What Is It?

For decades, low-income urban and rural communities have faced limited opportunities to purchase healthy food. In the 1960s and 1970s, white, middle-class families fled urban centers for homes in the suburbs, and supermarkets followed them—taking jobs and tax revenues along with their offerings of healthy, affordable food. This left poor residents with fewer healthy, affordable options. These disparities in access are contributing to obesity and related health problems.

Strategies that increase access to healthy, reasonably priced food in low-income communities can contribute to equitable neighborhood revitalization. New grocery stores that locate in poor communities can stimulate economic growth and development by offering local jobs. Increased sales tax revenue can put more resources back into the community and attract further investment from the private sector. The expansion of healthy food retailers provides wonderful opportunities for community revitalization, economic growth, and most importantly, improved community health.

In communities without access to a quality, full-service grocery store, bringing a new grocery store to the area is a high priority.

Newark Pathmark: Contributing to Community Revitalization

The Pathmark supermarket in Newark’s Central Ward provides a striking example of how a new grocery store can contribute to community revitalization. The Central Ward is an African American community that suffers from severe poverty, depopulation due to white flight, and disinvestment. When Pathmark opened its doors in 1990, it was the first supermarket to serve the 55,000-person community in 25 years. The supermarket anchors the New Community Shopping Center, and the entire development is jointly owned and operated by Pathmark and the New Community Corporation (NCC), a faith-based community organization. The supermarket has created thousands of jobs, and since NCC owns 66 percent of the supermarket and all of the other businesses in the center, profits are channeled directly back into the community through the organization’s housing, childcare, job training, and educational activities.

Attracting a suburban-style supermarket to an underserved community can bring many rewards, but because of their business models and size, large supermarkets are usually the most difficult type of grocery store to bring to a low-income community.

Other types of grocery stores, such as smaller, independently owned stores, can be successful in low-income communities and may offer comparable prices as well as more specialized products that are attuned to local consumers’ tastes and preferences. Independent grocers have proven that they can be successful in low-income communities, and they have greater flexibility to adapt their merchandise mix and practices to meet consumers’ needs. “Limited assortment” stores like the national Save-A-Lot chain offer deeply discounted merchandise. That chain, in particular, has committed to locating in urban and rural areas that lack access to larger, more conventional stores, as well as enhancing its produce department in response to customer demand. “Specialty” stores such as Whole Foods Markets can be successful in “dual market” areas that comprise both low-income and middle-income neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Groceries: Solving the Supermarket Dilemma

Because supermarkets need to move large quantities of merchandise in order to turn a profit, they serve areas that are much larger than one neighborhood and require very large sites that are extremely difficult to assemble in dense urban areas. Not every community can support this food retailing model.

One potential solution to this dilemma is the development of viable smaller-scale grocery stores that can provide the variety, quality, and price of supermarkets while relying on a smaller customer base and fitting into smaller spaces. Neighborhood groceries can both increase food access and fit into community visions for walkable, livable neighborhoods that promote physical activity, thus addressing the obesity problem from multiple angles.

Finding a scalable small-store model should be a priority for food advocates, communities, and retailers. Ethnic markets, greengrocers, specialty stores, and limited assortment stores could prove useful in developing these models since they sometimes successfully locate on smaller sites in underserved communities.

Developing a new grocery store in underserved, low-income communities can bring many health and economic benefits to these communities. Unfortunately, the process of improving access to healthy foods requires a lot of work and is very challenging. Communities across the country, however, have successfully attracted new full-service grocery stores into neighborhoods which were previously underserved. This tool highlights a number of innovative strategies to help you address the food access challenges and provides guidance for attracting fresh food retail into underserved communities.