Is your neighborhood in a "food desert?" The first non-profit grocery store in the U.S. opened this week



The nation's first non-profit grocery store opened two days ago in St. Joseph, Missouri, narrowly beating Philabundance, the Philadelphia food bank, at selling food at discounted costs to low-income families. Actually, the claim of being the first non-grocery store could be debated, given the success of a mobile grocery store in Minnesota with 27 outlets that offers up to a 40% discount. Let's not quibble as Fresh Start, St. Joe's non-profit grocery store, starts this grand experiment because it's really about placing stores in or near "food deserts."

Putting aside food co-ops and similar ventures, it seems a bit of stretch to think that we had to wait until 2013 before someone came up with the notion of a non-profit grocery store. Shouldn't access to nutritious and affordable food be a basic right to everyone in one of the wealthiest nations of the world?



You can bet there's going to be strong opposition to these efforts, especially if they succeed. Despite the efforts at providing low-cost food to relieve hunger one Minnesota for-profit grocery store owner complained about the advantage of a tax-free nonprofit store. "It's just completely wrong," said Tony Oelmann, manager of Mike's Discount Foods. "How can they consider themselves a nonprofit if they do this bootlegging?" said Oelmann. "They are attempting to undercut a business."

And small business owners are right to complain -- they are at risk of losing business and in a worst case scenario seeing their store close. Chain stores can pull their grocery stores from unprofitable areas like what happened when Sunfresh pulled out of the Linwood Shopping Center in Kansas City years ago.

Strong support to address "food deserts"
US. Dept of Agriculture Economic Research Service map
shows FreshStart grocery store serving a "food desert"
in St. Joseph, Mo.
St. Joe's new low-cost grocery store is operated out of Second Harvest Community Food Bank, the food bank at 915 Douglas, which rests at the edge of one of the food deserts, identified by the USDA. “There are 52,000 individuals that need our support, currently we serve about 15,000 a week. So, there’s a huge gap from where we are today to where we are going and Fresh Start helps to expand that access,” said St. Joe food bank Chief Operating Officer Tamara Grubb during an interview with a Kansas City news outlet.

Philadelphia's efforts to place a non-profit grocery store in a food desert near low-income residents was made possible with a lot of financial support. "The Nonprofit Finance Fund, the Reinvestment Fund, and TD Bank, the organization will open Fare & Square, a 13,000-square-foot grocery store next spring on the west side of Chester, a city that has been without a grocery store for eleven years and one of thirty-five USDA-designated food deserts in the Delaware Valley."

The largest non-profit grocery store in the United States
After a bit of quick research I found that there's already a non-profit grocery store in the United States that provides deep discounts to low-income families all over the country. In fact, it's a store that places it in the top ten grocery store chains, plus it allows shoppers to use their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP/Food Stamps) and Women, Infants and Children (WIC) benefits.

The Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) military commissary system allows family members to "save over 30 percent of what they would spend at nearby civilian grocery stores." With over 14 million active, reserve, retired military members and their families the DeCA system is available to over 4% of the US population, "while improving customer savings and satisfaction ratings," according to a report (PDF) defending this non-profit grocery store model (PDF).

The DeCA commissary system, also known as a post exchange (PX), "supplied the soldier with quality food at below market prices."

According to the report, the "military resale system has traditionally been defended along compassionate and mission grounds. That is, these programs are essential to care for our military personnel and their families and represent a reciprocal commitment on the part of the American people to recognize the service of our men and women in uniform."

Better yet this significant discount has been available to military service personnel for nearly 200 years -- since 1825 -- and is provided as a worthy benefit to all military service members -- active duty, reserve, retired, etc.

In fact, shoppers visit stores as many as 96 million per year.

Given the success and benefit of this non-profit grocery store model, perhaps it warrants a second look for an extensive expansion to non-military members of the U.S.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Community Media: Serving More Than a Geographic Region

Community media outlets like KKFI 90.1 FM in Kansas City have thrived for decades, maintaining a well-established broadcast model: high-quality studio sound broadcast to a wide geographic area serving the "community." Non-profit community radio station like KKFI, along with college radio and small commercial radio stations keep costs low by renting small studios and operating with few paid employees. These stations attract small audiences but differentiate themselves by focusing on community issues, music and culture. This focus is what defines community media, along with -- in the case of community radio -- maintaining cooperative ownership, not corporate ownership. Community radio operators always knew that "community" was more than a geographic region; it was the various cultural, ethnic, social and artistic communities for which locally-produced radio shows target. KKFI has local radio shows by or directed to African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and immigrant
Read more

Quest for a new volunteer management system at KC area food bank

Image
Note: This document is an early draft of a business case to upgrade a volunteer management system. It is not intended to be a fully organized statement of requirements, but more of a collection of features and a document for discussion. Overview Harvesters, the Kansas City area food bank, would like to improve the capability of the Volunteer App, the volunteer management system used to schedule, track and recruit volunteers and groups.  The Volunteer Services department would also like to improve the efficiency and accuracy of volunteer management by adapting their processes with new features and functions from an updated application. The current, custom Microsoft Access-based system developed a few years ago provides a rich-featured, robust solution to track individuals and groups volunteering at Harvesters. The system tracks all volunteers working in the Volunteer Outreach Center, as well as those donating their time and skills for events and in departments throughout Ha
Read more

Lee's Summit Proposes the Sanity Approach to Waste Reduction

Image
Finally! The city of Lee's Summit, Missouri took a responsible approach to trash service by replacing an all-you-can-dump-with-no-free-recycling-option to a "volume-based" approach similar to the successful service used in Kansas City, Missouri. After the service is changed, then those residents who have paid $2.50 per month to trash companies like Deffenbaugh can rely on the new service for free recycling, plus get the satisfaction that waste will be reduced and recycling increased. ...the City Council directed city staff to issue the state-required two-year notice to all solid waste haulers providing services in the City that the City is considering implementation of a comprehensive, citywide, solid waste program.  The program currently proposed by city staff includes volume-based pricing for residential trash service with unlimited, curbside recycling at no additional fee .  Under this proposed program, residents would only pay for the amount of trash they discard ;
Read more