Salad shouldn’t be a delicacy.

For most families, it’s not. And now fresh vegetables and lean meat will no longer be out of reach for the Chicago neighborhood Englewood, labeled a “food desert” for lack of supermarkets much beyond the couple of grocery aisles in the drugstore or the corner liquor store.

That’s because a long-anticipated Whole Foods US:WFM opened there Wednesday, while a new Starbucks started serving espresso a few doors down, all part of a plan first announced in 2013.

The typically upscale Whole Foods will occupy an 18,000-square-foot store in the newly constructed Englewood Square shopping complex during a notably violent year in the neighborhood, one of the city’s poorest—it served as the setting for Spike Lee’s controversial “Chiraq” movie, and median household income is under $20,000, according to Census data.

The grocery chain will offer the organic produce, unique and traditional pantry items, an indoor cafe and a lengthy menu of prepared food for takeout, a model it largely uses no matter where it operates. At the announced launch three years ago, executives said they would be able to trim typical prices for the neighborhood because of a smaller footprint and lower negotiated wholesale costs. German-owned discount grocery Aldi, with its no-frills format, does operate a store a few blocks from the new development.

See:How Aldi stacks up to its cousin Trader Joe’s for your grocery needs

According to the Chicago Tribune, 85 of Whole Foods’ 100 workers are from the city’s south side, 35 of them from Englewood itself. Plus, some 40 local vendors and suppliers are doing business with a new neighbor known for stocking its shelves with artisanal coffee, cheeses and more.

In fact, 35 Englewood-made products, which include baked goods, beauty items and more, will be stocked. For some of these vendors, securing a Whole Foods contract allows them to boost their own staffing, which means that officials are claiming 200 neighborhood jobs newly created as a result of the Starbucks and Whole Foods openings.

Read:Why supermarkets want to sell you ugly fruits and vegetables

Englewood Square is a $20 million project financed with a combination of city land subsidies, crowdfunding and federal tax credits.

The project aims to show that people in the community desire and deserve high-quality goods and services, Leon Walker, managing partner of DL3 Realty, the developer of the shopping complex, told the Tribune.

“We hope that it’s the rock in the pond that creates the ripple effect,” Walker told the paper. (A relatively recent Whole Foods opening in Detroit has, anecdotally, been reported to have made progress toward several of its desired social aims in a community with similar demographics to those on much of Chicago’s south side.)

In Englewood, 89% of 16- to 19-year-olds and 72% of 20- to 24-year-olds did not have jobs in 2014, according to the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute.

Read:Good news for the rest of the U.S. — Chicago’s crime plague isn’t contagious

Expanding into underserved areas is far from untested for Starbucks. Its Englewood store is part of a pledge the coffee vendor made last year to open in 15 low- and medium-income communities nationwide by 2018.

It has opened locations in Ferguson, Mo.; Phoenix; and the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens in New York. It just announced plans for locations in underserved Baltimore; Miami; Seattle; Long Beach, Calif.; and Birmingham, Ala., neighborhoods.

From the archive:Whole Foods to sprout from food desert on Chicago’s south side