"Why Grocery Stores Are Avoiding Black Neighborhoods"

[Pitcairn17]

Maxirad:

Have any CAF members been to a supermarket that did/does not sell fresh produce?

Yes. They are known as small bodegas.

In what way is a “small bodega” a “supermarket?” Surely those are very different things.

 

[PaulinVA]

Ok - what American consumer lives near a grocery store – close enough to walk?

I feel bad.

I live within a five minute walk to a grocery store and a super Wal-mart, and ten minute walk to a Target with a grocery section.

I live in a suburb that is 54% white, 18% Asian, 17% hispanic, and about 6% Black.

 

[Sarcelle]

That’s my dream location right there.

 

[PaulinVA]

That’s my dream location right there.

We’ve lived here for about 35 years. We’re really fortunate. Growing up, we told our kids that this is not “normal” and that they lived a life others did not. They certainly found that out when they went away to college.

Oh, did I mention we can walk to a Starbucks?

 

[KMC]

Surely robbery is something you can get grips on, for example using store security, or going back to an old fashioned mom & pop style of selling things over the counter.

I wonder how many of the stores who complain about theft have replaced cashiers by automatic checkouts and such.

If you depersonalize your business, I think it lowers people’s respect and they are more liklely to steal if they can get away with it.

Net earnings for grocery stores are fairly low as a percentage of sales. I looked at Kroger’s annual statement…looks like their earnings are less than 3% of sales. This is why you won’t (usually) find a large grocery store like a Kroger’s in a neighborhood with high theft rates…they can’t make money. Your solution to get rid of automation and add people will add more costs for operation and further reduce relatively low earnings, on top of the theft issue.

You wouldn’t steal from the shop where your aunt works as cashier because that would be like stealing from your aunt.

hmmm…riots in Minneapolis, Seattle and other cities destroyed businesses where people who lived locally worked. I’m not so sure I agree with your hypothesis here.

 

[KMC]

Thank you. I didn’t read the whole article, but I think Republicans should love the housing-choice voucher program since they love school vouchers so much. What about it, Reps? You want poor kids and their families to choose their schools; how about their homes in your neighborhood as well?

I believe the sincerity of the ruling class when I start to see “affordable housing” going up on Martha’s Vineyard (next to the Obamas), or in Chappaqua next to the Clintons, or in Pelosi’s section of San Francisco, or in Beverly Hills next to various social justice warriors, or in Highland Park, TX next to W.

 

[blackforest]

Oh, did I mention we can walk to a Starbucks?

That’s lovely, but where do you get actual coffee? (Dodges tomatoes . . .)

Honestly, the food desert problem exemplifies why we need to think out of the box. Grocery stores won’t open as a charity to people, and our almost exclusive dependence on industrialized food is unstable.

 

[PaulinVA]

Honestly, the food desert problem exemplifies why we need to think out of the box. Grocery stores won’t open as a charity to people, and our almost exclusive dependence on industrialized food is unstable.

There are so many millionaires and billionaires trying to give away their fortunes, you would think a couple of them could get together and form a non-profit grocery chain in underserved areas.

 

[blackforest]

I still believe that the nation at large has grown too dependent on industrialized food and outsiders providing food.

So I don’t know if the solution will come from Above . . . or if anyone should even wait for it. In line with the Ted Talk example I posted above, low-income communities can get innovative. They will need to apply for grants that may depend on billionaire philanthropists. But there are possibilities, including a non-profit, volunteer-run food co-op.

 

[F_Marturana]

I grew up in a city with a supermarket 1 block away, a green grocer around the corner. The green grocer was next door to a German Deli, and a candy store (I guess now they call them bodegas)

Across the street was an Italian salumeria.

At least 2 pizza shops were in a 2 block radius.

And there were three drugstores, a card shop and an ice cream shop. A couple of bakeries.

My mom never learned to drive. She sewed in a dress factory also within walking distance.

We took the bus to visit friends a few neighborhoods away.

