Staffing is a family affair at El Progreso Market in Mount Pleasant. While Meris Ramos sits behind the counter, her parents and her teenage kids can be found working, as customers shop for homemade chorizo, horchata mix, and prayer candles.
Since her family came to the U.S. from El Salvador in the 1980s, hard work has been their way of life.
“That’s how we started—cleaning houses and offices. We come from a working family,” Ramos said.
While El Progreso has been around since the ’80s, the Ramos family took it over around 20 years ago. Today, the market stands as one of D.C.’s last options for Latino customers shopping for tastes of home.
Photo by Sydney Carroll
“We have [customers] from Central, South America. We have Caribbeans. We have Africans. It’s a little bit of everything—and the whole neighborhood as well,” Ramos said.
This diverse customer base comes as D.C. has experienced some of the most intense gentrification in the country over the last 50 years, with Black residents making up 71% of the city’s population in 1970, but only 43.4% today. At the same time, D.C.’s population of non-Black minorities has increased. In 1970, Asians made up less than 1% of the District, and “persons of Spanish descent” were around 2.1%. As of 2025, Asian and Latino residents comprise 5.5% and 12.6% of D.C., respectively. D.C.’s immigrant population has also grown, from just 4% of the city in 1970 to 15% as of 2024.
Despite a growth in immigrant and non-Black minority populations, D.C.’s supply of ethnic grocery stores has shrunk. Pushed out by high rents and increased competition with large chains, many of D.C.’s historic, immigrant-owned grocery stores have been forced to shut their doors.
This has lasting consequences for the shoppers they leave behind, who are now forced to trek into Maryland and Virginia to find the imported ingredients they use every day. Senior residents in Chinatown, for example, board buses chartered by Wah Luck Adult Day Care Center and ride 30 minutes, foldable shopping carts in tow, to shop for Chinese foods and products at Great Wall Supermarket in Falls Church, Virginia.
Nestled inside Union Market behind doors painted red, white, and green is A. Litteri, an Italian market selling imported Italian oils, sauces, and snacks, and serving up their own homemade subs, sausage, and cannolis. Owner Max Evans, who acquired the business in 2020 after selling wines to the original family owners, said that even though the neighborhood around it has changed, the store’s legacy is still intact.
Photo by Sydney Carroll
“We opened 100 years ago,” Evans said. “There was an Italian community that doesn’t really exist so much in the city anymore, but there was at the time, and we’ve been here since then.”
A. Litteri is one of the few ethnic grocery stores left standing in Union Market, which has seen an exodus of working-class ethnic retailers in exchange for chains and private equity-backed ventures. The area, then known as Florida Avenue Market, was pitched for redevelopment in 2009 by the DC Office of Planning.
For much of its history, Union Market’s vendors were mostly “Jewish, Italian and Greek wholesalers, groups eventually succeeded by African, Chinese and Korean immigrants,” according to The Washington Post’s Metro section. This all changed with its renewal. While the market “represents a very diverse and unique pocket of D.C.,” the Office wrote in the 2009 study that the market had come under “substantial pressure” to be redeveloped.
A. Litteri has been able to stay afloat; however, many other longstanding Asian and African wholesale vendors have been priced out in the “redevelopment” process.
A. Litteri was once a centerpiece of D.C.’s Italian-American community, but today its customer base is more eclectic.
“We still have a lot of older customers that come in that are of Italian descent, for sure, but we are a mix of everybody,” Evans said. “I try to keep it as much like it always was as I can, while also catering to a different clientele that didn’t exist in this neighborhood historically.”
Beyond changing demographics of those living in the city and shopping at these markets, recent federal actions have also disproportionately impacted local grocery stores and their clientele. Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has cracked down on the city and, according to the most up-to-date data, deported over 12,000 individuals in the D.C. area between January and October 2025. This has impacted businesses across D.C., and El Progreso is no exception.
“A lot of customers have been deported,” Ramos said. “And people are just scared. Some come from Maryland, and [deportations] are still going on in the [outskirts] of D.C.”
However, she said that the community in Mount Pleasant—an area in D.C. with a large Latino population—has stepped up to support El Progreso.
“We haven’t felt it, due to the fact that I think the community here in Mount Pleasant resists,” Ramos said. “We’re just fortunate. We’re very lucky that we’re here in Mount Pleasant, the community is great.”
The key to survival, both stores’ owners say, is this community support. Evans says that A. Litteri is “the busiest that we’ve ever been,” and that they feel incredibly lucky to be in that position. Ramos, too, pointed to the support she’s felt from her neighborhood.
In an age where massive chains and big-box vendors dominate the space, keeping small stores alive is a conscious effort.
“If you need something, instead of going to the big Giant or Safeway, you can just help your community, moms and pop markets,” Ramos said.
