Jewel-Osco Celebrates Black History Month

Jewel-Osco will commemorate Black History Month with its 12th annual “A Taste of Black History” celebration, a month-long program honoring the contributions of the Chicago-area supermarket chain’s African-American vendors.

The program kicked off Wednesday with an invitation-only reception at Chicago’s South Shore Cultural Center, at which $15,000 in grants were awarded to Trinity United Church of Christ, Growing Power Inc. and the North Lawndale Employment Network, for their work in the areas of hunger relief, nutrition education and environmental stewardship respectively. The grocer also presented $7,500 in scholarships to students from Chicago’s Washburne Culinary Institute who participated in the program and honored Baldwin Richardson Foods with its Vendor of the Year Award.

“Diversity and developing minority vendors are important to us and the success of our company,” said Jim Seidler, Jewel-Osco organic specialty and ethnic sales and merchandising manager. “Therefore, we would like to thank our African-American vendors for their outstanding contributions that help us meet the needs of our customers every day. In turn, we hope consumers recognize that by purchasing African-American vendor products, they are also supporting these outstanding men and women.”

Jewel-Osco is hosting in-store celebrations and tastings of African-American vendor products each Sunday in February, in honor of “A Taste of Black History.”

Owned by Minneapolis-based Supervalu Inc., Jewel-Osco operates more than 180 stores in Illinois, Iowa and Indiana.