Are there too many grocery stores?

[JayhawkCO]

The whole "food desert"  concept is just idiocy.

Well, obviously, because you can type it into the post box on AARoads forum with no further elaboration, everyone concerned with that problem should pack it in. "Hey! Guys! Did you hear, we don't have to worry about this anymore, S.P. Cook says it's idiocy!"

Before Homeland opened at NE 36th and Lincoln, there were zero grocery stores in the loop bounded by I-235 to the west, I-35 to the east, I-35/40 to the south, and I-44 to the north. A couple Family Dollars, but no actual grocery stores. This is the part of the city that contains the State Capitol, the Zoo, Remington Park, and the national softball championship park, so it's not exactly a remote part of town. It also contains a bunch of low-income neighborhoods, so not everyone has the ability to drive elsewhere to the nearest store.

Downtown OKC is also lacking any sort of grocery store. The nearest one is at NW 18th and Classen, which is a good mile and a half or so as the crow flies from the central business district or the Deep Deuce district–not huge distances if you have a car, it's a major deterrent to going in on foot and picking up a few items as you need them. Unlike in other cities, there isn't any sort of zoning issue here that makes placing a grocery store downtown difficult; there was a small independent grocer in Deep Deuce for a while, but it failed because they went in with an upscale Whole Foods sort of business model, which doesn't tend to play well anywhere other than Memorial Road.

I was about to comment on his statement as well.  The main issue with food deserts is that you might be able to get some food nearby, but it's convenience store/bodega type stuff and nothing that actually has any nutrition.  Yeah, microwave burritos are technically food, but if you have to drive/ride a bus for 10 miles to get a head of broccoli, we have issues.

Chris

[paulthemapguy]

The whole "food desert"  concept is just idiocy.

Yeah that's a stupid thing to say.  Everything else in the thread tracks pretty well but that was just plain stupid to say.  Plenty of places lack grocery store coverage.  There's something to be said for the spots where you have three grocery stores within one mile of another; maybe close down a store where that occurs.  However, while many of us have the luxury of turning down the food at one grocery store for the food at the grocery store NEXT DOOR, lots of places don't even have a grocery store within a 45-minute drive. 

This article about Pine Ridge, SD, is similar to an article I read back in the late 2000s, about how the opening of a Subway in a small South Dakota town revolutionized the nutrition of that town.  I think it was about Martin, South Dakota, which only had a gas station convenience store as a source of food to purchase in-town.  The levels of obesity dropped dramatically when they had a Subway move in, which should speak to the great vulnerability of people who live in our most rural areas.  The painful irony is that a lot of these rural areas are home to people who grow our nation's food, but then aren't given easy access to reaping the rewards of America's agriculture.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/stuck-food-desert-pine-ridge-locals-subway-meet/story?id=14732285

There's also a lot of widely-accessible rhetoric speaking to how grocery stores rarely locate themselves in poorer urban neighborhoods, especially those predominantly settled by racial minorities.  The basic gist is-- the poorer the environment, the less likely you'll find easier access to groceries.  Access to groceries is almost never completely impossible, per se, but if the grocery store is farther away, you need to spend more money on gasoline or a bus fare just to get your food.

[hotdogPi]

There's also a lot of widely-accessible rhetoric speaking to how grocery stores rarely locate themselves in poorer urban neighborhoods, especially those predominantly settled by racial minorities.

Are you not counting independent stores like the ones I linked earlier in the thread?

[Scott5114]

There's also a lot of widely-accessible rhetoric speaking to how grocery stores rarely locate themselves in poorer urban neighborhoods, especially those predominantly settled by racial minorities.

Are you not counting independent stores like the ones I linked earlier in the thread?

Most places don't have stores like that. They're certainly not common in Oklahoma City, and when you do find a store like that, it tends to be just a slightly bigger version of a gas station convenience store that sells only processed foods and has little in the way of fresh fruits/vegetables, refrigerated items other than soda or perhaps single pints of milk, etc.

[triplemultiplex]

It's no secret that the big grocery chains locate stores closer to rich people.  And in places where they can build giant, mostly empty parking lots.  So it's not so much a problem of quantity as it is distribution.

