You're collapsing "demand" into "they must not want it" instead of "the size of the demand doesn't match the minimal demand needed for the economics."
Grocery stores are very low-margin. They basically only work at scale. You need a lot of space, and a lot of customers. Those two factors combine to eliminate numerous areas where demand for the product otherwise exists. Not enough customers and/or not enough physical space available.
And constrained by either space, or customer count, you've got some hard choices to make.
Produce, fruit, fresh meat, etc are not high-profit items for grocery stores (They're often high-margin, but spoilage destroys net profit). You need a certain amount of turn-over to make the math work.
On top of turn-over, you need to be selling a lot of high-profit goods to make up for all the offsets in a grocery business. In low-income neighborhoods, how many customers will you have for deli products with high-markups? Or Prepared Foods? Hell, with EBT rules, a lot of high-margin goods can't even be bought by your core customer. You can't buy alcohol with EBT, for instance, and that's a huge chunk of profit for modern grocery stores.
And without all those healthy margin items, your labor costs need to be incredibly low.
What are you left with? Shelf-stable, low-quantity, bulk-purchased items in a densely packed store with the lowest possible labor costs.
> Grocery stores are very low-margin. They basically only work at scale.
> You need a lot of space, and a lot of customers.
That contradicts most of human history and is still wrong today.
In fact for most of history most people walked to a small store that had some fresh products outside and you just pick them up.
The problem is that in the US you force stores into these commercial zones that are separated from housing zones and force people to drive there.
Countries that are much poorer then the US have systems where almost everybody can get pretty easy access to a store and that store usually had fresh products.
Me and a friend walk threw some back allies in Haifa Israel and walked right up to a little store with some fresh fruit and most of what you need. Yet, such stores don't exist in US suberbia.
I'm living here in US suburbia (California) and it is literally (measured using google maps) 600ft to the nearest store that sells some groceries and 1300ft to the nearest full-size supermarket. And the second full-size supermaket is about 2000ft away.
That may be the case in your location, but you can go look at zonening maps and its not the case. Many city have 80 or sometimes 90% of R1 zoning where no grocery stores are allowed.
And it also shows up in data showing how many less then 5mile trips are maybe by car in the US and grocery shopping is one of the major drivers of such trips.
Living in several areas of US suburbia as well, I was nearing my 30s before I lived in a place with grocery stores that I could even bike to, let alone walk. My quality of life increased drastically when I was finally able to walk/bike to the store. Walkable suburbia exists in the US, but it’s not the norm. Don’t take it for granted :)
> Living in several areas of US suburbia as well, I was nearing my 30s before I lived in a place with grocery stores that I could even bike to, let alone walk.
I read this a lot so I believe it, but haven't really experienced it. I've lived in a couple places on the east coast and multiple places in California and only once there hasn't been one or more supermarkets within walking distance. And that one place was quite rural so it was not comparable to any suburbs.
>The problem is that in the US you force stores into these commercial zones that are separated from housing zones and force people to drive there.
Yeah, but this is just an inconvenience. There is no reason why there should be an issue to drive 1 or 2 or 8 miles to get a good deal on healthy food. Even if you don't have a car, find a friend or church that does.
As I've said elsewhere, my relatives lived in the middle of nowhere, and had to travel 60 miles - an hour and a half each way - to go to the Costco to stock up on staples.
You have to drive for 15 minutes to a grocery store??? Oh, misery. The world is coming to an end.
We need to get someone here to peel my grapes and feed them to me, place them in my mouth one-by-one so that I have to do nothing. I just want to be treated as a Roman emperor, I live in the USA...isn't that everyone's right?
Needing community support to buy 1kg of carrots is kind of insane.
> As I've said elsewhere, my relatives lived in the middle of nowhere, and had to travel 60 miles - an hour and a half each way - to go to the Costco to stock up on staples.
That's a very exceptional situation and not really representative of how most people live.
> You have to drive for 15 minutes to a grocery store??? Oh, misery. The world is coming to an end.
Well yes, polluting the world with inefficient land use forcing 100s of millions to drive everytime they want to buy milk is a problem.
This is specially a problem when you can only go when you don't have to work and maybe at those time there is also traffic. So you only go once a week or every 2 weeks, meaning you end up buying less perishable foods.
15min, lol, in 15min I walk to the shop, buy something and I'm back home already.
Also, simply complaining that people are how they are isn't helpful, its just a reality of the situation. You can either have an urban planning and infrastructure policy that supports what makes people lives better, or you don't.
