Wanted: inner-city supermarkets

Allen Frederick

Before the WalMart Supercenter era, community markets where the norm, now with sprawling shopping centers moving out into the burbs, the hometown markets where forced to close up shop.

And yet despite all the ‘change’ things still remain the same. This story shows once again that the small business owner working in his or her own community has the most positive effect on that local economy.

clipped from features.csmonitor.com

A fresh idea brings healthy food to low-income neighborhoods.

Grocer Jeff Brown put a lot of sweat into his ShopRite supermarket in inner-city Philadelphia: He built a pork-free meat room for Muslim customers, stocked the aisles with the Jamaican and African cuisine that neighbors requested, and taught job skills to the hires new to the workforce.

Brown’s ShopRite opened alongside several large stores, creating 900 jobs just in that one neighborhood, he says. “Which means 900 families can buy food and get off of welfare,” Brown says. (Most of his employees live in the local community.)

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One thought on “Wanted: inner-city supermarkets”

  1. This is a great idea. When we had the Watts riots, the south LA area was promised local markets. It never happened. Will it take another upheaval to show the rest of us that being poor does not mean eating unhealthy food. We need to use the fresh foods produced near us. Farmer’s markets help, but are usually held only weekly.
    I hate finding “fresh” produce that comes from thousands of miles away to my local market.
    Open note to California’s governor, “Dear Arnold, let’s get this going here in California.”

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