Why Whole Foods Is Moving in to One of the Poorest Neighborhoods in Chicago

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/14/why-whole-foods-is-moving-into-one-of-the-poorest-neighborhoods-in-chicago/

by adam • 12 years ago

117 96 12 years ago

washingtonpost.com

rmason2• 12 years ago

Whole Foods also opened the first full supermarket in downtown Detroit. Imagine a city of 700,000 people without a single supermarket.

Course they received millions in subsidies to do it. But the program was out there for awhile and no other supermarket chain would take the chance.

Whole Foods success was followed by other chains. However the other chains took the subsidies and built their supermarkets out on 8 mile which is the dividing line between Detroit and the suburbs. While the stores are technically within Detroit the suburbs are right across the street so their risk was much lower.

ironchef• 12 years ago

There are actually quite a few other supermarkets in the area (like E and L). It's the chains that are / were largely scared (outside of like Spartan)

bluedino• 12 years ago

> Whole Foods also opened the first full supermarket in downtown Detroit. Imagine a city of 700,000 people without a single supermarket.

Don't spread this lie. I know food deserts are a popular myth but there are plenty of grocery stores in the city of Detroit. Sure, they might not have a Kroger or Meijer but there are plenty of smaller grocery stores like Save A Lot and ethnic markets.

People don't really think everyone in Detroit lives on a diet of snack foods, $1 menu burgers, and fruit flavored soft drinks, do they?

cbd1984• 12 years ago

People don't really think everyone in Detroit lives on a diet of snack foods, $1 menu burgers, and fruit flavored soft drinks, do they?

Some people apparently think all Americans live that way. Never underestimate the power of preconceptions and stereotypes, especially when they're Not Racist.

cynicalkane• 12 years ago

"Supermarket" refers to a grocery store that is significantly larger than traditional neighborhood grocery stores.

arturnt• 12 years ago

I shop organic, typically at farmer's markets, and actively cook. I lived in Toledo for a little while and visited Detroit. While you have access to supermarkets in that part of the country the access is very poor. I ate a lot of fast food simply because fast food is within 5 min and a super market is often times 30 min. Produce is typically poor quality and imported.

rmason2• 12 years ago

Most of the coders living downtown I know before Whole Foods all drove to the suburbs to shop. Those small stores offered little variety along with limited selections of fruits and vegetables.

omaranto• 12 years ago

Nobody said Detroit was a food desert or that it had no grocery stores. The claim was that it had no supermarket. You said "don't spread this lie" but then gave no evidence it was a lie. Is it a lie (I wouldn't know)?

fiatmoney• 12 years ago

"Nor is it a bet, by Whole Foods, on neighborhood change."

Although, if the neighborhood did happen to gentrify, as has been the goal of the Emanuel administration for Chicago as a whole, that would be a happy coincidence.

johnloeber• 12 years ago

Normally, gentrification is a slow creep that happens on a block-by-block basis. This does not apply to Englewood. The Whole Foods is being built essentially in the heart of urban poverty in Chicago.

selectodude• 12 years ago

Nobody is moving to Englewood because a Whole Foods opened up.

mynameishere• 12 years ago

They only mention SNAP in passing, but I guarantee it features large on the spreadsheets back at HQ. Everyone I've known who was on it seemed a little nostalgic about buying expensive food they wouldn't normally. (However, my sample size is two).

buttcoinslol3• 12 years ago

This was my first instinct, Whole Foods wants to see if the SNAP money can subsidize a location in a low income area.

gumby4• 12 years ago

Which is not inherently a bad thing.

GabrielF00• 12 years ago

The average monthly SNAP benefit per person in Illinois is $138/month, or $4.60 a day. You're not going to be living large on it.

[http://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/pd/18SNAPavg$PP....]

Retric• 12 years ago

If you spend 4.60 per day on unprocessed food and a little meat you can get high quality food. But you need to cook it. Or you can basically starve on chips and soda. Now if your unemployed / underemployed and have free time foor cooking it's not unreasonable to shop at whole foods. Assuming you don't need to watch kids / elderly / or the disabled.

