Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Why so?
Edit: essentially, a lot of the time it is expensive to be poor.
I drive to one or more grocery stores infrequently to get what I want. Buy quality food and freeze/store it in my large house. Garden provides some more. Waste is composted and feeds the gardens.
Meals cost me a buck or two to prepare from my plentiful stock. All because I can afford to. Food is a negligible fraction of my budget.
It's the old adage about it being expensive to be poor, only in reverse.
You can do that kind of thing when you are relatively settled and have roots and connections in a community, and the know-how to do all that home-making. We didn't have any money, but we were rich in a lot of other ways. If you are isolated and precarious, living reactively day-to-day, it makes something that is already hard nigh on impossible.
Kroger used to be so bad in our neighborhood that we drove 30 minutes (past upscale krogers) because their business model of abusing stranded populations was abhorrent.
You plan your trip to take advantage of transfer tickets and such. Sometimes you walk a mile or two or you bike or you bum a ride from someone.
Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t plan and are helpless.
Sure it’s not ideal and I prefer being able to shop ad hoc at my leisure, no doubt. But when I had to I made do.
Chronic stress (such as from financial stress and working multiple jobs) actually does severely impact your executive function and decision-making ability. It's hard to make dispassionate decisions when you're exhausted and scared. There's been studies about it.
Obviously it's possible to overcome that, and some people are better at it than others. But the burden is real. When you're coming off a double shift, it's really hard to make the decision to spend an extra 45 minutes walking round-trip, or two hours hopping on and off buses, when you could just hit the Walgreen's near your apartment and get home to your family.
it kinda does though.
The effects of financial stress on your mental wellbeing are pretty well documented and can manifest in ways such as inability to focus/concentrate, chronic fatigue, spotty memory from stress etc.
obviously not. But anecdotally what I see where I live is that it is a large enough inconvenience that it makes an impact. If you work 8 hours, then have to spend 2-3 hours getting groceries you already have a 10-11 hour day not counting any other commuting you need to do. What if you have kids you need to get off a bus from school?
trying to blanket say anyone not willing to make that trip just isn't trying isn't fair.
It is well documented that low-income areas have less access to good education, healthcare, and other facilities. blaming the residents doesn't help them improve their quality of life. Not everyone will make it out of that.
We’re not making two hour trips every day after work for food. No poor person I knew did that when I was poor. I did it mostly on weekends when there was lots of time.
But being poor DOES mean lowered efficiency with respect to an astonishing number of steps involved to achieve the desired outcome.
And when you have enough of these lowered efficiencies at one time and they begin to compound like interest...
Not always a pretty picture.
WF (or Trader Joes for that matter) simply doesn't sell value priced versions of a lot of items. CVS will sell it at a ripoff. It probably comes out close to a wash put poor people are poor, not stupid. If the numbers worked out in favor of WF they would be shopping there. Also, nobody(TM) does their entire shopping at CVS. People will drag their asses elsewhere on a regular basis to buy certain items that are cheap. Many convenience stores, bodegas, etc. will sell a couple staples or classes of items dirt cheap in order to attract business. You buy your regular items where they are cheap (e.g. $1.50/gal brand name milk from the bodega that buys about to expire milk from a restaurant supplier for pennies and passes on the savings to create foot traffic) and buy everything else at CVS.
>I get the impression it caters to people for whom cooking for themselves is a special occasion and not a daily thing.
I'm really confused, you think WF caters to people who don't cook for themselves, but you feel like it's missing condiments and sauces? That's weird, people who cook for themselves probably aren't looking to smother their food with ketchup.
I mean, I live in an area where there’s a Whole Foods within two blocks’ walking distance of two other grocery stores (one mid-market, one down-market.)
I think this isn’t actually that uncommon; people don’t see Whole Foods as actually satisfying the demand for “a grocery store” in an area (as it doesn’t carry many of the things people expect a larger grocery store to carry—it may have decent produce, deli, bakery, etc. sections, but its grocery section is rather lacking in anything other than up-market “bougie” brands) so if there’s an existing other grocery store, and then a Whole Foods also gets built, that doesn’t much decrease the traffic to the other grocery store to the point that it would close down.
The only problem is property developers marketing a new neighbourhood that only has a Whole Foods as being “close to a grocery store”, and people believing them and moving there. That Whole Foods was probably already there before the neighbourhood was, serving as an outlet to travel to for the larger region that that the new neighbourhood is located in; but the other parts of the region were being served by grocery stores located closer to them, and this new neighbourhood actually doesn’t have one of those.
What do you regard as the grocery section?
I go to the grocery store weekly and all I buy, pretty much, are bread, dairy, and produce.
Do you mean stuff like breakfast cereal and peanut butter?
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/about-our-products/product-...
Absolutely false. That is the entire stated purpose of the 365 brand. What 365 does not cover is produce and meat. Meat is definitely more expensive at Whole Foods as they do not use it as a loss leader like other stores. I also sometimes wonder if one of the founders being vegan had something to do with that. Produce at WF is definitely about merchandising. The lower priced produced is very well hidden.