And three Catholic parishes in walking distance.

 

[27lw]

I grew up in a city with a supermarket 1 block away, a green grocer around the corner. The green grocer was next door to a German Deli, and a candy store (I guess now they call them bodegas)

Across the street was an Italian salumeria.

At least 2 pizza shops were in a 2 block radius.

And there were three drugstores, a card shop, a bakery and an ice cream shop. A couple of bakeries.

My mom never learned to drive. She sewed in a dress factory also within walking distance.

We took the bus to visit friends a few neighborhoods away.

And three Catholic parishes in walking distance.

Yup, sounds like AnyCity USA before White flight / ultimate suburbanization.
What decade - the 1950s? 60s? 70s?

 

[Nepperhan]

In what way is a “small bodega” a “supermarket?” Surely those are very different things.

Not in many urban areas I have seen!

 

[GKMotley]

I have 2 OP bookstores in mind, in south Minneapolis. Piles of ashes, now. You know how it is.

I worked for a number of bookstores, independent/chain/used/rare, over 14 years. It was obvious to me that the internet would seriously impact that retail line, back around 2000. I still use B&N (I worked for them for 8 years), but I don’t depend on them. Ditto a local used book store run by a friend. Amazon fills my shelves mainly, now.

 

[farronwolf]

This is a super complex problem and it will only get worse in the future.

Businesses have to make money to stay open, it is that simple. As stated in the video, it is more costly to open up a store in an area that is lower income. Big companies looking at long term strategies are not going to look for a property that once they get it purchased and converted will simply loose value the first day of their investment. Also without getting into the theft issues etc, if the people shopping at the stores are only purchasing low margin items that have long shelf lives, the store mitigates their risk. Vegetables and meats and other “fresh” items have higher margins, but they go bad very quickly, so it is pretty risky to stock or sell those when you might get a 15% margin, but end up throwing away or severely discounting 10% because of it going bad.

Not only have we changed as a society due to “white” or suburban flight, we have changed due to the nature of the family.

In my case, I am one of 11 children (yea good Catholic family), mom never worked outside of the house until I was in middle school and she then went to work for my dad in a business he purchased. Every meal I ate at home was made in the kitchen. We drank milk with every meal, soda’s weren’t to be found in our home. We never had chips or candy available. We ate real food that took time to plan and prepare. It took time for mom to research sale items, purchase them, many times stocking up for a long time when there was a good sale. The deep freeze was always full of meat, and some of the God awful pop pies (only prepared food I can remember eating) that mom could catch on sale for 10 for 1 buck. Thankfully, this was a rare thing.

When we lived in Wisconsin they had a 1/2 acre garden and mom canned everything. They would buy beef on the halves with one of my aunt/uncles. This also took planning and time.

So move forward to today. How many families eat nearly every meal made from scratch at home? How many families have a mom or dad that stays home to be able to do this? No where near the number it was when I grew up.

Today it is most common that both parents work, or there is a single parent household. This leaves little time in the day for planning and preparing meals which consist of quality food. The number of restaurants on the main thoroughfares in cities today is another indicator that our eating habits have changed drastically. Heck, now a days folks find it perfectly acceptable to place their grocery order through an app and have it brought out to their car so they don’t even have to step foot in the store.

I could go on and on, but these things just touch the surface of why we have food deserts, and why things are not the same, nor will they be as they were 50 plus years ago. It all boils down to economics and the shift in our mentality as a country since WWII. We all want everything, and want it now, and have given up the way things were done for what is easy.

 

[farronwolf]

I try my best to emulate what my mom and dad did but it is really hard and we only have 1 kid.

We eat at home most of the time but even with the 3 of us there are times when we are like, what do we want to eat this next week. Planning a weeks worth of meals and making certain you have everything at home to do it does take some time.

It is just about time to do my annual smoke. I usually smoke between 150 and 200 lbs of boston butts, brisket and ribs. It takes me 3 days to do it, but that amount will last us for a little over a year.