Though transportation is often a major issue keeping people shopping at the corner store.

buttcoinslol3• 12 years ago

There are 2,040,053 SNAP recipients in IL, at an average of $138 per month, total benefits equal $281,527,314. Per month. Even if only a quarter live in Chicago, that's still nearly $1 billion a year in SNAP benefits in Chicago alone.

twoodfin• 12 years ago

The average SNAP recipient has other income to spend on food. The benefit is a supplement. Except at the maximum end, it's not intended to fully fund your food purchases. Those "live off the average SNAP benefit" publicity stunts are disingenuous.

kolbe2• 12 years ago

I've talked to some Whole Foods employees about this. Cashiers at the location I frequent have estimated that anywhere from 10% to 30% of their sales are made to people using SNAP. It's hard for me to make sense of it given how much a grocery bill at WF is and how little assistance SNAP offers, but those were the 'numbers'.

abrowne• 12 years ago

I had been know to call it "Whole Paycheck" in the past, but I've found prices not to be too bad if you're selective, such as their house-brand products.

discardorama• 12 years ago

SNAP won't let you shop at WF for long.

A few years ago, I indulged in an experiment: I'd try to live off the SNAP amount for a month. I assumed a budget of $110, and tried to make 3 meals/day out of it. I had to resort to all sorts of trickery to make it work, but I did; by shopping at Mexican grocery stores and swinging by farmers' markets at closing time (when they have to get rid of their produce, and hence offer massive discounts) I was able to survive. It wasn't easy, and I for sure wasn't eating organic foods!

rahij• 12 years ago

On the topic of Whole Foods: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8609515

raldi• 12 years ago

Can we get a "saved you a click" summary?

RyJones• 12 years ago

Ten million dollar subsidy by the city of Chicago, high SNAP redemption flow in Detroit store in similar situation.

michaelchisari• 12 years ago

With the shift in other supermarkets carrying more organic and "luxury" items like Jewel and Mariano's purchasing Dominick's locations and building stores that carry a wide range of organic to normal shelf items, Whole Foods isn't the high end gem it once was. You can now get the things you got there at regular stores (that have more acceptable pricing). My guess is this is putting pressure on Whole Foods' growth strategy.

larrys2• 12 years ago

"My guess is this is putting pressure on Whole Foods' growth strategy."

Agree.

And it will be interesting to see the exact product mix of that store is vs. the one that is located where I am.

My guess (in addition to what the article says) it will be quite different.

At a local WF "clone" that I also frequent (just opened) last night I bought some raw pistachios. I didn't even look at the price. When I got to the register they were $13.50 for 8 ozs. (I'm sure WF has a similar product.) My point is that's easily an 1 hour's after tax wage or more in that area. (Maybe 2 hours..) Hard to believe the product mix is going to include items like that.

Anyway growth wise WF could come up with a new brand (which is typically what would happen) but here they decide to use the same premium brand name because, and this is important and in addition to any PR benefit, the people who would shop at an upscale whole foods won't know what goes on at this Whole Foods (if it in fact would even matter to them). It could look like a warehouse and they'd never know that. Not the same as with a consumer product that makes it into the channel and could destroy your brand name.

larrys2• 12 years ago

"an 18,000-square-foot Whole Foods."

18,000 is actually small for a supermarket and in fact the average Whole Foods is 38,000 square feet:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/whole_...

rpenm2• 12 years ago

I've lived in Englewood. I can confirm a lack of quality produce - I'd have to travel to Hyde Park, Chinatown or the South Loop for that. However, I doubt Whole Foods will draw too many neighborhood customers away from the Food-4-Less or Aldi. Price matters.

The Englewood location is probably more about cheap land near the I-90/94, which links downtown Chicago to the South Side, and south suburbs. This location is also close to the Hyde Park (University of Chicago) and Woodlawn neighborhoods, which are more affluent.

BostonEnginerd2• 12 years ago

Would you consider Aldi's to not be a real supermarket? We have one in my neighborhood in MA and you can find passably good produce there. It's certainly not as nice of an experience as the Whole Foods, but you still find organics there.

