Posted on 05/29/2024 7:42:34 AM PDT by Salman
After months of blown deadlines and broken promises to renovate and reopen six low-cost grocery stores in underserved communities, the operator of Save A Lot stores in Chicago promised a top city official in January that his company will do better.
“We took your comments about a ‘hard reset’ to heart,” Yellow Banana Chief Executive Joe Canfield wrote to Ciere Boatright, Chicago’s top planning and development official, in a January 31 email.
Five months later, Yellow Banana continues to fall short of its own goals.
The company was given 24 months under a contract with the city that approved $13.5 million in subsidies to rehab six stores. More than halfway in, all of the six stores are closed and none have been renovated. The company now has 10 months left to finish the job.
It’s been a tumultuous year for Yellow Banana — the company has been plagued by financial and legal troubles and dozens of timeline changes. Meanwhile, residents in neighborhoods with no grocery stores wonder when the company will make good on its promises.
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(Excerpt) Read more at chicago.suntimes.com ...
Now...why would any community NOT have grocery stores? Hhhmmm...
Ask moochee. She whines about ‘food deserts’. Odd that stores close so quickly in certain locations. Almost like they can’t afford to stay open.
So I guess they are eating gas station hotdogs, sushi, chips, soda and beer;-)
We had a Sav A Lot close here in southern Indiana about 3 or 4 years ago. It was all cheap stuff in cluding beef from Mexico. We said no way Jose.
Serious answer: Traveling to other neighborhoods to shop.
It's a big city and they are not so far apart.
"Food desert" is just inflammatory rhetoric, but there is a real problem here.
In a well ordered densely populated city, a supermarket close enough to walk is normal.
Having to travel ten miles or so (on a bus or transit train) can be a serious inconvenience,
particularly through a high crime area. But people manage to do it.
We had a Save A Lot store close down about a year ago in our small town in S. Ill. It was a toilet, good riddance.
Grocery stores have low margins... They can’t survive with high retail theft.
Food Desserts happen because of theft and crime, period.
Get rid of welfare checks and put fathers back in the homes and you will end these problems.
We have a Save-A-Lot in our small Kentucky Town along with a Kroger and a super Wally World. I shop in there regularly. It is clean and safe. Nothing fancy of course that’s the idea. The people working there and the people shopping there are the same people that go to Kroger in this town.
Bring back shopping carts;-)
It looks like they have taken the money and not done the renovation but it’s very likely that the renovation is costly and delayed due to theft and vandalism. Hard to say without searching through a bunch of news articles from the last year or so. The news media isn’t doing research any more.
It takes longer to install bullet-proof glass and anti-theft barriers than they thought.
The Save-a-Lot I encountered in Clarksdale MS was “downtown”, a bit dirty, limited selection, and not cheap. It probably services people who couldn’t drive the 4 miles to Walmart. It did have Blue Bell ice cream though.
Keeping in mind that my particular store is clean and pleasant, no riff raff, one thing I like about it is some regional brands for certain products.
Anyway, recalling Winn Dixie as an example, you can put any store in the right section of town and it will be crap. Some people just don’t want good things.
Yellow Banana owns only 38 Sav A Lot stores out of 1,700 plus stores. A cursory search indicates that it is not a good company.
I think the other the other stores should be judged individually. Where a store is located has a lot to do with how it look / operates. I gotta wonder what decent company would partner with Chicago to build stores in areas where they are guaranteed to be robbed blind, lose money and patrons assaulted in route to and from the stores.
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