My local grocery store is under threat from redevelopment.  It's very walkable for a large number of people, but they are not exactly going to strain a muscle to lift their paychecks.  There are other options in a reasonable distance if one has reliable access to a car, but if you don't, not so much.
The problem is, the big chain that now owns it doesn't like that it's not as profitable as one of their large suburban locations, so they are not interested being part of the redevelopment.  So that part of the project now hinges on getting a grocery store into the mix to avoid creating a food desert.

It's been interesting to follow these last few years.  In the interim, the store remains open, fortunately.

I like it because it's the only one left that doesn't have any of those goddamn self-checkout things.  I swear those things are a psychological experiment to test the limits of people's tolerance for defective technology.
I PUT IT IN THE GODDAMN BAGGING AREA YOU STUPID FUCKING MACHINE!!!!!

[abefroman329]

I like it because it's the only one left that doesn't have any of those goddamn self-checkout things.  I swear those things are a psychological experiment to test the limits of people's tolerance for defective technology.
I PUT IT IN THE GODDAMN BAGGING AREA YOU STUPID FUCKING MACHINE!!!!!

Haha, yeah, I feel like Indiana Jones trying to swap the idol with a bag of sand whenever I use one of those.

[Bruce]

There definitely isn't too many in rural areas.  Good luck finding a reliable general store much less a grocery store in the more sparsely populated areas of the country.

This is what shocked me during my recent journey to Montana and Idaho (and to a lesser extent, Utah).

I live in a rural area (county population of 7,000, county seat population is 1,000) and I'm used to seeing general merchandise stores with great frequency. We're an hour from the nearest Walmart Supercenter, 30 minutes from the nearest "regular" Kroger, and an hour from the nearest Kroger Marketplace. We have a locally-owned IGA store and a Save-A-Lot, which I presume is corporately owned. A lot of the little mom-and-pop country stores that were prevalent in my youth are gone, but there are Dollar General stores all over the place, and several Family Dollars too, although not as many as Dollar General.

Traveling through Montana, I noticed that many of the towns had very little. Around here, a town the size of those would definitely have a Dollar General. I saw this week they are building their very first location in Idaho. Family Dollars are few and far between. And forget about an afternoon run to Walmart like we could do; a trip to one of those towns would consume a whole day. I wonder where those people shop.

Shelby was one place that really surprised me. It's on I-15 and is the gateway to Glacier, a very popular national park. I saw no general-merchandise retailers (there was an empty Shopko building, so they'd had one at one time). I saw one grocery store, a small Albertson's. No Family Dollar. None of the popular fast-food places you'd normally expect to see at a major interchange like I-15 and US 2.

Dillon was another. A decent sized town on I-15 with a college, serving as a gateway to Yellowstone. No Walmart. One Family Dollar (that was really picked over, as it was back-to-school week for the local college). I'm sure there was at least one grocery store, but I don't remember it.

I think I'm isolated. I think some of the valleys in southwestern West Virginia are really isolated. Some of those county seat towns in the high plains and foothills of the Rockies make this area look like NYC.

In the Inland Northwest, it's also the same, with a Safeway at most in the largest cities for a multi-county region. Also, we don't have Family Dollar here, only its sister chain Dollar Tree (though I did see a FD/DT double store in Libby, MT).

[Dirt Roads]

Zip code 27610 in Raleigh is the second most populous in North Carolina (75,991).  This incorporates all of Southeast Raleigh, which has been underserved by grocery stores for more than 40 years (according to a recent news article).  Thought I would check this out.

There are only four grocery stores remaining in Southeast Raleigh inside the Beltline, one of which is a Hispanic grocer and another which is a newer African-American farm co-op that just started in September 2020.  There's only two stores remaining in Northeast Raleigh inside the Beltline, with one Food Lion plus one older independent grocer.  Three more are tucked in between the Beltline and Garner, there's two more independent groceries along Poole Road.  The remaining 5 are clustered around the Walmart on New Bern Avenue just outside the Beltline, including an Aldi and another Food Lion, plus several ethnic stores.

[Max Rockatansky]

There definitely isn't too many in rural areas.  Good luck finding a reliable general store much less a grocery store in the more sparsely populated areas of the country.