Calling an area that has an Aldi a "food desert" doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

rpenm2• 12 years ago

The Aldi in Englewood isn't really a supermarket - it's more like a dollar-store version of Trader Joe's. They also don't sell much produce (maybe 10 feet of shelf space), and it's usually been sitting on the shelf a while. I think this is more about customer demand than availability. Chicago gets plenty of great produce through its wholesalers (and role as a freight hub) - high quality produce is abundant and cheap at the Latino markets.

Steuard• 12 years ago

I had the same thought: that part of their goal is to get a cheap location that can attract Hyde Park and Woodlawn folks ("Hi, Mr. President!") who'd otherwise go all the way to the north side or the suburbs. But I very much hope that they can serve the immediate neighborhood well, too. Englewood deserves it.

Edit: Someone else commented that there's also a Whole Foods slated to open right in Hyde Park. So this may not be their strategy in Englewood after all (though the Hyde Park location has evidently had some significant delays, and isn't set to open until 2016 at this point).

tptacek6• 12 years ago

Whole Foods doesn't seem to have a lot of trouble setting up shop in more affluent Chicago neighborhoods.

Moreover: people who live in Hyde Park do not as a general rule drive into Englewood for groceries (non-Chicagoans: Hyde Park is an upper class white college town stronghold in the predominantly black south side, and Englewood has a reputation as one of the most dangerous areas in the city).

I'm also having a hard time imagining anyone getting on the Dan Ryan to get groceries, given that there's a giant Whole Foods right at the intersection of the Ryan and the Ike.

If Whole Foods wanted to light up the upper/middle class south side, there are less "interesting" places to park one; Chatham, maybe, for instance. Auburn/Gresham.

Regardless, I'm glad they didn't stick it in Beverly. That map of Whole Foodses in Chicago would have been pretty damning.

kasey_junk• 12 years ago

Not that it impacts your argument in any way, but classifying Hyde Park as "white" is a little off. It is white in that there is a way higher white population in Hyde Park than in it's surrounding neighborhoods, and that the white population is the biggest racial group, but the white population is not a majority in the neighborhood.

What is accurate to say is that compared to the neighboring areas, Hyde Park is phenomenally affluent and educated and Englewood exists on the exact opposite end of that spectrum.

In any case, it stands, having a Whole Foods in Englewood will not attract Hyde Parkers (especially as they already have 1 high end grocery brand, and are getting a Whole Foods).

et2o2• 12 years ago

This is a really huge deal. Englewood is a hurting neighborhood and community. These food deserts are real. Children in these areas sometimes grow up eating out of vending machines because there aren't any alternatives. I'm not a romantic, but having had some firsthand experience, these situations are really tragic.

It wouldn't surprise me if this was a package deal with the new Whole Foods opening in Hyde Park near the University of Chicago.

yummyfajitas7• 12 years ago

Food deserts are real, and caused by consumer choice. Giving people access to health food does not result in an increase in vegetable consumption or a reduction in BMI.

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/giving-people-ac...

tl;dr; The issue is demand side, not supply side.

UrMomReadsHN• 12 years ago

So... i know someone. One day his kids were hungry and asked for something to eat. He gave them each a candy bar. He had access to FREE healthy food as he was staying with my parents at the time and he could eat anything there. He could have literally walked two rooms away to the kitchen and found something for them to eat. But i guess he thought a candy bar was just as good as any other food.

smtddr2• 12 years ago

Note the last part of his article: "Access may be necessary, but it’s not sufficient. Policies that are aimed at just eliminating food deserts may not work. More needs to be done."

There are a lot of reasons poor people don't eat healthier; supply is definitely part of it. But not just supply of food, supply of time as well. A poor person is probably working some physically taxing job and is just too tired to cook a healthy meal. Or too tired to get to the market selling healthy food, or... a million other things. It's not just "demand", it's not that they just don't want to eat healthy. Some don't even know fast food is unhealthy. Don't forget, we have people on HN defending fastfood hamburgers..... so imagine the potential confusion about nutrition in a poor & less educated community.

et2o2• 12 years ago

Reading the rest of your comments makes it evident that you have an axe to grind.

Food deserts are caused by decades-long social and economic pressures that may manifest as "consumer choice," as espoused in the following comments. It is really not surprising whatsoever that opening a grocery store in a food desert did not reduce BMI in the community in 6 months.

