A project of The California Endowment and a team of partners, including First Lady Michelle Obama, FreshWorks is a $200 million public-private partnership loan fund created to increase access to healthy, affordable food in underserved communities, spur economic development, and inspire innovation in healthy food retailing.

 
The California FreshWorks Fund (CAFWF) is modeled after the successful Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative and developed to align with the National Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI). The fund will make communities across California healthier by working directly with grocers on developing new and improved places to buy nutritious food.  According to CAFWF partners, the new stores are expected to create or retain around 6000 jobs in California.
 
“Health happens in our neighborhoods. Families can’t eat healthier food if they can’t buy it where they live,” said Robert K Ross, M.D., president and CEO of The California Endowment. “The sheer number of banks and other investors involved proves that this is not only the right thing to do to improve the health of our communities, but it’s financially attractive” he added.
 
The complete list of FreshWorks partners includes: The California Endowment, NCB Capital Impact, NCB, Unified Grocers, California Grocers Association, Kaiser Permanente, Catholic Healthcare West, Calvert Foundation, Social Compact, Emerging Markets, PolicyLink, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, U.S. Bank, Community Health Councils, The Reinvestment Fund, and Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles.
The fund will provide financing to grocery stores and other healthy food retailers and distributors who meet a subset of skillfully developed program guidelines designed to move healthy food retailing forward in an affordable and accessible way and prioritize healthy choices from top to bottom. CAFWF program guidelines are different from and go further than other previous efforts. For example: Projects will get priority points if they don't sell cigarettes, have higher proportion of healthy food retail, eliminate junk food aisles, etc.
 
Seed stage financing from The California Endowment included a $30 million mission-related investment on the debt side and a $3 million grant. In a matter of months the fund grew to $200 million committed from prominent investors like NCB, Kaiser Permanente, JP Morgan Chase, and others who felt strongly about the model and believed in its potential to transform underserved communities into communities of opportunity.
 

**LEARN More About the California FreshWorks Fund at www.CAfreshworks.com**