Posted on 07/20/2011 4:16:49 PM PDT by SmithL
First Lady Michele Obama today announced that several large grocery chains, including Walmart, will add 1,500 new grocery stores over the next five years in poor communities that lack access to fresh foods. The stores are expected to reach 9.5 million people.
The First Lady called the initiative a "game-changer for kids and communities all across this country."
"We can give people all the information and advice in the world about healthy eating and exercise, but if parents can't buy the food they need to prepare those meals because their only options for groceries are the gas station or the local minimart, then all that is just talk.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Well fresh food and Wal-Mart is not something I’d expect to see mentioned in the same sentence. Wonder how many of these companies made donations to her husband’s campaign in exchange for the publicity...
don’t worry, these Wal-Marts will soon close because of enormous losses...
The whole “food desert” thing is so dumb. There’s a reason there aren’t grocery stores there, if it was a good place for them they’d be there, make it a good place for them and they’ll show up.
Walmarts have full grocery stores. Even lobsters.
Humph, I wonder if the first hypocrite will get her seafood there? Not!
Isn’t it great to be poor.. you get to be a contempt-ed tool used for government coercion. And there’s always some little totalitarian looser willing to take up your ‘cause’.
Walmart did this in Indianapolis. They opened Walmart grocery stores in poor communities.
Almost all are gone because most of the time the food never made it to the shelves. If it did, it was stolen.
Walmart now has empty buildings sitting around with graffiti on all over them.
Many years ago Cub Foods got lured into the same thing. Had the same problem and those stores are gone along with the rest of the stores.
Perhaps Moochelle could start an honesty program and teach those peeps in those communities to stop thieving from those trying to solve their food desert problem.
No, they won’t close...WalMart will just raise prices elsewhere in the country to offset some of the losses at those stores in “disadvantaged areas” from shoplifting, vandalism, lack of paying customers, etc. In other words, the rest of us will pay for it.
Once again, an Obama starts a program to “spread the wealth” around.
A friend just showed me an article in the Washington, DC “City Paper” about Walmart. Four new stores are planned incide DC, which for years has been known as haveing “food desert” areas. Of course it doesn’t help that years ago the city passed laws against unlicensed street vending and made licenses expensive and hard to get. There used to be farm trucks loaded with fresh produce traveling around the city and especially in the poorer areas. There was one white farm couple that stopped their truck near where I worked. I bought their lovely ripe tomatoes and corn regularly. They were run off by these vending law changes.
One effort that DC has made according to the article, is to require that Walmart pay at least $4 above minimum wage.
More importantly...this will have no impact on health, or obesity trends.
The reasons why retailers avoid the “food deserts” is because the “food deserts” are high crime areas.
Unfortunately, the costs of doing business in these areas is higher than elsewhere. The costs of security, losses to shoplifting, and higher insurance and maintenance costs will make it more difficult to be profitable. Grocery stores operate on a very thin profit margin.
It’s predictable that there will be charges of discrimination, if these stores charges higher prices than other stores in the same chain. These stores would have to charge higher prices if the prices are going to reflect the higher costs of doing business. More likely, the chains will just raise prices for all of their stores, so that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton can’t say that they are charging higher prices in their ghetto stores.
I live in a town that is considered a “food desert”. The nearest Wal-Mart is 4 miles away, and there are Wal-Marts every 10 miles or so from all the other stores in this part of the state. My town has a few “Mom and Pop” markets, a Subway, a Rite Aid that sells food, and 2 convenience stores. Taxes and crime are high in this area. I can’t imagine who would want to open a big grocery store here.
Perhaps this will be different with the 4 Walmart stores they plan to open in Washington, DC. Several years ago I went to a newly opened Home Depot. The hardware and tools section was in an especially enclosed single access, supervised entrance area. Going back a few years later, the same area is now just as open as the other store areas. Another thing I have seen in statistics is that property and other crime levels have dropped in major cities. Could it be because black are proud that one of their guys made it to the Presidency and are less angry and committing fewer crimes?
Except, irony of ironies, it’s the ‘community activists’ who have kept Walmart out of various boroughs of NYC, for example, or Tom Menino, the mayor of Boston, who is keeping Walmart out of his city—over protests from people in some poorer neighborhoods, where Walmart wants to build a store.
I still say that food stamp recipients should be able to buy only produce, lean meat, dairy, and whole grains.
Also, is it time to sell my Walmart stock?
Grocery chains will put a store anywhere it will earn a profit.
Exactly why would they put stores in areas where the store was guaranteed to lose money?
Instead of shaming good companies into bad investments, Moochelle would be much better served by pointing her Wookie finger at the Hombeboys who caused the situation.
Wow. So now these communities will have more places to rob!!
Those familiar with the Washington, DC area may know the story of Landover Mall, and why that mall went out of business.
When it opened, Landover Mall was a beautiful shopping mall. The area at the time was middle class though racially mixed. As time went on, the black population increased sharply, especially among poorer blacks. Gangs started congregating at the mall and caused trouble sometimes. Graffiti and other evidence of gang presence, such as ripped up seats in the movie theaters there, created a bad atmosphere.
The bad atmosphere frightened shoppers away, which caused sales to drop, which caused some stores to close, which turned more shoppers away. And the packs of youths, menacing legitimate shoppers, scared even more people away. There were gang fights and some other crimes there, which scared off even more.
Eventually the mall was torn down.
I didn’t say they didn’t have grocery stores, I was just commenting on freshness. I remember them telling some environmental groups last year that they were going to buy and sell more local foods to save on fossil fuels and preservatives, but I haven’t seen much of a change.
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