As long as I can have someone peeling my grapes and feeding them to my\e one at a time, I'll be happy. I just cannot be incovenienced, it is the right of all Americans.
I really don't understand your attitude or even the point you are trying.
You act like suberbia exists without infrastructure and to support the live-style you advocate nothing needs to happen, its just free.
And what I am advocating is somehow a privilege that all Americans should be granted and this privilege is a luxury.
This is the exact opposite. A society driving every time they have to buy basic items, large roads connecting to even larger connecting roads connecting to absurdly huge parking lots going into gigantic grocery store to buy basic food comes at an absurd cost.
Please actually inform yourself on the cost of those infrastructures, there is a reason most US towns are basically bankrupt. Why so many roads in the US are falling apart, because you simply can't afford it with the property taxes the city produces. The amount of infrastructure required here is a gigantic privilege and the results can be seen in places like Detroit.
However the more dense mixed use development I advocate for is actually a huge efficient. Its less pollution, produces more taxes then it consumes, less traffic and so on.
There are good data visualization that prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, check out Urban3 (they have lots of resources on YT and other places presenting these results to cites): https://www.urbanthree.com/
You are talking about city infrastructure and stuff that I'm not talking about. If you want to have a utterly completely different conversation about tearing down every single house and every single road, and do a big do-over, I guess we can do that.
But I'm just talking about how poor people can buy a tuna fish sandwich, dude.
Luckily, this is literally the only inconvenience that poor Americans face, and very manageable with all their free time. /s
Growing up, it took us 45 min one-way to drive to the closest grocery store my parents could afford. Thankfully we had enough space in the house to buy in bulk, but unfortunately that doesn’t help you with fresh produce. Did it kill us? No. Was it a shitty way to live? Yes. Even as a kid I recognized the stress it put on my mom.
I now live a mile from a grocery store, so I usually walk or bike there. Shockingly, it’s much easier to stay healthy and regularly eat fresh foods this way.
I don't understand - was this 45 minutes in a car or public transportation like a bus?
If you didn't have a car, make a friend. Find a friend that has a car that you can shop with. It's not that difficult and people like to help other people.
I don't know about your produce, but in my family, we all went to the orchards and picked our own. then we would freeze and can for 2 entire days.
My parents would buy an entire cow (we had a very big family), and hire a butcher to cut it up, and we put all that in two freezers we had in our garage.
Everything can be done, it just takes work and imagination to figure out how. I know, I've been there too.
And as I mentioned elsewhere, many in my family have lived in the middle of nowhere, and had to drive 1 1/2 hours to go to Costco. They did this about once per month and load up on the staples - bulk buying.
Actually, frozen and canned produce is much better nutritionally. This is because the produce is picked at it's peak nutritional value and taste. For fresh produce, a lot of times it is picked early because of transportation times.
I have a bunch of frozen and canned fruits and vegetables, they are great.
I could go on all day about what one can do. But it falls on deaf ears, all the time, like yours. Instead of being open, you shut completely down. Instead of saying, "Wow, how interesting, I don't think it can be done, but I want to know how you do it." But no, you answer with a sarcastic remark, so I know where you are at, mentally. Which is closed down and defensive.
I remember talking to a friend of mine - I told her she should purchase her next pair of prescription glasses at Zenni optical for $15-$40 for frames and lenses. I must have told her at least 6 to 8 times in our conversations, as we saw each other daily. She asked me how to save money, so not like I forced it on her. Well, after all our discussions, she went into a local optomitrist and spend $500+ on her glasses. Trust me, she was poor as f. This is why the poor stay poor. Even when I tried to help, she self sabotages. And this is by far the only person I've had this experience with, people who ask my help, and I give my opinion, and then they go off and blow their money anyways.
The point is that people don't care if you have suggestions of how to make their lives easier. They would rather do it the same way, even if it takes 45 minutes one way instead of finding a friend with a car to carpool with. Again, I don't know if that was your case, but other people have said they can't do anything because they have to ride public transportation.
It is sad, because here I am on this post, offering my assistance, and most of what I'm getting is vitriol, instead of people trying to learn, or even consider what I'm saying and simply ask questions to me as to how it is done.
My guy, your tone and your insistence on the laziness and self-sabotaging tendencies of the poor would lend one to believe that you’re not being entirely altruistic. But fine, benefit of the doubt granted.
