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Comment by rpenm | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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).

You're right. I edited my sentence to include "college town" and split "white" from "stronghold".

Hyde Park is a white stronghold in the sense that it, like Beverly, is a south side neighborhood where white families will happily reside.

"College town" is probably the more appropriate descriptor of Hyde Park.

(I grew up in Beverly, and went to school at Ignatius, so I had a bunch of Hyde Park friends).

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.

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.

dollar-store version of Trader Joe's

The family resemblance is to be expected since the two brands are the result of feuding brothers splitting their family business: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/12/02/aldi_grocery_...

Fair enough! The one over here has a pretty solid frozen vegetable section and reasonably good fresh produce ($0.99 unripe avocados!!!). I'd estimate that they have about 20ft of shelf space for fresh stuff.

This by the way is what Aldi's are like in their home country, Germany. When we stayed with my mother in law it was pretty much the only grocery store around (and in an agricultural area!).

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).

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