From my perspective, you are using the veil of rationality to advance an intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt argument. When I encounter a line of argument like yours, I find that it is nearly certain the other individual has little personal experience with underserved communities or individuals. I challenge you to any first-hand work in truly underserved American communities. The vast majority of these people are not simply lazy or lacking in impulse control, but are stuck in a socioeconomic feedback loop.

marincounty• 12 years ago

Never thought I would stick up for Whole Foods, but their price on the basics(milk, butter, some bread, flour) is cheaper/same price than Safeway. Their bulk food section is overpriced. I'm not sure why they overprice the bulk foods; I think they figure we can't do the math? Examlpe: Lumberg rice is cheaper than WF bulk rice? If anyone from Whole Foods reads this, and I imagine everyone of these posts are going to be dissected my management--get rid of the Security Guards. If you are that conserved about theft, use undercover guards.

btoptical• 12 years ago

The Whole Foods in Almaden (affluent South San Jose) hires off-duty San Jose PD to provide security. The officers are in full uniform and carry their utility belt and service weapon.

dcre• 12 years ago

Get rid of the security guards.

I assure you, they will not.

http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/community

Animats2• 12 years ago

I could see putting in a Trader Joe's, but Whole Foods? Whole Foods is overpriced silliness. "Organic salt", stuff like that.

jim_greco• 12 years ago

Each area is different I guess. In NYC Whole Foods is among the cheapest of the supermarkets and one of the highest in quality. For example, Gristedes and Morton Williams cost more and their fruits/veges selection is poor.

maratd• 12 years ago

I think you mean Manhattan, the other boroughs have a few more options like Waldbaums and Key Food, etc.

Manhattan sucks for decent affordable groceries because there's a substantial culture of frequently eating out and those that eat in normally do so because they want the gourmet experience at home, so they're looking for high-end stuff. That and everything costs more in Manhattan.

Go across the river to NJ and right away you'll see Wholefoods is obscenely expensive when compared to Trader Joe's, H Mart, Pathmark, Shop Rite, and local farmers markets.

dllthomas• 12 years ago

The boxed mac & cheese at the Whole Foods near me is cheaper than that at the local corner store. You can spend stupid amounts of money at Whole Foods, but they've got a reasonable selection that is reasonably priced when you look past the overpriced stuff.

matznerd2• 12 years ago

Whole Foods has a huge selection of niche products. Trader Joe's specifically carries a very limited number of items and much of stock is their brand.

jfuhrman• 12 years ago

I am one of those vegan health and fitness obsessed girls and even I find Whole Foods a bit pricy, but they're doing well so they seem to have an appeal to a lot of folks.

tptacek6• 12 years ago

Tim Harford tried to myth-bust this a few years ago. Yes, you can buy Maldon sea salt at Whole Foods, but you can also buy (more prominently displayed) Morton kosher, and it's priced the same was it is at Safeway. There are organic lemons that cost $1/unit more than conventional lemons, but there are also conventional lemons.

The way you tend to spend more money at Whole Foods than you would at Safeway is, you go for staples and end up buying premium stuff. So: don't do that.

The "Whole Paycheck" trap is mostly a problem for people who aren't price sensitive when picking out groceries.

gumby4• 12 years ago

And let's not forget that the prices at those corner stores aren't low either!

waynecochran• 12 years ago

Favorite quote: “No one steals vegetables.”

sremani• 12 years ago

I do not know about Chicago or Englewood, so I do not have much to comment on this particular stuff, but riding on the theme - I work across a Whole Foods and across the street are many low-income apartments, I did not find many people from those apartments shopping or working at whole foods. If their desire is to address food deserts this store has to be completely different from their standard configuration and unless that is not the case, this is either well-intentioned yet misguided effort or calculated low cost land acquisition.

keithpeter2• 12 years ago

"The neighborhood was targeted by the city as a "food desert," although corner stores are common and discount-grocer Aldi's is just down the street."

My corner shops and my local Aldi must be unusual. No problem sourcing fresh produce at reasonable prices (UK).

