Cautiously Hopeful: Growth Ahead, and a $25M Lever Aimed at Food Deserts

Here’s a number that ought to encourage anyone who owns a storefront on a South Jersey main street: half of small business owners now expect their revenue to climb over the next three months. Fifty percent — the highest reading of optimism recorded all year, according to the latest Q3 2026 survey.

But I’ve covered enough business cycles to know you read the whole page, not just the headline. Tucked right underneath that optimism is a quieter, more sober number: only 24% of those same owners say they’re extremely or very confident in the U.S. economy overall — down hard from 36% just a quarter earlier. So what you’ve got is a South Jersey shopkeeper who believes in her own shop, her own regulars, her own next ninety days — while keeping one eye on the horizon and one hand on the brakes.

The confidence of people who run lean

That tension is the real story of small business in New Jersey right now, and it’s an honest one. More than half of owners — 51% — point to inflation and cost management as their single biggest challenge, ahead of general economic uncertainty at 43% and the ongoing grind of finding new customers at 39%. On top of that, employers keep telling the same story I hear from Mount Laurel to Vineland: the qualified workers are hard to find, and harder to keep.

The confidence isn’t naïve. It’s the confidence of people who’ve learned to run lean, watch every invoice, and still bet on themselves.Mason Carter

A $25 million lever from Trenton

The more interesting development this past week came from Trenton, and it’s the kind of policy move that actually touches this region directly. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority announced it will auction up to $25 million in tax credits through its Food Desert Relief Tax Credit Auction. The mechanics are clever: corporate taxpayers and insurance companies buy the credits — knocking up to 15% off their New Jersey tax bill — and the proceeds get channeled into programs that expand access to healthy, affordable food across the state’s 50 designated Food Desert Communities.

Why does that matter to us? Because South Jersey has skin in this game. Camden sits among the communities the state has long flagged for exactly this kind of food-access gap — neighborhoods where a full-service grocery store is a genuine hardship to reach. A $25 million pool aimed at closing that gap isn’t a rounding error. It’s grocery projects, cold storage, delivery of fresh food into places that have gone without. And a company doesn’t have to be in the food business, or even located in a food desert, to buy in — that broad eligibility is how the state gets to $25 million instead of $5 million.

I’ll be honest about the limits, too. Optimism surveys move month to month, and a tax-credit auction is a tool, not a finished grocery store. The proof is whether shovels go in the ground and shelves get stocked in the neighborhoods that need it. But put the two stories side by side and you get a fair picture of the South Jersey business landscape heading into fall: owners who believe in the next quarter more than they believe in the macro forecast, and a state quietly pulling a lever that, if it works, puts fresh food and new commerce where both have been scarce.

Cautiously hopeful. In this economy, from where I sit, that’s not a bad place to stand.

Based on reporting from New Jersey Business Magazine, NJBIA, WHYY, and the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.