This is what shocked me during my recent journey to Montana and Idaho (and to a lesser extent, Utah).

I live in a rural area (county population of 7,000, county seat population is 1,000) and I'm used to seeing general merchandise stores with great frequency. We're an hour from the nearest Walmart Supercenter, 30 minutes from the nearest "regular" Kroger, and an hour from the nearest Kroger Marketplace. We have a locally-owned IGA store and a Save-A-Lot, which I presume is corporately owned. A lot of the little mom-and-pop country stores that were prevalent in my youth are gone, but there are Dollar General stores all over the place, and several Family Dollars too, although not as many as Dollar General.

Traveling through Montana, I noticed that many of the towns had very little. Around here, a town the size of those would definitely have a Dollar General. I saw this week they are building their very first location in Idaho. Family Dollars are few and far between. And forget about an afternoon run to Walmart like we could do; a trip to one of those towns would consume a whole day. I wonder where those people shop.

Shelby was one place that really surprised me. It's on I-15 and is the gateway to Glacier, a very popular national park. I saw no general-merchandise retailers (there was an empty Shopko building, so they'd had one at one time). I saw one grocery store, a small Albertson's. No Family Dollar. None of the popular fast-food places you'd normally expect to see at a major interchange like I-15 and US 2.

Dillon was another. A decent sized town on I-15 with a college, serving as a gateway to Yellowstone. No Walmart. One Family Dollar (that was really picked over, as it was back-to-school week for the local college). I'm sure there was at least one grocery store, but I don't remember it.

I think I'm isolated. I think some of the valleys in southwestern West Virginia are really isolated. Some of those county seat towns in the high plains and foothills of the Rockies make this area look like NYC.

In the Inland Northwest, it's also the same, with a Safeway at most in the largest cities for a multi-county region. Also, we don't have Family Dollar here, only its sister chain Dollar Tree (though I did see a FD/DT double store in Libby, MT).

What really got me on a recent trip was how barren of services in the Klamath Basin are aside from Klamath Falls.  It had me wondering if people really drive all the way to Klamath Falls for things like groceries or even things like gasoline?

[LM117]

Thinking of Syracuse, NY, downtown is almost a food desert, grocery-wise.  There are now a couple of small foodie shops, but beyond that, not much.

What's worse to me is Tops Markets' practice of diving into food deserts in economically challenged areas of cities and charging exorbitant prices since they have a small-scale monopoly where they set up.  I suppose it is a profitable business model, but it's pretty galling.

Down here, that's Food Lion's strategy.

You ain't lyin' about the Lion. 3 of their stores are within a 10-mile radius from me, and there's 4 more slightly beyond that.

Walmart Neighborhood Market opened here in August 2017 and it put Save-a-Lot out of business. Other options here are 1 Aldi, 1 Lidl, and a Piggly Wiggly that smells like piss. Before I moved here in 2011, there used to be a Harris Teeter (closed in 2010) and two Kroger stores (one closed in 2003, not sure when the other closed).

[SP Cook]

Yeah that's a stupid thing to say.  Everything else in the thread tracks pretty well but that was just plain stupid to say.  Plenty of places lack grocery store coverage. 

I was trying to avoid yet another name-call and subsequent thread lock or deletion.  If it were the writ of this board I could explain, for pages upon pages, why you do not know what you are talking about, but its not and I'm going to remain civil.

[zachary_amaryllis]

we have plenty of stores here, but what i find mildly disturbing is the way these stores branch out into other non-grocery things.

i've been in walmart, picking up frozen pizzas, and my roommate called and said he'd broken the toilet seat. so i show up at the checkstand with 12 frozen pizzas and a toilet seat. the checker gave me a funny look.

and it feels distinctly weird walking through the underwear aisle at king soopers, to get to the milk.

[abefroman329]

we have plenty of stores here, but what i find mildly disturbing is the way these stores branch out into other non-grocery things.

i've been in walmart, picking up frozen pizzas, and my roommate called and said he'd broken the toilet seat. so i show up at the checkstand with 12 frozen pizzas and a toilet seat. the checker gave me a funny look.

and it feels distinctly weird walking through the underwear aisle at king soopers, to get to the milk.