I wonder if anyone is looking out for the corner shop people.

wodenokoto• 12 years ago

Isn't that what the 'although' in the sentence means? That the neighborhood was designated as a food desert, despite having stores that sell fresh produce?

keithpeter2• 12 years ago

OK, so 'food desert' means something different to what I thought it meant.

fndrplayer132• 12 years ago

My wife and I are very much into knowing where our food came from, how it was raised/produced, etc. As you can imagine, we shop primarily at Whole Foods (outside of our CSA). We are also interested in making sure we buy these products at the best possible prices. So we routinely cross-shop at places like Marianos and even Jewel for these items. Interestingly, the cost of these types of items are almost always cheaper at Whole Foods than anywhere else. I think Marianos and Jewel mark these items up much higher because they take up precious shelf space and tend to move more slowly than the non-organic and/or mass-produced items. Just something to be aware of. If you're concerned about where your food came from, Whole Foods is actually not overpriced. If you look at how European families spend money on groceries proportional to their income, I think the Whole Foods model is more in line with that than the familiar American model. I'd have to Google the numbers, but I believe American families spend roughly 10% of their income on food, whereas Europeans will spend 15-20% of their income.

With all that being said, surely this is a huge risk on Whole Food's part, and I'm not quite sure how it will turn out. I enjoy that there is probably some portion of idealism in this move and I hope it works for both WF and more importantly the residents.

tptacek6• 12 years ago

It might not be obvious if you're a vegetarian (or just minimize meat consumption), but Whole Foods is not the most cost-effective way to get high-quality traceable meat. I routinely pay more per-pound for lower-quality protein at Whole Foods than I do at Butcher and Larder, a boutique whole-animal butcher.

fndrplayer132• 12 years ago

Yeah +1 that makes a lot of sense. I eat meat 1-2x a month.

ZanyProgrammer• 12 years ago

I hope that (assuming the demographics really do skew poor and food stamps) that the cashiers aren't mandated to harass the cusomters with WFs bullshit charities. I used to work at the Palo Alto WF for 4 years, and a couple of times a year there were periods where it was mandatory for cashiers to ask customers about WFs latest bullshit charity schemes-like the Whole Planet Foundation, etc. It was bad enough doing that in rich PAMPA, but hopefully the store management has a bit more flexibility opening up in freaking Detroit (assuming its not a store heavily visited by 28 year old start up employees with obscene amounts of money).

tptacek6• 12 years ago

Putting a Whole Foods in Englewood is fraught for the same reason it would be in Humboldt Park (well, minus the gentrification issue).

Go to Jimenez or Del Rancho and check out the produce section: it's comparable in size to a Whole Foods, but stocked very differently. You can find a small tub of lemongrass or buddhas hand citrus at Whole Foods, along with a small tub of jalapenos and maybe a plaintain. You can't find buddhas hand at Jimenez at all, but fresh peppers are stacked floor to ceiling.

Produce variety at Jimenez is poorer than Whole Foods. But quantity is much greater, and quality is higher. Jimenez does a better job at stocking the ingredients people in their neighborhood actually use.

Similarly: you can get cheap-cheap-cheap top round or ground pork or skirt or chorizo at Del Rancho. You can't get hanger steak, air-chilled cage-free chicken, or 15 varieties of chicken-apple sausage.

Having a serious grocery store in Englewood is an unalloyed good thing, no matter whether they choose to stock Organic Valley Sour Cream or Salvadoran crema (the crema is better, by the way). But if Whole Foods really wants to help the south side, they're going to have run a different kind of Whole Foods. It would be really neat to see them try.

gumby4• 12 years ago

This is super exciting. I was disappointed by one pull quote: "This is not an experiment. African American people are not an experiment,” Thompson says. “People need to stop thinking like that, that we cannot afford the things that people in other communities have.”

The fact is: this is a poor community, and the accepted wisdom is that they can't have nice things. This is indeed an experiment to show that that accepted wisdom is wrong. There's nothing wrong with doing experiments: we do them all the time, whether it's testing drugs or the work of economists like Esther Duflo, these are crucial. And I sure hope if throws sand back in the face of those who have given up on these communities.

Why Whole Foods Is Moving in to One of the Poorest Neighborhoods in Chicago

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