Of course it’s possible to eat healthily when poor, and I can appreciate your suggestions, but your example itself has demonstrated that it’s time-consuming and logistically difficult. It’s very fortunate that your family had the money and space to be able to buy in bulk, but you must recognize that this isn’t an option for everyone, especially on a strict budget. It’s also fortunate that your family lived close to orchards and had the space and free time to spend canning foods for later.
Please try to imagine how your solutions would be accomplished by someone who was already struggling with some of the other problems of being poor, such as lack of access to childcare, transportation, and/or medical care. It’s not impossible to manage all these things, but even with the suggestions you’ve provided, it’s another drain on one’s time and energy. Nobody wants that for their friends/family.
Zenni is legit though: quick, cheap, and passable quality. I tell everyone about them too. Weird that your friend didn’t decide to use them. I wonder if her optometrist warned her against the competition?
I'm being explicit about what "demand" means, and how the economics of grocery stores intersect with things like physical space, infrastructure, government regulation, etc. lest someone think "there's not enough demand" means "poor people just don't want affordable, nutritious food."
There can be plenty of demand for a quality grocery store, but not enough square footage available to support a store that sells the volume and mix of goods necessary to create a profitable business.
There can be plenty of square footage, and relatively high demand but not enough literal humans in the area to support it.
And there can be enough space, and enough people, but infrastructure problems which create uneven costs on the business.
I understand what you're saying, but, a priori, how can you say the existence of food deserts is because of reason X vs. Y.
For instance, the poorest Americans drink the most sugary drinks [0]. I can accept there may be other reasons for the existence of food deserts, but to outright dismiss that preferences might differ across incomes without any evidence feels like an argument made purely out of ideology.
Growing up poor, my house and the houses of my friends basically had three options – milk, sugary drinks and water. And milk was rationed like it was war.
Sugary drinks are cheap, shelf-stable and dense with calories.
When you don't have a lot of better options for calories, they fit the bill. It's not preference, it's survival.
We know that despite the difference in sugary drink consumption, obesity doesn't vary in population sets [0]:
"… evidence from 4 nationally representative US surveys has shown that populations who frequently consume sugar-sweetened beverages do not have a higher obesity rate or risk than populations who infrequently consume these beverages."
… which makes sense if sugary drinks are replacing calories that would otherwise be found in better foods.
I'd recommend spending some time with working-class people before adopting any belief which treats them as fundamentally different than higher-income people in terms of preferences.
Sugary beverages have been correlated with obesity and weight gain in multiple other studies, however. One thing that’s interesting having read a few of these is that there are often contradictory results when doing meta-analysis of multiple studies.
Having empathy on a subject is definitely important. But it’s also important not to take an argument personally and not let personal anecdotes influence you more than they warrant. We’re not really talking about every poor person here and we’re not talking about your childhood friends. We’re mostly talking in generalizations about broad demographic trends.
The importance of the study I linked is that it examined consumption in low-income populations, and not the broader public.
As my point was that sugary drinks are often a form of caloric replacement, and not preference, for low-income people – as was my lived experience – the study was relevant as it's the type of result you'd expect were that to be the case.
I was not arguing that sugary drinks don't contribute to obesity in the general public.
I too grew up poor and we never had soft drinks. Instead my mom would make us kool-aid on occasion. We almost exclusively ate at home, from food my mom prepared. We did have a kitchen, so if you don’t have access to a kitchen your options are limited.
I've followed your comments in this thread. You'd benefit from educating yourself on the subject of food deserts it is not an unknown or new subject. There are hundreds of studies that explain how and why food deserts exist and why poor people make the decision that they do.
From the stores perspective, I can imagine that there are a few reasons why it can make sense for them to move out of impoverished areas even while demand exists there.
Wealthy customers who can easily travel to stores in impoverished areas are turned off by poor conditions and higher crime rates and will shop elsewhere. They may also feel less comfortable shopping in areas where the majority of the other customers are of a different race or culture. The stores and staff may themselves experience increases in theft, vandalism, and violence in low income areas. Stores can't sell as many overpriced items in low income areas where the majority of their clientele are struggling to afford necessities.
It really doesn't matter that a store can make a healthy profit by serving customers who live in a low income area. If that same store feels that they could make even greater profits by being in an area with wealthier customers, then that is exactly what we must expect they will do.
One of the main indicators of in the study you linked was sales volume, i.e. demand.