> shop at multiple stores (extremely difficult if you are poor)
Poor people don't have legs? I was poor for most of my life. I rode a bicycle to the grocery store. And the 365 brand stuff is mostly non-perishables. You can shop for non-perishables every couple of weeks.
Admit it. You just do not like the brand and identity the Whole Foods represents. It has nothing to do with the actual products or prices.
No. In so many ways, no. If the trade off is to save a few dollars by running around for multiple hours per week to go to multiple stores (uses gas! or takes a long time!), or just going to the nearest cheap store to get everything they need, they're going to Walmart.
It has nothing to do with brand and identity and everything to do with not wasting precious time and money.
https://www.checkbook.org/boston-area/supermarkets/articles/...
Walmart has staples dirt cheap but a much more limited selection. Market Basket has "proper grocery store selection" and can match Walmart in prices except for the things that really lend themselves to discounts for buying in bulk (like those big boxes of eggs) which they simply don't sell. Hannaford and Price Chopper make up the part of the curve leading to the mid range which is occupied by Stop and Shop, Shaws/Star, etc. and then at the top of the price distribution is all the stores I try to avoid at all costs.
They mention large variation of prices between stores of the same chain. I strongly suspect that this correlates with how wealthy the community the store is located in is (which leads to increased cost to run the store). Where I live Aldi is the high priced upscale store. Where my parents live Stop and Shop is the high priced upscale store and Shaws/Star Market is generally cheaper.
The fact that Walmart ranked poorly does not surprise me. There are no good Walmarts in the Boston area. Walmart doesn't throw a lot of grocery effort into stores with lots of local competition. The one near me is really good. The one in Quincy is laughably bad. Tewksbury is good but I'm not sure if they consider that "the Boston area".
It's contrary to advertisments who make you think you are saving money by buying "cheap processed foods".
Most sales, and particularly BOGO are loss-leaders to get people to sign up for the loyalty card. That's where the money comes from because now we have your phone number and email address and purchase history to sell. Every one of those coupons that prints on the receipt is a paid advertisement. CVS gains by promoting those products. By gamifying coupon use. And those ExtraBuck coupons aren't discounts but more like short-term microloans that CVS keeps the interest on.
So when I run out of flour, I have a decision to make: would I rather sit in traffic for 30 minutes, wait for instacart/amazon fresh delivery, or go to CVS/Walgreens? I suspect there are many people like me who pay the markup every day because it's less of a hassle.
Another factor is that in this age of instant gratification if I were to buy a week's worth of perishables items would go bad because it's so easy to have a shitty day and say screw it, let's go out, get takeout or get delivery (369 restaurants will deliver to me via uber eats) instead of cooking.
Not saying that it's a healthy way to live, but it's become a strong pull over the 10 years since I've made the transition to fully urbanized life. The way we cope, especially after having a baby, is to shop at the local butchers, bakers and markets for fresh stuff every few days and order delivery of heavy bulk goods periodically.
Accidentally running out of flour, coffee filters, half and half, etc., is probably an inevitable side effect.
Plus in some areas you cannot get a grocery in due to zoning or regulatory agencies which can increase the costs of worker and compliance needs beyond normal. There are many rules regarding handling of produce and raw foods that drug store type sellers never have to meet.
This is unfortunate, because Manhattan clearly has excess demand for good grocery stores, and the incumbents (Gristedes, etc.) are terrible.
Those grocery stores would easily be extinct with more meaningful competition. The only thing that keeps them in business is the "natural monopoly" caused by the fact that most Manhattanites don't have cars and aren't willing to travel very far for groceries.
All sorts of folks buy from CVS, mostly stuff on sale but not always. Moms with a sick child and elderly folks in to get medicines are a good chunk of the customers. Folks without transportation are a few people, sure. In one store, some of the food traffic was simply because we were in a small town with limited groceries: Some of the food was nearly as cheap as the local places. We got a boost of traffic because of football games at a college about 25 minutes away.
The second store was a 24 hour store, and though the town had 24 hour grocery stores, they weren't next to us at night. We were not far from a small college as well. And again, same sorts of customers, usually picking up one or two things.
Even more extra bonus points on holidays, since we were always open (at both stores). I think people figured we'd be less busy.
Whole Foods 365 brand organic milk is slightly cheaper than CVS, but it's a slightly longer walk and has longer lines and is in a basement, so I tend not to bother. (I probably should go there more often.)
> The eyebrow-raising figure probably comes down to an issue of scale – last year CVS and Walgreens each had close to 10,000 stores in the US, while Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods each had fewer than 500 locations.
[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CzhWggSef2pbRMJam1m2...
I feel like the most appropriate metric would control for total population served (to discount both the fact that WF and TJ's don't exist everywhere CVS does, and that there are more CVSes per capita than the others where two or more of the three exist).
WF and TJ are niche supermarket chains, its just another dumb headline. https://www.statista.com/statistics/818602/online-and-offlin...
But my fear is growing...
More like 20x.
FTFA: last year CVS and Walgreens each had close to 10,000 stores in the US, while Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods each had fewer than 500 locations.
