historic Bonton neighborhood reports a median family income under $25,000 with poverty rates exceeding 32%, per data cited by Modern Farmer.
Bonton Farms' advocacy has also reshaped state law. In July 2021, Governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 569, known as the Bonton Farms Act, which requires Texas judges to credit $150 per day of prior incarceration toward outstanding Class C misdemeanor fines and warrants so returning citizens aren't trapped in debt. The legislation addresses how unpaid traffic tickets and minor fines can block returning citizens from obtaining driver's licenses and jobs, according to Business Wire.
Housing and New Leadership
The resource center joins a tiered housing strategy that Bonton Farms has built for residents at different stages of being housed, including emergency pallet shelters, tiny homes, triplexes, and a 36-unit apartment complex called Bonton Gardens, according to Bonton Farms. The range includes the tiny home where apprentice Mosley lives.
Mark Jones is Bonton Farms' President and CEO, as Dallas Innovates reported.
