How one woman is helping feed Kensington's families: "I can't walk around here and not do something"
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Kensington is one of Philadelphia's most challenging neighborhoods.
As Margaux Murphy explains it, "All you hear about in the news is the opioid crisis. A place that looks the same day or night, known for its open-air drug market."
But when Murphy looks past the stigma, she sees the community's people.
"It doesn't occur to people that there are children and full communities here that are existing through all of that," Murphy said.
Murphy knows the Kensington community by heart. In 2022, she planted her Greater Goods grocery store under the "L" at Kensington and East Allegheny avenues after closing her lucrative cleaning business.
Nichole Cook was one of Murphy's first customers.
"I was homeless and I was in active addiction for about 10 years when I started working a few doors down at the Mural Arts storefront and this place," Cook said, "it helped me get my life back together."
Before Cook became addicted to heroin, she was a veterinary technician. After living in the Lehigh encampment for close to three years, Cook is now clean and employed, but still has her struggles.
Thanks to Murphy, she can grocery shop in a place that feels like home.
However, not everyone who shops at Greater Goods is living on the streets or dealing with addiction. Some customers are families just trying to get by.
"I can't walk around here and not do something," Murphy said. "I am this close to being in this situation. I live paycheck to paycheck."
Murphy knows much of the population she serves at her free grocery store through her nonprofit Sunday Love.
"I was supposed to do a volunteer event on Christmas in 2014," she said. "I overslept, I woke up I felt like a terrible human being. I went to Boston Market, I bought a bunch of meals, I gave them out in this neighborhood."
Those 12 meals became 300, but she wanted to do more.
"I want [people] to go home, put a meal on the table for the kids and have some quality time together and not feel destitute and poor," Murphy said.
She now serves up to 150 families Monday through Friday at Greater Goods, though her goal is to get families to a point where they're not relying on the store every week.
When entering the store, each customer is given 20 poker chips equivalent to 20 points. Shoppers then use those points to pick up the items they need.
Murphy hopes the love that's inside her store will spread throughout the streets of Kensington, and people like Cook will no longer need her assistance so she can close Greater Goods for good.
"I hope that we are run out of business someday," Murphy said. "That we are no longer needed."