People really value one-stop shopping.  Of course, the downside is that the selection of toilet seats at Walmart is going to be much smaller than the selection at Home Depot.

[Rothman]

Yeah that's a stupid thing to say.  Everything else in the thread tracks pretty well but that was just plain stupid to say.  Plenty of places lack grocery store coverage. 

I was trying to avoid yet another name-call and subsequent thread lock or deletion.  If it were the writ of this board I could explain, for pages upon pages, why you do not know what you are talking about, but its not and I'm going to remain civil.

Ah, a secret plan to get us out of Vietnam...

[gonealookin]

I think a lot of our grocery stores are way too big.

Most of them could downsize the square footage by eliminating six of the nine checkstands, or some similar number, because there are never more than a third of them open at once.

The south shore of Lake Tahoe has a lot of grocery stores relative to permanent population.  Two Raleys, two Safeways, and one each of Whole Foods, Smart and Final Extra and Grocery Outlet.  They are all jam-packed for much of the summer, particularly on weekends and dear god holiday weekends, and on winter weekends as well.  In October, though, the checkers are standing in front of their stands begging for anyone to keep them busy for a couple minutes.

[Scott5114]

Most of them could downsize the square footage by eliminating six of the nine checkstands, or some similar number, because there are never more than a third of them open at once.

I never understand why people fixate on the proportion of registers that are open. Either it's "oh, they only have 1/3 of the registers open, so the lines are so long!" or "why do they have six registers they never open, it's such a waste of space!"

Most of the time the registers aren't open because they're not needed. But periodically there's spikes of traffic where you need to have more registers open than usual, like the week of Thanksgiving, or other peak demand periods. If you only have the number of registers needed during typical demand levels, you don't have the equipment or space to add more cashiers if they're warranted.

Plus, the other registers serve as a backup during average traffic levels. If you only need registers 1 through 3 open and register 1 goes down, or the drawer breaks, or the conveyor belt starts acting up, you can just close register 1 and move the cashier over to register 4 until whatever's wrong with register 1 can be fixed.

[Max Rockatansky]

Most of them could downsize the square footage by eliminating six of the nine checkstands, or some similar number, because there are never more than a third of them open at once.

I never understand why people fixate on the proportion of registers that are open. Either it's "oh, they only have 1/3 of the registers open, so the lines are so long!" or "why do they have six registers they never open, it's such a waste of space!"

Most of the time the registers aren't open because they're not needed. But periodically there's spikes of traffic where you need to have more registers open than usual, like the week of Thanksgiving, or other peak demand periods. If you only have the number of registers needed during typical demand levels, you don't have the equipment or space to add more cashiers if they're warranted.

Plus, the other registers serve as a backup during average traffic levels. If you only need registers 1 through 3 open and register 1 goes down, or the drawer breaks, or the conveyor belt starts acting up, you can just close register 1 and move the cashier over to register 4 until whatever's wrong with register 1 can be fixed.

Likely there isn't enough staff on hand to man all those back up registers anyways on a normal sales day.

[hbelkins]

I think a lot of our grocery stores are way too big.

In particular, I find the Kroger Marketplace stores to be intimidating and terribly oversized. When I go grocery shopping, I usually know what I want. I hate having to go to one side of the store to pick up a few cans of soup, then plod through the patio furniture and the seasonal clothing to get to the pop, and then to the other end of the store for bread.

With Walmart or Meijer, I know that if I just need groceries, they're going to be on one side of the store, and if I also need a pint of two-cycle oil, I'm going to have to trudge all the way over on the opposite end of the back wall for the auto parts and hardware sections.

There's a small Kroger in Stanton, 30 miles away, that doesn't carry the variety of grocery items that the Kroger Marketplace in Richmond, 37 miles away, does. But it's such a chore trying to find what you want at the bigger Kroger that I hate going in there.

[Big John]

I think a lot of our grocery stores are way too big.

Then you won't like Woodman's in Wisconsin.  Large footprint and groceries all through it.  Usual lower prices are the draw.

[abefroman329]

I think a lot of our grocery stores are way too big.

