The marketplace may address this situation, said the [image-nocss] report. This summer in Chicago, drug store chain Walgreens 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, said the Times, because it involves a well-known retail brand not typically associated with groceries, and because it involves a well-known retail brand at all.
(Click here for previous CSP Daily News coverage.)Chicago was the focus of a 2006 study by the Mari Gallagher Research & 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--Detroit and Birmingham, Ala., according to the report--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 Richard 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 said.
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% of the square footage in each participating store is now given over to food, the report said. 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, Jim Jensen, the chain's divisional merchandise manager for consumables, told the newspaper
Then again, said the report, for a big retailer looking to explore a new category, there are advantages to knowing in advance that the market is not saturated. Walgreens is offering few specifics about how the test run is going. But Don Whetstone, senior director of new format development, frames groceries as a business opportunity: "We didn't build this just for Chicago" he told the paper.
Given the scope of the food-desert challenge, other municipalities are encouraging Walgreens to bring its concept elsewhere, the Times said; 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 such as sandwiches, for have been spotted at drugstore chains like CVS and Duane Reade.
And Wal-Mart Stores is again exploring opening smaller-footprint urban locations, the report said.
Gallagher 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, said the report.
While Gallagher is pleased to see the Walgreens experiment unfold, "there's not a single solution," she told the Times. She said that 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 said, "is a good driver." In other words, if this marketplace failure is going to be resolved, it is hard to see how anything but the marketplace can do it, the report concluded.
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