A neighborhood mini-mart at the corner of 95th Street and Anzac Avenue is back open for business, providing fresh fruits and vegetables within walking distance for the community.<\/p>\n
Owner Keisha Daniels said she reopened the store with a mission to create a reliable, healthy food option for local families.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to provide a place where families can come, get healthy food, to get the things that they need like a one-stop shop,\u201d Daniels said.<\/p>\n
Daniels said financial challenges forced her to close the store several times in 2024 and 2025. A broken cooler was one of the biggest setbacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a cooler that broke down and it cost almost $3,000 to get fixed. I didn\u2019t have that money,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The turning point came when Daniels secured a $50,000 microloan from Macedonia Community Development Corporation, which provides technical assistance and promotes job creation in low-income communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel so famous right now!\u201d Daniels said during a celebration marking the store\u2019s reopening.<\/p>\n
Marie O\u2019Kelly Green, chair of the board of directors for Macedonia Community Development Corporation, praised the impact of the business.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou may see new faces that wanna sing that old Janet Jackson song \u2018What have they done for you lately.\u2019 What have they done for you lately \u2014 Watts Up Mini Mart is what they have done for you lately,\u201d Green said.<\/p>\n
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, attended the celebration and said she is focused on making affordable housing and small-business success possible for all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are gonna make sure that any money that we invest or any money that we support in investing in this community, that you\u2019re not going to fail,\u201d Waters said.<\/p>\n
Waters also praised Daniels\u2019 determination.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so proud of her. Just to think about this young woman who decided that she could own a store. She could be the owner. She could get it started and help make sure there\u2019s fresh food for the community. That\u2019s very important. She\u2019s done that in Watts,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A neighborhood mini-mart at the corner of 95th Street and Anzac Avenue is back open for business, providing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49,2852],"class_list":["post-177701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-watts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}