May 5, 2008
Map of the Day: Dwindling Local Supermarkets
Map via The NY Times
Because of rising rents and lowering profit margins, supermarkets city-wide have been disappearing, according to a recent study. New York's boroughs have been especially hard hit, forcing low-income residents like Fort Greene's Della Dorsett to power her electric wheelchair several blocks uphill along Myrtle Avenue, "returning home with plastic bags dangling from handles and nestled between her feet." Something to think about next time the lines jam up at Whole Foods.
The Department of City Planning says that as many as three million New Yorkers reside in communities without enough supermarkets and limited access to fresh food, where some do their grocery shopping at discount stores or pharmacies. Jimmy Proscia, co-manager of a Key Food in Flushing, tells the Times that his competitors cut costs by hiring nonunion workers, while big-box stores buy in bulk and undercut the supermarkets.
According to the food workers union, only 550 decently sized (10,000 square feet) supermarkets are left in New York City. Labor unions and community boards are fighting the decline one supermarket at a time, and the city is moving to increase the number of carts that sell fruit and produce in low-income neighborhoods.
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If they stopped eating Fried Chicken and fried bananas, they wouldnt be so fat.
This is a really big problem. Bodegas and clothes shops seem like the only stores that can make it in this city.
Supermarkets have a lower profit margin per square foot than just about any other kind of business. It's inherent to the industry and isn't about to change. As a result, a supermarket has to be physically large in order to make any money.
#1
but it's so delicious and cheap
Supermarkets in this town are and always have been horrendous. Give me a freaking Safeway, Hannaford, Shaw's, or Publix any day of the week... the kind with aisles that go past six.
If getting fresher food into all neighborhoods is a public priority - which I think it should be - there's going to have to be some sort of government incentives (perhaps through tax incentives) for stores that sell such food.
When will people learn - Capitalism Doesn't Work!
Try as I might to read between the lines, I cannot seem to find anything that directly blames *me* for this, being a white male and all. Until the Reverend Wright gets a hold of it, natch.
I think the landlords are emboldened by the flocks of people buying up expensive apartments in neighborhoods that have absolutely nothing to offer in terms of necessities shopping, like DUMBO and Long Island City. "If they don't need supermarkets there, why should we care if we price out a supermarket in St. Albans?"
I don't shop at the supermarkets you cretins frequent. I only shop at organic food markets where the food is grown locally and without the help of any unnatural pesticides or fertilizer. This helps protect our environment and makes me feel sophisticated, intelligent, and just plain better than the rest of you.
Kojak... Not to mention hungrier.
This article proves what I've always suspected... that yuppies don't eat.
I think they eat... they just don't cook.
I don't shop at American supermarkets.
They are too expensive.
I am not telling you where my wife and I shop,
because those places are already too crowded.
No it is NOT Costco, and NOT Walmart.
We do go to Trader Joes. But there are other good choices.
Man, I was out in Corona Queens a couple of weeks ago and I wanted a snack so I went into a bodega to find a granola bar. Needless to say they didn't have one, or really anything resembling a healthy snack with nuts and grains. I had to go to 7 bodegas before I found one.
And yet every one of the seven bodegas I went into had these pink-colored fried pork rinds molded into star shapes with f***ing clowns all over the packaging because it's supposed to be for children.
when the food riots come, fresh direct wont be delivering to your fancy overpriced shoebox in long island city or dumbo.
when the race riots start see how long your supply of organic fancy pants radicco lasts.
see how long you cant suffer without your precious shitakis.
This is ridiculous. I grew up in the Bronx, in the 80s, and we were low income Latinos who made perfectly normal healthy meals all the time, with vegetables and fruits from our culture, bought at any of the mini marts: mangos, platanos, yucca, etc. No one in my family has diabetes, heart disease,e tc. Who are these idiots who can't learn to cook and feed their families without giving them processed chicharrones?
What? The 99 cent stores don't sell fresh produce? How do those people eat?
oh, Publix, how I miss you.