Tulsa - The US Department of Agriculture (web | news) says 49-million Americans don't have enough food throughout the year. Now, a west Tulsa church has found a way to help the poor and hungry.

They've spent half a million dollars to build a one of a kind grocery store.

The West Side Harvest market is run by a church. It's a non-profit grocery store and is unlike any grocery store you've ever seen. Its customers -- three thousand of them -- live within a block. Many of them live in nearby subsidized apartments. Before this market opened, they depended on local convenience stores for food.

"When I went down to some of the convenience stores, the prices they were selling a half gallon of milk for five dollars," says Cindy Hemm. "Here we're selling it for a dollar-eighty-nine."

And those lower prices are found throughout this neighborhood grocery store. Hemm is principal of nearby Eugene Field Elementary School and was one of the driving forces who helped open the grocery store last March.

"This place serves three housing projects," she says. "It's open to the public, and good prices for fresh milk, fresh meat, bread, anything you need to fix food is here."

Also here is a fully equipped teaching kitchen, where a new generation can learn how to cook.

"When they come to me and say I'm hungry, and I hand them a bag of beans, they have to cook it and they say I can't eat this and hand it back."

In addition, people come here for training to get jobs. Whatever the community needs, the volunteers here can help make it happen. Now there's no more riding the bus to buy groceries.

"So now you don't have to do that," says Mary Everidge who lives nearby. "You can just walk. I can walk to the grocery store from where I live."

The people who run this store are all volunteers. They say this is a model for the rest of the city, the rest of the country. In these troubled times they say you don't have to build every kind of grocery store or re-invent the wheel, because they've done it right here.

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