Getting Started: Strategies and Policy Opportunities to Improve Access to Healthy Food

Introduction
Getting Started
Options for Increasing Access to Healthy Food: Key Differences

Introduction

Community residents, advocates, foundations, business leaders, and policymakers can all play important roles in improving access to healthy food in underserved communities across the nation. This tool describes three of the most promising options for increasing access:

Developing New Grocery Stores
Improving Existing Small Stores
Starting and Sustaining Farmers' Markets

Each option is described in terms of its particular benefits and challenges, and the innovative strategies and policy opportunities that stakeholders can champion, implement, or fund. Not every strategy will work for every community. This chart highlights some of the key differences between the three healthy food access options described in this tool.

Following these three primary options, the tool also briefly highlight additional options for increasing access to healthy foods, including: transportation options; public markets; mobile markets; cooperative grocery stores; farm-to-school initiatives; community supported agriculture; and community gardens.

Getting Started

Every community has unique assets, challenges, and goals. To identify the best option for improving food access, some communities conduct community food assessments (CFAs), or other participatory research that examines a community's access to healthy food to determine actions to improve it. To date, about 40 CFAs have been completed in the United States.28 Information on CFAs is available at www.ers.usda.gov/publications/efan02013 and www.foodsecurity.org/pubs.html.

Another way to plan for improved food access is to include food access concerns into existing planning processes for neighborhood revitalization. While these processes rarely integrate the concern for resident health with community economic development, pressure from food access advocates can lead to win-win solutions.

Other communities assess needs and develop strategies through more informal processes such as ongoing discussions with other concerned neighbors. In West Fresno, for example, discussions among concerned neighbors inspired a sustained advocacy effort that resulted in a new supermarket for the community.

Options for Increasing Access to Healthy Food: Key Differences

	Developing New Grocery Stores	Improving Existing Neighborhood Stores	Starting and Sustaining Farmers' Markets
Complexity / Time	Complex and time-consuming. Land must be identified and purchased. Significant financing must be accessed. Supermarket chains need to be convinced that the area can support a store. Regulatory processes such as zoning and the construction process also take time.	A significant challenge, but less complex and requires less time. Can see results sooner.	A significant challenge, but less complex and requires less time. Can see results sooner.
Land	The average supermarket is 44,000 square feet, and new stores are usually much larger. They require ample parking lots, and are often anchors to much larger developments that include other retail stores. Smaller grocery stores are typically 10,000 to 12,000 feet and may fit into existing sites.	Requires no new land since the stores already exist.	Only requires a parking lot, a blocked off street, or another public space that can be used for short periods of time.
Funding	New supermarkets require millions of dollars to construct and operate. Smaller grocery stores are less expensive but still cost over a million dollars.	Re-outfitting a corner store to sell fresh produce can cost less than $100,000 in technical assistance, equipment, and initial inventory.29	A reasonable first year budget is approximately $34,000, though markets can cost as little as $2,000 or as much as $150,000 per year.30
Customer Base	Supermarkets require extremely high volume and so must draw shoppers from beyond a single immediate neighborhood. It's important to consider whether residents in adjacent neighborhoods would come to a new supermarket. Heavily trafficked roads can increase potential customer base. Smaller grocery stores can rely more on neighborhood customer bases.	It is helpful to demonstrate community interest in purchasing healthy foods so that storeowners know that they will be able to sell whatever produce they purchase and still make a profit.	Need enough customers to be worth the farmers' time at the market and transportation costs, as well as enough profit to pay for a market coordinator.