With 9th Ward plans still in the works, Wendell Pierce's grocery buisness is planning to make its first foray into quenching New Orleans-area food deserts on the West Bank. The actor's Sterling Farms LLC is getting set to open its first store at Ames and Lapalco in Marrero. But first, they're giving away groceries. From 4-6 p.m. today, Pierce is giving away 500 bags of fresh produce to residents of that area. The Arena Football League, which is touching down in New Orleans this week for Friday's Arena Bowl, is cosponsoring the event. The bags will double as samples of what the store will offer.

That hulking, stately building at the corner of St. Charles and Louisiana Avenues is set to get a Fresh start. After months of renovation, the former funeral home and Borders is set to become the latest installment of the Fresh Market upscale grocery chain. According to the company, the 24,800 sq. ft. store will open at 9 a.m. Wed., July 25.

Chicken Mart is about to get some competition, and they're armed with veggies. Reinforced by a loan from the City that requires stocking fresh food, a new produce and seafood is planning to open in Central City in the near future. DaFresh, which will be located at the corner of Baronne St. and Jackson Ave., will be run by New Orleans native Douglas B. Kariker, a native New Orleanian, and employ eight people.

In today's article about tomorrow's Street Fare Derby, Erica Normand of nolafoodtrucks.com talks about how food trucks supplement grocery stores in food deserts. Well, according to a new report, we need all the help we can get. New Orleans is at the top of the food desert pyramid among American cities, according to News One. The ranking partially reiles on data from the Congressional Hunger Center, which says we now have 20 grocery stores, as compared to 30 before K.

The rumor mill can stop churning now. The old Bord...sorry, former House of Bultman Funeral Home, located Uptown at St. Charles and Louisiana Aves.is going to be a The Fresh Market. Reliable gossip told us that the building was going to be a H&M, a Best Buy, a Trader Joe's or the next home of a really awful cable reality show you could watch on Channel 467. But it is none of those. Instead, the bucolic building is one location of a national chain of health-minded grocery stores that sounds an awful lot like Robert Fresh Market, but isn't. What's the projected opening date? And we thought the rumors were over...

As populations picks up in the Warehouse District, so, too, must the amenities. Rouse's is slated to open on the other side of the CBD in the near future, but for the condo-dwellers closer to the River, there's already a place to buy liquor, groceries, organic produce and even have a coffee. On July 1, Poeyfarre (pronounced poe-e-fare) opened at the site of an old metal fabrication building on the street of the same name.