South Side café offers healthier options while operating from shipping container
CHICAGO (CBS) — An unconventional café inside a shipping container on the city's South Side is serving healthy meals to the neighborhood.
The owners of 7323 Chicago Café, located at 6600 S. Woodlawn Ave., a big yellow shipping container on the corner that is hard to miss, are dedicated to serving healthy meals to a neighborhood that has historically been a food desert.
Before Marquinn Gibson can start serving food out of his shipping container, he's gotta open it up. The café is powered by a generator that is filled with gasoline before plugging in all of his appliances. Even then, he's still got groceries in the car.
"At this park, there was nothing, no structure that was pretty preexisting. So, I came up with the idea and said, hey, I'm going to convert a 20-foot shipping container into a small kitchen," he said.
Gibson had seen the concept before while living on the West Coast, where people were using the millions of abandoned shipping containers out in the world.
"I started to see, like, people with shipping containers often, so I'm just like, what are y'all doing with these?"
With the help of some veteran vendors and the internet, he worked to bring the concept back to his neighborhood.
"I was just YouTube University; it wasn't like I was just hiring a bunch of different people and say, hey, come build this for me. No, this was a labor of love," Gibson said.
He pulled together a business plan for the 7323 Chicago Café that caught the attention of the Chicago Park District, earning him enough grant money to get the cafe up and running. However, it wasn't just about the container, but what he was making inside of it.
"Me trying to create a solution to a problem that I see in my neighborhood, which is, accessibility to healthy food options."
He's got paninis, salads, and fruit smoothies — all homemade recipes made with whole ingredients.
"I thought about how traditionally it's been seen as sort of a food desert. And thinking about I can go anywhere to go get fried chicken, fried fish, french fries, but I didn't know how, how far or how long it would take me to go get a fresh smoothie or a juice, you know, it was kind of redundant, the food scene in this neighborhood"
Gibson clearly wasn't the only one looking for some healthier options. As soon as he opens up, the community starts stopping by.
"I was really impressed that they dropped off a container, and it turned out to be, surprisingly, a restaurant right in the neighborhood. This is very uncommon. This is very cool." Andrés Medrano said.
"It was this idea of creating something that was of quality but yet affordable, something that you could probably make or make yourself, but it just had something extra to it, right?" Chef Q said.
Almost everything has a fresh fruit or veggie in it — except for the ice cream sandwiches.
Gibson developed his menu with new flavors, and the community's palate is expanding with it.
"There's a panini where I use Spanish. But then there's another where i use argula and, you know, i have people come to the window and they're like, what's arugula? And I'm just like, hey, it's just the leafy greens, a little peppery kind of taste, a little aftertaste. But it's really good, you know?"
If the cafe is open, then Chef Q is around to chat about what they're serving.
"And I think the neighborhood needs those beacons of light that hope. And I think if he doesn't recognize that's what he is. Right?"
The 7323 Chicago Café is open Wednesday through Sunday on the corner of Marquette and Woodlawn. It's the third summer they've been open.
Chef Q says they're working on getting connected to the power grid and getting some WiFi to make it a spot to hang out.