Grid Magazine

11/26/2025

NextFab Holiday Gift Guide: Personalized & Keepsake Gifts
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Shop gifts that can be customized or are meant to be cherished for years.

Featuring:
m.a.b.e.l
Niki Leist Jewelry
Letterportrait by HAYATO

➡️ View the full 2025 NextFab Holiday Gift Guide at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/nextfab-holiday-gift-guide-2025/

11/25/2025

🍫 Ebo Nunoo’s grandfather was part of a generations-long line of cocoa farmers in rural Ghana. In search of more opportunity, he moved his family to Accra, the nation’s capital, and became a shoemaker. Decades later, his grandson Ebo left Accra for the United States to attend college and find his own opportunities. It’s unlikely that any family member would have predicted that the profession Nunoo would eventually pursue would involve Ghanaian cocoa.

Ebo Nunoo’s path to becoming a chocolatier was anything but direct. Unable to afford completing his college degree in Illinois, Nunoo and his older brother went East looking for work, eventually settling in Philadelphia. Nunoo married and built a corporate career in client relations, brokerage services and retirement portfolio management. The birth of their daughter in 2018 led Nunoo and his wife to examine their hectic two-career lifestyle. “I realized I wanted to start living the life that I wanted our daughter to see me in. For me, that life meant to slow down, to be present, to be with her and with my family.”

His first step was enrolling in the entrepreneurship program at Temple University to complete his undergraduate degree. The idea for Xoxoa came to him as a byproduct of a business competition he won at the Fox School of Business. He then began a multiyear immersion in all things chocolate.

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/xoxoa-chocolate-brings-entrepreneur-back-to-his-roots/

✍️ Marilyn Anthony
📸 Tracie Van Auken

11/24/2025

🎛️ Modern and boxy, with a silver exterior and sharp, clean edges, it’s hard to believe that Kitchen Korners in Mayfair used to be a run-of-the-mill Northeast Philadelphia garage. What’s inside is just as surprising: a state-of-the-art kitchen facility, where local entrepreneurs, caterers, food packagers and other like-minded culinary purveyors can create their products safely and cleanly.

An independently owned, shared-use, multipurpose food contractor business, Kitchen Korners is the brainchild of Alonzo Coates, a local businessman looking to transform the Philly culinary industry by helping fledgling food entrepreneurs launch their businesses.

“We know how difficult a process this can be and we want to offer people a better way to be successful,” he says.

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/kitchen-korners-incubates-philly-culinary-businesses/

✍️ Daniel Sean Kaye
📸 Jared Gruenwald

11/21/2025

NextFab Holiday Gift Guide: Philly Holiday Jawns
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Shop items that capture the heart, humor, and iconic sights of Philly — perfect for decking your halls or gifting a piece of home.

Featuring:
Girl Holding a Pen
Jawnaments
G + RIZZ
Fishtown Signs

➡️ View the full 2025 NextFab Holiday Gift Guide at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/nextfab-holiday-gift-guide-2025/

11/20/2025

11/20/2025

🌱 Moving to a new home is a chore. Now imagine relocating an entire farm.

That’s what the folks at Truelove Seeds did in March — for the third time in nine years — when they moved to a two-acre plot at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Roxborough.

Owen Taylor, cofounder of the Philadelphia-based seed company, on a hot morning in mid-July, says that until now, the seed growers had “never felt permanent anywhere,” but this new farm could finally be a long-term home. Truelove Seeds signed a 10-year lease on the land, with a five-year renewal option. Taylor says one of the best parts of the move is that this site is a 15-minute drive from Truelove’s Germantown office, significantly closer than any of their previous farms.

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/treulove-seeds-moves-to-schuylkill-center/

✍️ Luke Carneal
📸 Tracie Van Auken

11/19/2025

NextFab Holiday Gift Guide: Artful Lighting & Wall Decor
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Shop pieces focused on illumination, display, or large-scale decoration.

Featuring:
HAYATO
Chachi Studios
Maria Schneider Arte
Ly & Lines
Brick & Wire
nothing unwanted

➡️ View the full 2025 NextFab Holiday Gift Guide at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/nextfab-holiday-gift-guide-2025/

11/18/2025

📝 Editor’s Notes: Tuning In 📝

On Sunday afternoon I made the mistake of turning on a football game. For twenty minutes I sat on the sofa and watched about 18 minutes of advertisements and replays interspersed with about two minutes of actual game play. I used to spend hours doing this on Sundays, but over the past 20 years, I’ve lost my taste for it. These days I prefer getting outside on a beautiful afternoon (or doing just about anything) to sitting passively while the networks and the NFL rent my eyeballs to advertisers. After a few minutes, I turned off the TV and went outside, happy to have escaped, but it was a healthy reminder that this is what we’re up against, and it made me thankful for media like “Planet Philadelphia.”

