Green Grocer grant behind The Counter Detroit
Karlyta Williams just opened a grocery store on her own block. The Counter Detroit, a small-format fresh food market inside Shops on Six at the Live6 Alliance in the Bagley neighborhood, opened its doors this week backed by a $25,000 grant from the city's Green Grocer Program.
The name is not new. Williams borrowed it from her great-grandparents, who ran a grocery store in Southwest Detroit generations ago. What she built is a continuation dressed as a debut: a family name that once meant fresh food for a neighborhood, now meaning the same thing on a different corner of the same city.
"Access is not a slogan. It is a store that opens on your block."
The store was designed with intention. Williams built The Counter as a counter, literally, to the processed and packaged food that dominates the shelves in too many Detroit neighborhoods. In a city where fresh, affordable groceries can still mean a long trip, a small-format market stocked with real food is not a convenience. It is infrastructure.
The grant made the math work. The Counter is the third Green Grocer ribbon cutting since the program relaunched in 2024, part of a broader push by the city to help entrepreneurs open the kind of stores that big chains skip. The dollars are modest by startup standards. The impact is measured in walking distance.
This is the version of entrepreneurship ANF follows most closely. Not the raise, not the exit, but the founder who takes a small amount of public money, adds a family history and a clear read of the neighborhood, and turns it into something a whole block can use. Ownership, on your own street, in your own name.
The store is open. The rest is up to the neighborhood, and Williams is betting it shows up.