We have a garden, no where near a 1/2 acre, but we end up giving more of it away than we can eat. I do some canning, but that takes time and if I don’t have the time, I would rather give the stuff away than let it go bad.

Could some of the people in the urban areas plan better so they could have better eating options? I am certain they could. Heck we all could. Could they start community gardens so they help themselves and others, absolutely. However they have to know how, they have to have the tools, and they have to have the time. Then they would have to worry if all of their efforts would be fruitful or if someone else might take all the food or simply destroy the work out of spite.

Americans used to be known for their self sufficiency. That isn’t the case today. Most don’t know anything about gardening, mechanics, construction, finance, you name it. Heck, a good portion of the people don’t even mow their own yard any more. This is evident by the number of landscape companies.

And we wonder why there are areas that can’t support an actual grocery store where someone can buy food to go home and actually prepare.

Like I said, this is a very complicated problem that I don’t see changing during my lifetime.

 

[F_Marturana]

I lived in that city until I was married in 1997. My mom lived there up until 4 or so years ago.

 

[27lw]

That city was like that until 2016? That’s amazing, but I would imagine rather exceptional.

 

[blackforest]

News media focuses on looters the majority of the time, providing a distorted perspective and completely ignoring the peaceful, daytime protesters.

 

[Peeps]

Could some of the people in the urban areas plan better so they could have better eating options? I am certain they could. Heck we all could. Could they start community gardens so they help themselves and others, absolutely.

In our city, there are several community gardens in the “poor” areas of the city, and rich ladies acquired the land, set up the boxes (raised wooden boxes), filled them with soil, prepared the seeds, and distributed the seeds and seedlings to all the interested people in these neighborhoods. They also helped with the planting (not everyone is good at gardening–e.g., anything Peeps plants dies a quick death!), and checked regularly to make sure the gardens had enough water, were weeded, and didn’t get infested with leaf-devouring pests.

But sadly, the gardens never caught on, and I think the rich ladies have given up, and I don’t blame them. If people won’t help themselves when they get a helping hand, then…they don’t deserve the handout.

I’m so sorry that the country is like this. I know there are people who DO accept help and DO have a garden.

There are also plenty of food pantries in our city, including truck food pantries that travel around the poor areas. Lots of the churches have food drives–one of the Assembles of God churches in our city has handed out tens of thousands of bags of groceries during the pandemic (they have a very large church with thousands of members, mostly people living in the “rich” neighborhoods).

I honestly don’t think there is any reason for people in our city to go hungry–there are lots of charitable outreaches.

And I don’t think there will be regular chain grocery stores in these “poor” areas until the street gangs/mobs make it clear that these stores will NEVER be touched and anyone working or shopping at these stores will NEVER be shot on the store property and no one will ever be taken hostage in the parking lot and forced to drive a gang member around town and grant him other…favors.

The ball is in THEIR hands right now–it’s their move, not ours. It makes no sense for anyone to build a playground for street gangs, drug dealers, and mob members to easily take out their victims.

 

[blackforest]

But sadly, the gardens never caught on, and I think the rich ladies have given up, and I don’t blame them. If people won’t help themselves when they get a helping hand, then…they don’t deserve the handout.

Do you believe the residents are just being lazy and apathetic? If so, let’s not jump to conclusions. Community gardens take a lot of work. I speak from direct experience. Raised beds require daily hand watering if irrigation isn’t established, as well as regular weeding. Juggling one or more jobs - especially blue-collar ones - can exhaust a person to a state of not wanting to garden. People with untreated substance abuse probably won’t show up regularly. Community gardens work, but only with a long-term sustainable plan. Do-gooders just planting them and running won’t do the trick.

I honestly don’t think there is any reason for people in our city to go hungry–there are lots of charitable outreaches.

Food banks are actually struggling right now with increased demands from COVID-19. Just a friendly reminder to donate if you can.