> It really doesn't matter that a store can make a healthy profit by serving customers who live in a low income area. If that same store feels that they could make even greater profits by being in an area with wealthier customers
This only holds true if a chain can open a fixed amount of stores. In reality, they can open as many stores as they want provided that the stores operate profitably.
> One of the main indicators of in the study you linked was sales volume, i.e. demand.
Sales is a poor measure of demand, because there are a lot of other factors that impact sales, but stores in low income areas certainly face demand problems in some ways. Demand for expensive products that might sell well in other areas will be much lower in neighborhoods where few people can ever afford them.
A store in a low income area is also insulated since fewer people from outside of the immediate area will come to shop there and many will deliberately avoid shopping there. That's certain to impact sales.
> In reality, they can open as many stores as they want provided that the stores operate profitably.
As long as they can continuously open stores, it would still make them the most money to limit themselves to the most profitable areas right? As long as they have the option to open a new store in a wealthy neighborhood where they can make the most sales and highest profits, why should they open one in an impoverished neighborhood? I live in a pretty nice area and there are five grocery stores within 10 minutes of my house (two owned by the same company), and that's not not counting stores like target/walmart that also sell groceries and are less than 10 minutes away!
Never mind that the paper specifically calls attention to profitability, you seem to believe businesses have access to unlimited capital, provided they can show a profit?
I've looked at food deserts on maps. There are places that have no good grocery stores around, but there ARE good grocery stores 5 or 8 miles away. If you have a car, drive there. If you don't have a car, find someone - friend, church - who does and stock up when you go there.
My relatives lived in a food desert, but it was not in a city. They lived in the middle of nowhere. Rural. They were in an actual food desert, they had to drive 1 hour each way once a month to stock up at Costco. But they didn't bitch about how they were in a "food desert".
There are always solutions. They might take extra work...but so what?
Here in California, we have a store called The 99 Cent Only Store, which is a dollar store. A dollar store is where almost everything is a dollar. They HAVE had to raise their prices because of inflation, but so have all other grocery stores. A good dollar store is awesome to save money, if you buy the right stuff. It is awesome. I can buy blackberries there for $1, while at a regular supermarket they charge $3 or more. This is a 300% return on one's money to buy it at the dollar store. I can go into a dollar store and fill 3 grocery bags full of food that would only be half of one bag at a regular supermarket.
Mine has all kinds of other cool stuff, too. Buy a can opener for $1, rather than $5 or $8 at a supermarket - that is a 500% to 800% return on your money right there. Wouldn't you like to get 500-800% return on your money in the stock market? That's exactly what it is, exactly the same. Except if you sell your stocks, you have to pay taxes on them, but when you save money, you pay no taxes on saved money.
What is so difficult in finding a friend or organization with a car? Maybe it will take 2 or 3 or 4 weeks of trying to find someone to help, but eventually one can.
It isn't a return if the goods are low quality and last 1/8 as long. Same with low quality food that ruins health, the cost is externalized to health care
Low quality foodstuffs are available anywhere, even in the wealthiest communities - cheetos, twinkies, cookies, crackers, etc. One can make poor food choices anywhere, that is for sure. Anyone canget the cost externalized to healthcare.
The point is that it is a choice to buy fruits, vegetables, eggs, etc, rather than cookies.
Everyone knows what a poor diet is at this point. Who doesn't know potato chips are not healthy, even in the most poverty-stricken areas? Who doesn't know that brocolli is healthier than Sugar Puffs cerial. Nobody, that's who.
Grocery stores are very low-margin. They basically only work at scale. You need a lot of space, and a lot of customers. Those two factors combine to eliminate numerous areas where demand for the product otherwise exists. Not enough customers and/or not enough physical space available.
And constrained by either space, or customer count, you've got some hard choices to make.
Produce, fruit, fresh meat, etc are not high-profit items for grocery stores (They're often high-margin, but spoilage destroys net profit). You need a certain amount of turn-over to make the math work.
On top of turn-over, you need to be selling a lot of high-profit goods to make up for all the offsets in a grocery business. In low-income neighborhoods, how many customers will you have for deli products with high-markups? Or Prepared Foods? Hell, with EBT rules, a lot of high-margin goods can't even be bought by your core customer. You can't buy alcohol with EBT, for instance, and that's a huge chunk of profit for modern grocery stores.
And without all those healthy margin items, your labor costs need to be incredibly low.
What are you left with? Shelf-stable, low-quantity, bulk-purchased items in a densely packed store with the lowest possible labor costs.
And what is a Dollar Store?