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The larger goal for Eat to Live called for putting an affordable grocery store with fresh produce into a "food desert" on South Salina Street. Instead of creating a traditional for-profit business, leaders formed a co-op, meaning members would run the store and share in any future profits.

In the end, despite other grocery stores being a mile or farther away from Eat to Live, not enough people shopped at the co-op.

What do you know, another socialist failure.

None of the ‘members’ actually put any of their own money in to this business so it should be no surprise that the business failed.

My guess is that this store failed because of high rates of product shrinkage. Namely that the employees are stealing the store’s food and giving it away.

The story does not say why the first manager was fired. My guess is that he caught an employee stealing and fired that employee which caused a problem with one of the organizers of this social experiment.

Hchampaign said it right. You cannot start a project like this without the owner being on sight.

Someone with serious skin in the game and authority to fire bad performing employees and make decisions has to be on the premises. Grocery stores operate on thin profit margins and are fiercely competitive.

Note that there is another private grocery store a mile away from this market in the “food desert” and this subsidized grocery store can not compete.

Let’s face it this store is not needed and can not compete because it is operated by people with no interest in its success.