Page 3 - Innovations in Food Equity: Business and Community Together

The Problem
Food deserts are urban and rural communities with no or severely limited access to fresh,
healthy, and affordable food.1 In the United States, approximately 23.5 million people live
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in food deserts. Studies have found a link between poverty, access to fresh, nutritious
foods, and diet-related health problems. For many, living in a food desert leads to food insecurity, where people are unable to secure a nutritionally adequate diet. The lack of access to fresh, affordable food for people living in low-income, isolated neighborhoods severely impacts the physical health and well being of those individuals and their families. To solve the problem of food inequity, many believe that “encouraging supermarkets and grocery stores to open in underserved neighborhoods will translate into improvements in individuals’ diets and lead to a reduction in diet-related health problems.”3 This is simply not true. Meaningful access means much more than physical proximity to a grocery store. Access means the food is proximate and affordable, and that efforts have been taken to overcome any other barriers inhibiting residents from enjoying a healthy diet. Indeed, our research shows that opening a grocery store in a food desert does not necessarily solve the community food issues or mean that the business will thrive.4 Rather, social barriers such as, “preference for existing food stores, worries about how increased choice might affect household food budgets, community resistance to new supermarket property development, and access to informal store credit, impede the success of new establishments.”5
Another misperception is that personal preference drives residents to continue to purchase unhealthy, processed foods when healthier options are available. The faulty logic is that individuals who live in food deserts are raised eating meals from fast food restaurants and convenience stores, so it becomes all they know.6 Studies, however, have shown that low-income communities have nearly twice as many fast food restaurants than wealthier areas making low-nutrient, high-caloric foods more financially accessible.7 In many cases, healthier food is harder to get to and more expensive, while unhealthy foods fit more easily into a tight budget.8 In short, the reason is often lack of money, not a lack of desire.
This Report focuses on five for-profit grocery stores and food establishments that have implemented promising business initiatives to combat food deserts: (i) Brown Super Stores; (ii) Whole Foods Market; (iii) Wegmans; (iv) Juices For Life; and (v) Walmart. It dissects the initiatives that these establishments have used to provide fresh food to their communities and, as a result, how they have helped combat food deserts. By doing this, we hope to foster dialogue about how to bring positive change to food desert communities.
Our analysis of the initiatives leads us to conclude that the success of these establishments in food deserts is dependent on engaging with and educating the community and partnering with progressive organizations.
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