Why Grocery Stores Are Avoiding Black Neighborhoods

A food desert is an area with low-access to healthy and affordable food. About 19 million people in America live in a food desert, and it disproportionately affects Black communities. Despite nationwide efforts to improve poor food environments, many of the biggest names in America’s grocery industry continue to avoid these neighborhoods.

In the midst of a worldwide pandemic and raging protests against police brutality, there’s another silent crisis wreaking havoc on America’s most vulnerable communities: food deserts.

The USDA defines a food desert as a place where at least a third of the population lives greater than one mile away from a supermarket for urban areas, or greater than 10 miles for rural areas. By this definition, about 19 million people in America live in a food desert.

The lack of grocery stores in many poor, Black neighborhoods has been a big topic in public policy since Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign in 2010. The initiative was designed to reduce childhood obesity by providing better food in schools and by bringing healthier options to low-income communities using public and private sector funding. Another chief goal of the program was to eliminate food deserts in America within seven years.

Despite nationwide efforts to improve poor food environments, many Americans say this problem persists today. Watch this video to find out more about the country’s food deserts.

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Why Grocery Stores Are Avoiding Black Neighborhoods

[cameronmccollough]

I'm a 32 year old black man from the hood. I was a district supervisor for undercover loss prevention for 3 years. Theft and robbery are a huge reason why these stores don't want to come to black neighborhoods. It's a easy but very valid excuse to not want to get involved in our communities. I did my best to prevent theft in lower income neighborhoods. I had to quit because that job is getting way too dangerous and that job wasn't paying enough for the amount of trouble I had to deal with daily.

[oliverheaviside]

The stores are avoiding black neighborhoods because of rampant crime. No other reason.

[SeudXe]

Love how the comments immediately know the real reason why stores don’t wanna come. Thats sad

[BabyBugBug]

High crime. I don’t need a 25 minute video to dance around this fact.

[magmaapex]

My father opened up a little store in Detroit in a not so good neighborhood. He was robbed 5 times in the 2 months he had the store open. He had groups of kids rush in and grab snacks and then run back out. He had grown men walk into the store and start trashing the place because they wanted to upload it to social media. The real reason people don’t open up stores like that in bad neighborhoods is because the people there don’t know how to act and take advantage of kindness.


I didn’t think this would blow up the way it did, First of all I want people to understand that a business can’t run off on losses. Second of all that business is what kept a roof over my head and kept my stomach full. So for all the people that would say things like reduce the price and give out freebies should seriously wake up to reality, my dad didn’t sell liquor since he didn’t have a liquor license. We did sell tobacco products but for everybody saying that my dad was a bad person because he sold tobacco products and liquor at the store you can literally get that stuff anywhere else. Another thing why would a small store need hired security, please explain because that makes no sense to me, Just be nice and don’t steal??? Yes we sold chips and sodas but just because we sold that stuff doesn’t mean we are tryna malnourish the population surrounding the store, seriously that doesn’t even make sense. We also had a small isle with fresh veggies which would almost always end up in the garbage and I know since I was the one that took out the trash so we were always at a loss. Opening the convenience store isn’t a act of kindness but the way my father treated the people that came was, even tho people would throw slurs at him, call him names and trash the place he never once got angry at people. He closed the store because he was always at a loss. But the way I have seen it ever since was that if those type of people knew how to behave in society and just not acts like fools there wouldn’t be these types of issues like food droughts and stereotypes.

[calmerthoughts]

As a black man in Minneapolis, I don’t blame the grocery stores, I blame the community who lacks accountability

[larrygibson]

Looting, and shoplifting, the two biggest reasons a business shuts it's doors.
They oppress themselves 🤷

[es]

I’ll save you time, it’s theft. Why risk you employees, property, and profits for a community that will not accept responsibility for bad behavior?

[ryanzackel]

The stores didn’t fail the communities.
The communities failed the stores.

[ohenricoacr]

They ask why grocery stores don't want to set up shop in these places while the camera shows a street where a building is vandalized. Major disconnect, I'm Black BTW! We live in a capitalist society, it cares about money, not race like what is being implied. CRIME is the reason! cost more for security, shop lifting, cost more for transportation (high crime, trucking companies are paid more), cost more for insurance. CRIME is the reason!

[coreytrevor]

The “community “ is the problem. Not the stores

[laasta]

CNBC should venture into opening a grocery store in one of these deserts and report back on their findings.

[tezino]

As a black person I suggest we stop shifting the blame and take accountability for the state of our community

[dcg]

Targeted minority neighborhoods? No, the stores are the ones targeted. Why should they operate a loss?

[_JackNapier]

You cannot call it a "Food Desert" when it is actually a "Crime Hotspot"🃏Call it what it is.

[victoriapendleton]

You can eliminate food deserts if you stop stealing from the stores that have located there

[Reno_Slim]

Rampant theft in the stores in those neighborhoods is why there are food deserts. No one is obligated to operate a business at a loss.

[marthell]

When I was a kid there was a Korean-owned grocery store in a black area that activists forced to shut down by blocking the doorways. They wanted a black-owned store to replace it. Instead, the Korean owners, who’d been robbed many times, let it go and it was replaced by nothing except boarded up windows and doors.

[midnightsnack]

The comments section is more enlightening than the video itself

[terryvlunsford]

A 25 minute video explaining why big grocery chains don't locate their stores in black communities, yet most folks including those who live there, can tell us in less than 25 seconds why no store that has to sustain profitability in order to exist can't open there.