Just because someone buys a grocery item from CVS does not remotely imply that CVS is their primary grocery store.
The USDA has better numbers representing the market. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/retailin...
Wow. What leadership. It only took a couple generations for a place that sells medicine to stop selling cigarettes. It should be only a quick thirty or forty years before they stop selling the deep fried salt cakes. Are they still selling homeopathic "remedies"?
There are lots of pharmacies in this world. I seriously doubt CVS was the first to do anything. Somewhere out there, probably in Utah, there had to be a pharmacy that didn't sell cigarettes prior to 2014.
I wonder if a lot of this has to do with how family life is going. It is not the 1960's any more and we don't have the whole family sat around the table at dinner time with mum having been home all day keeping the house in order.
For people who don't have a dining room and people to cook for, why lovingly prepare a meal from fresh produce when junk food can be eaten instead? Price isn't everything. Neither is cooking skills or familiarity with what vegetables look like. Ready meals rule in an atomised society.
Not a lot of people have that kind of time to prepare a healthy meal, especially when they get home exhausted from work or have to get ready to work second or third shift, and might be trapped in a car two hours a day. Who has time to shuck corn, mash potatoes, and peel rutabagas? It becomes far more attractive to pop in the take and bake lasagna and throw the tin out afterward and actually have some time to spend with your kids before you put them to bed.
Sometimes a drug/convenience store is just a drug/convenience store.
Trader Joe's has their own in-store brands for tons of products, which has spawned various guides on what should/shouldn't be bough there (https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/save-money/what-to-buy-at-tr... for example). CVS, on the other hand, is a far more general store. They both sell food, but they're not in the same market segment - so the comparison is strange.
wtf are you talking about? I do this (with other greens and vegetables). If anything, the people shopping at WF/TJ don't want a head of lettuce because it's a stupid product, but I think you're using that as an example...but using head of lettuce just makes me believe you don't understand the demographic.
It's not very surprising. When you take a broad meta-category like "groceries" and have 10x the number of locations, it isn't shocking that they would move more product.
Trader Joe's and Whole Foods target specific demographics. I live in a metro area of about 300k people and there are 1 each Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. There are probably 40-50 CVS outlets. Their sole income driver is margin on food. CVS focuses on market saturation -- their profit driver is drugs (a market in which they vertically integrate distribution) that are mostly 3rd party paid. They survive in food deserts because the money made on drugs offsets heavy shrink losses.
I heard accounts of ironically Whole Foods which is referred to as "whole paycheck" in other areas being the cheap option in some areas. I would guess traffic vs stock would also influence prices in non-obvious ways. With perishables, more expensive real estate, high traffic, and customers more likely to buy everything by foot they may be less of a speciality niche in urban areas than suburbs.
For people scratching their heads wondering what the heck Wawa is, I have no idea what the West Coast equivalent would be. Sheetz is another similar chain on the East Coast, if that rings any bells...
Ask someone from Pennsylvania or New Jersey what they think of Wawa. In my experience, their eyes generally light up and they start raving in a way that most people don't talk about a gas station convenience store.
24 hours a day, you can get hot soup, quesadillas, sandwiches, salads, burritos, etc. in a matter of minutes for a reasonable price. There's really nothing else like it.
Most places are food deserts not because market forces don't work there, but because they do: People in those areas do not want to buy fresh vegetables and raw ingredients for cooking. They prefer to buy packaged/processed foods, regardless of cost or health comparisons they are making, or not making. This makes traditional grocery stores less worth it, so they leave if they can't make do.
There's a lot of literature on food deserts (as typically stated) being more or less a meme since 2015, here's one example with a couple studies to back it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/giving-the-poor-ea...
> Another study, published this week as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, looked across the country and found that no more than a tenth of the variation in the food people bought could be explained by the availability of a nearby grocery store. The education level of the shoppers, for example, was far more predictive.
And so on. So no I don't think your idea would work particularly well past the novelty stage :(
This neighborhood was not a poor one. Million dollar condos (forget houses), all around.
However, there are only so many buildings with acceptable basement layouts, and only so many neighborhood that are profitably enough to merit the additional capital and operational cost of a supermarket in a basement.
Yet, despite the poorer selection and higher prices, the majority of groceries that enter our house come from CVS. Why? My wife visits one regularly to pick up prescriptions, and they have just enough of what we buy, at sufficiently justifiable prices, that she can get enough of what we need without an extra trip to a different store.
The most convenient store is the one you're already at.
This has happened in several European countries. For example, in the UK Tesco has opened many "Tesco Express" shops in towns and cities. They are fairly small, but they can take advantage of Tesco's huge distribution system to stock a wide range of products, including fresh food. Prices are the same as the large shops, but the 20% of products they stock are the dearer ones.
Apparently the difference is 1-5p on most items, so less of a problem than the American situation.
In Canada the corollary is 'Shoppers Drug Mart' and ever since they merged with the national grocer chain, I can get >50% of my groceries i.e. milk, bread, cheese, meat (I mean none of it is super high quality but often good enough) because it's across the street! And there is no lineup.