Grid was created in 2008 to fill a void in the local media landscape — to provide environmental news and information on how Philadelphians can live more sustainably. “Planet Philadelphia,” profiled by Daniel Sean Kaye in this issue, launched on G-Town Radio 10 years ago to fill a similar void on local radio.

But “void” might not be the right word. It’s not only that there isn’t enough sustainability content out there, but that the preponderance of media in general offers a message of consumption and complacency that threatens the environment. This isn’t just a matter of the news focusing on other topics or the American Petroleum Institute running ads glorifying fossil fuels. The advertisement for a luxury SUV that runs at the two-minute warning of an Eagles game, or for an airline during a timeout, are messages to keep burning fossil fuels.

➡️ Read the full note from our editor at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/planet-philadelphia-is-the-cure-for-mainstream-media/

✍️ Bernard Brown

11/17/2025

💡 Given the sweeping cuts to the tax credits that were part of the federal budget bill, and all the clean energy funding cancellations and rescissions by the Trump administration, you might assume that the solar industry would be down in the dumps and busily preparing to shut down. Indeed, some solar developers are preparing for bankruptcy, and in fact, several companies, including Posigen, a very key player in the Philadelphia region, have already laid off many of their employees.

The solar industry has been on this roller coaster before. In 1980, when President Jimmy Carter was replaced by Ronald Reagan, solar water heating was the primary casualty. (At the time, solar photovoltaics [PV], or solar electricity, were still expensive and had not yet become popular.) Reagan’s sudden withdrawal of federal support for the emerging solar industry caused massive changes, with local businesses closing left and right, investment moving to Germany and the United States losing its advantage as the global leader in solar. Then in 2012, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding was not renewed, Pennsylvania experienced a similar 180-degree turn, with a sudden drop in support for both energy efficiency and solar. The Mid-Atlantic Solar and Storage Industries Association estimates that many solar companies either closed or left the state at that time due to the lack of favorable state policies for renewable energy in PA.

The current about-face in federal policy has echoes of these earlier shocks, with one very big difference: solar PV is now the cheapest and fastest form of energy in the world. This means that solar can outcompete fossil fuels on a level playing field. That said, in Pennsylvania we do not have a level playing field — the state provides more than $3.5 billion in subsidies to fossil fuels annually — and so we will see more solar businesses go under in Pennsylvania, or move away to greener pastures.

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/a-path-forward-for-solar-in-pennsylvania/

✍️ Liz Robinson
📸 Alexa Fraiman

11/14/2025

NextFab Holiday Gift Guide: Functional Home Decor
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Shop gifts that bring style and smarts to a space, helping you organize, elevate, and get things done.

Featuring:
Scrapyard Aesthetics
Compass Rose Spatial Design
True Love Carpentry
Tombino
Loma Living
Grace Choi
Untitled_Co

➡️ View the full 2025 NextFab Holiday Gift Guide at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/nextfab-holiday-gift-guide-2025/

11/13/2025

🏠 As Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s $2 billion housing plan moves forward, heated debates continue about another set of municipal housing proposals that could transform Philadelphia tenants’ rights.

In June 2025, Philadelphia’s City Council considered three housing bills, collectively known as the Safe Healthy Homes Act. The package was introduced by Nicolas O’Rourke, an at-large council member who belongs to the Working Families Party.

One of the bills authorized the city to create a fund for tenants to relocate if their buildings are condemned by city inspectors. It was signed into law, though it remains unclear how the fund will be financed.

The other two bills stalled. One was an ordinance that would broadly strengthen tenants’ rights, and the other – known as the Right to Repairs — would shift how Philadelphia ensures housing is safe for tenants, empowering the City to proactively inspect rentals for housing code violations.

These bills deal with housing policy, but they’re also matters of public health.

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/rental-inspection-program-improves-health/

✍️ Gabriel L. Schwartz, Ph.D.
📸 Photo courtesy of Ta’Liyah Thomas, Philadelphia City Council

11/12/2025

NextFab Holiday Gift Guide: Statement & Unique Jewelry
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Shop pieces with a distinct style, often incorporating unconventional materials or themes.

Featuring:
NOSHADE
no. 27 collection
Niki Leist Jewelry
Virginia DeNale Jewelry
ArtesinA

➡️ View the full 2025 NextFab Holiday Gift Guide at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/11/01/nextfab-holiday-gift-guide-2025/