Then you won't like Woodman's in Wisconsin.  Large footprint and groceries all through it.  Usual lower prices are the draw.

Oh, we have Woodman's in Illinois, too, and they're fantastic.  They sell Donald Duck orange juice, which I haven't seen for sale anywhere in thirty years.

[Dirt Roads]

I think a lot of our grocery stores are way too big.

It used to be that people that hiked on sunny days would go "mall walking" on rainy days.  Now I can just go to Harris Teeter and walk all of the aisles.  Many of their stores have a middle aisle down the entire width of the store, so you can walk the back side from left-to-right, then come back up the front side from right-to-left.  I'm sure that the folks watching the security cameras are wondering why this guy walks the entire store and only cherry-picks the sale prices in canned vegetables and cereals.  By the way, I only go to Harris Teeter occasionally and not necessarily on rainy days, but I do walk the entire store. 

[gonealookin]

Most of them could downsize the square footage by eliminating six of the nine checkstands, or some similar number, because there are never more than a third of them open at once.

I never understand why people fixate on the proportion of registers that are open. Either it's "oh, they only have 1/3 of the registers open, so the lines are so long!" or "why do they have six registers they never open, it's such a waste of space!"

Most of the time the registers aren't open because they're not needed. But periodically there's spikes of traffic where you need to have more registers open than usual, like the week of Thanksgiving, or other peak demand periods. If you only have the number of registers needed during typical demand levels, you don't have the equipment or space to add more cashiers if they're warranted.

Plus, the other registers serve as a backup during average traffic levels. If you only need registers 1 through 3 open and register 1 goes down, or the drawer breaks, or the conveyor belt starts acting up, you can just close register 1 and move the cashier over to register 4 until whatever's wrong with register 1 can be fixed.

Likely there isn't enough staff on hand to man all those back up registers anyways on a normal sales day.

I'll buy the second part of Scott's argument about needing one or two backup checkstands due to mechanical failure.  Not the first part though.  A store with 10 checkstands never has 10 employees available to cover them.  They can't just pull somebody out of the storeroom in back; there needs to be some training in customer service, and in Nevada (and in most states I would guess) an employee working the checkstand has to have an alcohol sales certification.

[Scott5114]

Never? Not even, say, the fourth Wednesday in November?

I used to hear customers bitch in the first casino that I worked in that there were 5 cashier windows at the main cage (61, 62, 63, 64, 65, don't ask why the numbering didn't start at 1) and 3 cashier windows in high limits (66, 67, 68), but we only ever had windows 64, 65, 66, and 67 open. If you're going to have that many windows, why didn't we have that many cashiers so they literally never had to wait in line? Because we didn't need that many, Susan; we're not going to spend $100 to bring another person on the clock to save you ten seconds of waiting. But on New Year's Eve, the schedule was totally redone so that every single window could be open, plus "window 60", which was an area to the left of window 61 that didn't even have a computer, but at least provided an extra area for people to make change. That was the only day of the year when having nine cashiers on duty even remotely made sense.

At the second casino I worked at, we had exactly the same number of windows as we needed cashiers on a typical Friday or Saturday night...but that meant that on New Year's Eve we had zero space for additional cashiers, so the lines just got longer and longer. And of course, even on a typical weekend, if one of the computers went down, that just meant the window stayed closed all night and the remaining cashiers got their ass handed to them.

[jp the roadgeek]

Let me see, there are 11 Stop & Shops within a 10 mile radius of me.  There are also 2 Price Choppers, 3 Shop Rites, and 3 Big Y's.  My town alone has all but Big Y, plus a local IGA, a Walmart (not a SuperCenter), and Target (full grocery section).  One town has 2 Stop & Shops, while another city (Waterbury) has 3.

[Takumi]

I think a lot of our grocery stores are way too big.

Then you won't like Woodman's in Wisconsin.  Large footprint and groceries all through it.  Usual lower prices are the draw.

Oh, we have Woodman's in Illinois, too, and they're fantastic.  They sell Donald Duck orange juice, which I haven't seen for sale anywhere in thirty years.

Oh shit, I forgot that even existed. I don't think I ever had it when I was a kid.