Walgreens Tackles ‘Food Deserts’

[Guest guest]

*Among students* of the contemporary metropolis, “food deserts” have become

a widely known problem. The term is generally used to describe urban

neighborhoods where there are few grocers selling fresh produce, but a

cornucopia of fast-food places and convenience stores selling salty snacks

(though, strictly speaking, the term can be applied to rural or suburban

areas, too). Often the problem afflicts low-income areas abandoned or

shunned by food businesses that focus on better-off consumers; the residents

of food deserts, apparently, are not providing enough profit to be offered

more healthful grub. These are places where the market for nutritious

sustenance has essentially failed.

Perhaps the marketplace can reverse its own failure, but a little prodding

from other entities may be required. One example emerged this summer in

Chicago when Walgreens, the drugstore chain founded in that city more than

100 years ago, started selling an expanded selection of food, including

fresh fruits and vegetables, at 10 locations selected because they were in

food deserts. The experiment in creating these “food oases” is intriguing

because it involves a well-known retail brand not typically associated with

groceries — and, really, because it involves a well-known retail brand at

all.

Chicago was the focus of a 2006 study by the Mari Gallagher Research and

Consulting Group (commissioned by LaSalle Bank) that helped popularize the

phrase “food desert” by linking it to block-by-block grocery-access data and

made forceful arguments about the impact the lack of options had on public

health. While the same issues exist in many places (and Gallagher has since

assessed locales like Detroit and Birmingham, Ala.), it seems likely that

the prominent association between Chicago and the food-desert problem played

some role in motivating city politicians; the Walgreens foray into groceries

followed an appeal from Mayor Daley’s office.

A drugstore might not seem the obvious venue for solving a grocery-store

problem, but Walgreens offered something useful: ubiquity. “That’s the

exciting thing about Walgreens, they’re in so many places,” Gallagher says.

(It was during her research on Detroit that she was struck by the fact that

pharmacies were practically the only mainstream chain presence, aside from

fast food, in many neighborhoods.) Thus the pharmacy chain did not have to

open new stores in food deserts, because it was already operating in plenty

of them, and could use Gallagher’s data to pick locations for its

experiment. Still, refitting the stores to offer 750 or so new products,

including whole new categories, without expanding their actual size was a

big undertaking. (About 20 to 25 percent of the square footage in each

participating store is now given over to food.) And Walgreens had to line up

new suppliers and adjust to the risks of selling things like lettuce and

bananas that can go bad on the shelf if not bought quickly, says Jim Jensen,

the chain’s divisional merchandise manager for consumables.

Then again, if you’re a big retailer looking to explore a new category,

there are advantages to knowing in advance that the market isn’t exactly

saturated. Walgreens is offering few specifics about how the test run is

going. (The company put me in touch with Bridgett , manager of the 67th

and Stony Island Avenue location, who said that customers love it.) But Don

Whetstone, senior director of new format development, frames groceries as a

business opportunity. “We didn’t build this just for Chicago” he says.

It’s certainly easy, given the scope of the food-desert challenge, to

imagine other municipalities encouraging Walgreens to bring its concept

elsewhere; customers in other cities who have heard about the effort have

already starting asking local Walgreens managers when produce will be

available. Meanwhile, more non-junk-food items and ready-made meal options

(sandwiches, for example) have been spotted at drugstore chains like CVS and

Duane Reade; Wal-Mart has said it will test smaller stores within cities

instead of at their fringes.

Gallagher, whose research has evidently done a great deal to spark all this

experimentation, has been working with new measurements to help more

retailers adjust their product mix to more healthful foods in areas that

lack access to them. Another clever attention-getting statistic she has come

up with is a measurement of “years of life gained” through access to better

food.

While Gallagher is pleased to see the Walgreens experiment unfold, “there’s

not a single solution,” she says. And in fact there’s an overlap between

that view and her general theme, which is that the goal is fundamentally to

increase choice. She is less concerned about purging food deserts of fast

food or other processed-sustenance options than she is with adding more

healthful options to the menu. “Choice,” she maintains, “is a good driver.”

In other words, if this marketplace failure is going to be resolved, it’s

hard to see how anything but the marketplace can do it.

Link

here<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/magazine/14fob-consumed-t.html?ref=health\

>

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Ortiz, MS, RD

*The FRUGAL Dietitian* <http://www.thefrugaldietitian.com>

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